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"I, Elizabeth," by Rosalind Miles (Three Rivers Press: New York, 1994) is a historical biography in the "words" of Elizabeth I, Queen of England. Elizabeth ruled from 1558 to 1603 in what historians agree was a turning point in British history. To quote the back cover of the paperback edition:

"When she died in 1603, after a 45-year reign, her empire spanned two continents and was united under one church, victorious in war, and blessed with an overflowing treasure. What's more her favorites - William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Walter Raleigh - had made the Elizabethan era a cultural Golden Age still remembered today."

This genre of historical fiction has always been one of my favorites. Having read a great work "The Autobiography of Henry VIII, With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers"
by Margaret George, another "fictional" biography, I was fascinated with Dr. Miles' effort, and equally delighted with the book's outcome and effect on me.

Rosalind Miles, a well-known and critically claimed English novelist, brings a uniquely feminine insight to Elizabeth's biography. Through Elizabeth's "own" words we meet an insecure survivor of her father Henry's execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn. A constant theme of Elizabeth's narrative is that Henry declared his marriage to Anne as invalid and that Elizabeth was a bastard something that was almost unbearable to Elizabeth's self-image and contributed to her lifelong resentment of her father.

As Elizabeth is maintained in the style of an outcast princess, we also meet her older sister Mary who assumes the throne after Henry dies. Mary, the so-called "Bloody Mary,"poses a true danger to Elizabeth, who refuses to abandon the "new" religion. The struggle between the old Catholicism and new Protestantism of Henry has not yet been settled. Mary's Catholic prelates are once again burning Protestants at the stake.

Mary is a devout Catholic, determined to bring England back under the influence of Rome and form an alliance with Spain, her dead mother's homeland. She marries back into the Spanish royal family, and her desperate desire to conceive an heir late in her life comes to naught. What she thought was the bulge of pregnancy was only a massive ovarian tumor.

Elizabeth survives Mary's purges and assumes the throne after her sad, pathetic, and mortally ill sister dies. Her troubles and insecurity, however, do not end with her ascension as England's queen. Her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, as well as other disloyal

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