Bücher von Lisa Hilton

'A sweeping, scintillatingly original, exciting exploration of writer, spy, power player, lover Aphra Behn' Kate Williams, historian and author of Rival Queens: The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots'Hilton to showcase[s] her skill for both historical and detective work and compelling, evocative writing . . . A sparkling and eye-opening account . . . compelling to read [and] refreshingly transparent . . . Her fresh ideas could open up exciting paths for future scholars' BBC History Magazine----A CLANDESTINE AFFAIR 'Whereas the Lady Henrietta Berkeley has been absent from her Father's house since the 20th August last past . . . AN OUTRAGEOUS ELOPEMENT. . . and is not yet known where she is, nor whether she is alive or dead. STOLEN LETTERS, SCHEMING SERVANTS These are to give notice That whoever shall find her, so that she may be brought back to her Father, the Earl of Berkeley, they shall have 200 Pounds Reward' SEX. SENSATION. CELEBRITY. This is The Scandal of the Century - and the true story of the author Aphra Behn, who used a shocking love affair to create the first English novel . . . ----In 1682, a young woman in the throes of a passionate affair flees her parents' home in Surrey to seek a new life in London. A scandal in its own right, but this is no ordinary young woman: Lady Henrietta Berkeley is the daughter of one of England's most powerful men, and her lover is her own sister's husband. As news of this notorious adulteress spreads, her flight, capture and the lawsuit that follow tear through society as the scandal of the century.To Aphra Behn, England's first professional female writer - herself condemned as a scarlet woman of loose morals - Henrietta's trial would be more than a source of shock and intrigue: it would inspire her to write Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, an outrageous and bestselling political fiction and arguably the first novel in English literature.Aphra herself is an enigma, the facts about her life continually disputed. By revealing the story of these two rebellious and ruthless women, Lisa Hilton's new history offers a surprisingly original theory on the origins of one of England's most celebrated playwrights. Against the backdrop of seventeenth-century England, with its strict traditional conventions of love, duty and identity, The Scandal of the Century shows just how far both women will go to break free.---'Gloriously mind-boggling . . . This is a lively book' Spectator

"Game-changing . . . How history should be written." -- Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon: A Life [An] ambitious re-examination of the intersection of gender and monarchy." -- New York Times Book Review Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her "weak and feeble woman's body" to do so for political gain. But in Elizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton's fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince--an expert in Machiavellian statecraft. Elizabeth depicts a queen who was much less constrained by her femininity than most accounts claim, challenging readers to reassess Elizabeth's reign and the colorful drama and intrigue to which it is always linked. It's a fascinating journey that shows how a marginalized newly crowned queen, whose European contemporaries considered her to be the illegitimate ruler of a pariah nation, ultimately adapted to become England's first recognizably modern head of state. "Hilton transforms an irreverent, centuries-old vision of a 'bewigged farthingale with a mysterious sex life' into a resolute, steel-spined survivor who far surpassed Henry VII's wildest hopes for his new dynasty." -- Publishers Weekly