Anyone still around?

And if so - reading anything relevant? :)

Hmmm... haven't been reading a lot of fiction lately but I did just finish, on unabridged audio, the first two of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell books. Not reeeally Elizabethan era, but the infant Elizabeth is a character. I must say they live up to their hype...

And now that I look more closely at this group -- I had never done much here -- I see that it's not necessarily for fictional treatments of Eliz. times. So...

Another book I am currently reading is The Shakespeare Circle: An Alternative Biography. This is a collection of brief biographies of the people in Shakespeare's life -- parents, siblings, schoolmate, townsmen, fellow actors, fellow playwrights, London contacts, etc. The bios are by academic and independent scholars but they're not too dry, being aimed at a general audience while still maintaining the scholarly virtues. Covers roughly 1540-1620, so that's Elizabethan enough...

>3 Crypto-Willobie: That sounds interesting... haven't even realized that it was even published :)

Still here, and still reading; for Christmas I got a copy of The Year of Lear, by James Shapiro. I haven't started reading it yet, but looking forward to it; I enjoyed his other book on Shakespeare very much.

>5 staffordcastle:

Which of his other books? 1599 or the one on his identity? (just curious - both are somewhere on my TBR pile...) :)

Meanwhile - I am slowly making my way through last year's Shakespeare Survey. Guess the whole group is on a Shakespeare spree at the moment :)

The one on 1599. I have both the hard copy and an audiobook, read by the author, who did a good job as a reader.

A fair amount of my current Elizabethan-related reading is on this interesting website...
https://www.lostplays.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

>8 Crypto-Willobie: Thanks for the link (I think...) :)

Interesting stuff! Thanks!

Just got two new books: John Guy's Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years and Susan Doran's Elizabeth I and Her Circle.

Has anyone read The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor? I just picked it up at the SF Friends of the Library Big Book Sale, and there aren't any reviews on LT yet.

>1 AnnieMod: I just joined so I'll try to revive this thread! I am a PhD candidate who studies gender and ritual reform from 1450-1700 in England so that definitely encompasses Elizabethan reform. I didn't just read this but am always thinking of it - Alexandra Walsham's Church Papists. I really love her work. She shows the complexity underlying the rather broad and not always accurate term "recusant" and shows that large groups of sixteenth century English people were nominally conforming to the church while continuing private Roman Catholic ritual, thus confounding the idea that there were simply reformed Christians and recusants. Good stuff!

>2 Crypto-Willobie:
And finally I am listening to the third of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell novels. Very good. Lives up to its hype.

And though this is not reeeeally "Elizabethan", I'm re-readng all seven volumes of G. E. Bentley's The Jacobean and Caroline Stage.
Have finished vols 3, 4, 5 (plays and playwrights), have moved onto 6 and 7 (playhouses and appendices) and will finish up with the volumes I know best, 1 and 2 (actors and acting companies). This is partly an exercise to shore up my slowly fading memory.