[The Elizabethan Trilogy 01] • Death of the Fox

I have read Death of the Fox," writes O. B. Hardison, Director of The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C., "and feel that I have probably participated at the inception of a major literary event. The novel is a brilliant and unique work. I know of nothing quite like it in recent American fiction. It is wholly conversant with the fiber, texture, and grain of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. In its sweep it takes us from the arrival of the Tudors in 1485 all the way to October 29, 1618, when Ralegh was executed. It covers . . . the policy, the religious disputes, the warfare, the rivalries of various political factions, the magic of Queen Elizabeth and the crafty folly of James I, Essex and Bacon, Leicester and Sir Edward Coke, Marlow and Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones! Incredibly, it is all these, not only in broad sweep, but in an infinitude of jewel-like details, each meticulously exact, but at the same time adding up to a sort of literary mosaic, creating an artistic fabric more enchanting, more real than a whole portfolio of photographs.