The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart

This volume reconstructs the personal and public drama enacted in the life of Lady Arbella Stuart, claimant to the English throne. Marrying against King James's edict, Arbella attempted to flee to France but was captured and imprisoned. Her letters and the records associated with her case (some of them newly unearthed) reveal a rhetorically-gifted writer whose considerable verbal talent was applied almost exclusively to the reversal of her plight, though in the end her efforts proved unsuccessful.