Devices and Desires: Bess of Hardwick and the Building of Elizabethan England
By Kate Hubbard
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
“A dynamic portrait. . . . Bess of Hardwick emerges from Devices and Desires as a fascinating and influential woman well deserving of many historians’ attention.” — BBC History
The critically acclaimed author of Serving Victoria brilliantly illuminates the life of the little-known Bess of Hardwick—next to Queen Elizabeth I, the richest and most powerful woman in sixteenth-century England.
Aided by a quartet of judicious marriages and a shrewd head for business, Bess of Hardwick rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most respected and feared Countesses in Elizabethan England—an entrepreneur who built a family fortune, created glorious houses—the last and greatest built as a widow in her 70s—and was deeply involved in matters of the court, including the custody of Mary Queen of Scots.
While Bess cultivated many influential courtiers, she also collected numerous enemies. Her embittered fourth husband once called her a woman of “devices and desires,” while nineteenth-century male historians portrayed her as a monster—”a woman of masculine understanding and conduct, proud, furious, selfish and unfeeling.” In the twenty-first century she has been neutered by female historians who recast her as a soft-hearted sort, much maligned, and misunderstood. As Kate Hubbard reveals, the truth of this highly accomplished woman lies somewhere in between: ruthless and scheming, Bess was sentimental and affectionate as well.
Hubbard draws on more than 230 of Bess’s letters, including correspondence with the Queen and her councilors, fond (and furious) missives between her husbands and children, and notes sharing titillating court gossip. The result is a rich, compelling portrait of a true feminist icon centuries ahead of her time—a complex, formidable, and decidedly modern woman captured in full as never before.
Kate Hubbard
After leaving Oxford University, Kate Hubbard worked variously as a researcher, a teacher, a book reviewer and a publisher’s reader and a freelance editor. She currently works for the Royal Literary Fund. She is the author of the acclaimed historical biography Serving Victoria and lives in London and Dorset.
Read more from Kate Hubbard
Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Devices and Desires: Bess of Hardwick and the Building of Elizabethan England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Devices and Desires
Related ebooks
Cavalier: A Tale of Chivalry, Passion, and Great Houses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby (Text only) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Queen: The Life and Tragedy of the Prince Regent's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scottish Queens, 1034–1714: The Queens and Consorts Who Shaped a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Agnes Strickland's Queens of England, Volume 1 of 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFortune's Many Houses: A Victorian Visionary, a Noble Scottish Family, and a Lost Inheritance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sophia of Hanover: From Winter Princess to Heiress of Great Britain, 16301714 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Queens Consort Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Triumph's Wake: Royal Mothers, Tragic Daughters, and the Price They Paid for Glory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Through the Keyhole: Sex, Scandal and the Secret Life of the Country House Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pleasures & Pastimes in Tudor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sophia: Mother of Kings: The Finest Queen Britain Never Had Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5She Wolves: The Notorious Queens of Medieval England Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Scourge of Henry VIII: The Life of Marie de Guise Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5King and Collector: Henry VIII and the Art of Kingship Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnne Boleyn in London Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQueen Margaret Tudor Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Lives of Tudor Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lady in Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Titled Americans, 1890: A list of American ladies who have married foreigners of rank Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Death of Amy Robsart: An Elizabethan Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsForgotten Royal Women: The King and I Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mysterious Mistress: The Life and Legend of Jane Shore Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Raising Royalty: 1000 Years of Royal Parenting Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chatsworth and the Duchesses of Devonshire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTudor Survivor: The Life and Times of William Paulet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKatherine Swynford: The History of a Medieval Mistress Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life in the Georgian Court Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond the Gatehouse: The Eccentric Lives of England’s Aristocracy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Women's Biographies For You
The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stash: My Life in Hiding Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Love Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordeal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frida Kahlo: An Illustrated Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Freedom: My Book of Firsts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: An Oprah's Book Club Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Butts: A Backstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unveiled: How the West Empowers Radical Muslims Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Madness: A Bipolar Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Devices and Desires
7 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devices and Desires (2019) by Kate Hubbard is non-fiction biography that takes Bess of Hardwick as its subject. Bess isn’t too good about sharing her thoughts, but meticulous in her accounts and frequent in correspondence. She was a consummate builder. Among her projects was the first iteration of Chatsworth House. And she outlived four husbands, each of whom lifted her further up the social scale until Bess was a confident of Queen Elizabeth I and one of the wealthiest women in England.Building projects were Bess’s true passion, particularly Chatsworth House which she began with her second marriage to William Cavendish and continued with funding from her third and fourth husbands. In her discussion of Bess’s projects, Hubbard’s attention diverts to architecture, construction practices, and the men who created great houses of the Elizabethan era.Bess left details of daily life in these lavish houses. At Hardwick in the 1590s, Bess wrote about the sale of cattle and sheep, the blue cloth she bought to make livery, the oysters sent by her son-in-law, the herrings purchased from Hull. The detail is fascinating.Filled with detail of society, marriage politics, domestic arrangements, Devices and Desires is an engaging read, but as non-fiction it can’t lift the people out of their of their documents.