Publishers Weekly
12/17/2018
In this engaging, well-researched biography, Hubbard (Serving Victoria) showcases the independent nature and innate business sense of Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury (better known as Bess of Hardwick; 1527–1608), through the lens of her passion for large-scale architecture. Hubbard reveals Bess’s shrewd determination to keep her assets, despite the uphill battles she faced as a woman and the strain it caused family relationships. After Bess’s first widowhood, she had to fight in court to retain her inheritance; in her later marriages, she ensured that ample assets included her name. During her fourth marriage, Bess and her husband had the honor and burden of keeping Mary, Queen of Scots, under guard for 15 years. The strain of guardianship and Bess’s multiple building and remodeling projects at Chatsworth, their estate, eventually resulted in a marital falling-out so spectacular that the English queen pleaded for the Shrewsburys to cease their public arguments over money and builders. Bess ultimately built four palatial homes using premier architects and craftsmen. Hubbard balances material concerns and incidents of family infighting with stories of Bess’s generosity toward relatives, servants, and the poor, including building almshouses. Hubbard argues that Bess used her intellect to create the life she wanted and to create a stone-and-mortar legacy. This is a captivating new look at a powerful woman. Illus. Agent: Georgia Rogers Garrett, Coleridge & White. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
Engagingly traces Bess of Hardwick’s astonishing rise, her sometimes fraught experience amid Tudor power struggles, and her legacy as a patron of architecture and the decorative arts…. Ms. Hubbard’s chief interest may lie in Bess’s building work and domestic arrangements, but she deals deftly with the treacherous politics of the time. He research has been deep and, one thinks, deeply enjoyable. So is her book.” — Wall Street Journal
“Succeed[s] in painting a dynamic portrait of Bess’s life, using letters and other sources to give it colour…. Bess of Hardwick emerges from Devices and Desires as a fascinating and influential woman well deserving of many historians’ attention.” — BBC History
“A brisk, perceptive portrait of a formidable Elizabethan woman.” — Kirkus
“Probing, buoyant.” — Booklist
Wall Street Journal
Engagingly traces Bess of Hardwick’s astonishing rise, her sometimes fraught experience amid Tudor power struggles, and her legacy as a patron of architecture and the decorative arts…. Ms. Hubbard’s chief interest may lie in Bess’s building work and domestic arrangements, but she deals deftly with the treacherous politics of the time. He research has been deep and, one thinks, deeply enjoyable. So is her book.
Booklist
Probing, buoyant.
BBC History
Succeed[s] in painting a dynamic portrait of Bess’s life, using letters and other sources to give it colour…. Bess of Hardwick emerges from Devices and Desires as a fascinating and influential woman well deserving of many historians’ attention.
Booklist
Probing, buoyant.
Wall Street Journal
Engagingly traces Bess of Hardwick’s astonishing rise, her sometimes fraught experience amid Tudor power struggles, and her legacy as a patron of architecture and the decorative arts…. Ms. Hubbard’s chief interest may lie in Bess’s building work and domestic arrangements, but she deals deftly with the treacherous politics of the time. He research has been deep and, one thinks, deeply enjoyable. So is her book.
Booklist
Probing, buoyant.
Wall Street Journal
Engagingly traces Bess of Hardwick’s astonishing rise, her sometimes fraught experience amid Tudor power struggles, and her legacy as a patron of architecture and the decorative arts…. Ms. Hubbard’s chief interest may lie in Bess’s building work and domestic arrangements, but she deals deftly with the treacherous politics of the time. He research has been deep and, one thinks, deeply enjoyable. So is her book.
BBC History
Succeed[s] in painting a dynamic portrait of Bess’s life, using letters and other sources to give it colour…. Bess of Hardwick emerges from Devices and Desires as a fascinating and influential woman well deserving of many historians’ attention.
Kirkus Reviews
2018-11-07
Besides Elizabeth I, another "strong-willed, fearless" redhead achieved power and wealth.
The wily and determined Bess of Hardwick (c. 1527-1608) was an influential figure in Elizabethan England, ascending the social ladder through four marriages, the last to George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, which conferred upon Bess the rank of countess. In a sprightly recounting of her life, times, and penchant for building and remodeling vast estates, Hubbard (Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household, 2013, etc.) vividly portrays a tense, roiling world in which Queen Elizabeth ruled with an unforgiving hand, all the while fearing to be betrayed and usurped. Foremost among claimants to her throne was the Catholic Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who was closest in blood to Elizabeth. When Mary fled from Scotland after a disastrous scandal, her arrival in England posed a dire problem for Elizabeth. Someone needed to take charge of Mary, keeping her virtually under house arrest; that person, Elizabeth decided, was the Earl of Shrewsbury, whose assets included many properties where Mary could be sequestered. For Shrewsbury, the responsibility was both an honor and an onerous burden. Required to be "in permanent attendance," he had to ask Elizabeth's permission whenever he wanted to move Mary, conduct his own business, or even spend time with his family; he also found himself vulnerable to Elizabeth's growing paranoia. "Plots and intrigues rumbled on," Hubbard notes, as she reports unending schemes among courtiers to gain and consolidate power. Initially, Bess was sympathetic to Mary, bonding with her over their love of needlework and gossip. But during Mary's incarceration—she finally was beheaded in 1587—Bess' "stocks of sympathy" became exhausted, and she escaped to one or another of her many properties, inherited from her former husbands, where she was involved in hiring architects, carpenters, and masons; overseeing construction and renovation; and redecorating. On one shopping spree, Bess returned with 10 wagons filled with "splendid furnishings." Moneylending and astute land purchases augmented her vast wealth.
A brisk, perceptive portrait of a formidable Elizabethan woman.
