Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot

A fresh and engaging account of the life, times, politics, loves, and letters of the great English poet John Milton on the four hundredth anniversary of his birth.John Milton is one of the world’s greatest poets, renowned author of the epic Paradise Lost as well as numerous sonnets and other works. But he was also deeply involved in the political and religious controversies of his time. Fully immersed in the new and rapidly changing print culture, Milton wrote a series of radical pamphlets on free speech, divorce, and religious, political, and social rights that proposed a complete rethinking of the nature and practice not only of government, but of human freedom itself.Having put his pen at the service of Parliament against King Charles, and his Latin at the service of Cromwell’s new commonwealth, when the Restoration came Milton was lucky to escape with his life. By then completely blind, he persevered, creating the majestic works that made him immortal.For centuries Milton has emerged from biographies either as a blind, saintly figure removed from the messy business of personal affections, or as a woman-hating domestic tyrant. Yet as Anna Beer shows, he was neither ogre nor paragon. Milton had intense and often troubled relationships with both men (such as his early, passionate friendship with Charles Diodati) and women (throughout his three marriages).By closely examining all aspects of Milton’s life—his poetry, his prose, his Latin writings, his careful editing of his own biography, the records of his government work, and the social and political history of England during one of its most tumultuous periods (an era that ran from Shakespeare’s plays to Samuel Pepys’s diaries)—Anna Beer succeeds in bringing a celebrated and enigmatic writer to vivid life on the four hundredth anniversary of his birth.

Biographies & Memoirs

Anna Beer

Arts & Literature

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot

Bloomsbury Press

Sir Walter Ralegh's life is romantic, irresistible, and of central importance to our island story. His death is a convoluted and contested tale of bargaining, failure and betrayal. Through the Elizabethan golden age and Ralegh's famous adventures to the final act, Anna Beer presents his stranger-than-fiction life in all its richness.How could a man once the Queen's favorite find himself consigned to the Tower by her successor? Should his legacy be fame or infamy? Who was the real Sir Walter Ralegh?

Patriot or Traitor

Historical

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

The previously untold remarkable life of Bess Ralegh, the woman behind Sir Walter Ralegh and ahead of her time. From the start of her liaison with Sir Walter Ralegh, Beth Throckmorton, maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth I, was thrown into the dangerous and violent political world of Elizabethan England. Overlooked by the court and high society, dismissed with no rights as a woman in a fiercely male establishment, she was forced to play for high stakes. Her acute intelligence and commercial acumen ensured her survival. Indeed, so great was her success that two monarchs, Elizabeth I and James I, felt threatened by and indeed sought to destroy her. However Bess' success in her pursuit of power and wealth and her struggle for justice did not come without a price: her own imprisonment and interrogation, banishment and destitution, and the loss of her husband and two of her three children. Her ultimate triumph over adversity is an extraordinarily dramatic and compelling story, and until now, untold. Twice from scratch, Bess rebuilt her fortune, taking on her enemies with a courage and resilience that makes her a woman as remarkable today as she was in her own time. She is here brought to life by Anna Beer in a perceptive and enjoyable biography.

Bess : The Life of Lady Raleigh, Wife to Sir Walter

Constable

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Books by Anna Beer