Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life and Legend

As much about his posthumous reputation as his life.

Mark Nicholls is President and Librarian of St John's College, Cambridge.Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford. Sometime Lecturer in History at the University of Oxford.

Contents\ Preface\ Abbreviations\ List of Maps\ List of Illustrations\ The Devon Man\ The Favourite\ Roanoke\ The Outcast\ El Dorado\ The Rival\ The Court Poet\ The Suspect\ The Traitor\ The Prisoner\ The Tower Writings\ i The Tracts\ ii. The Great History\ iii. The Dialogue of Counsel\ The Last Voyage\ The Martyr\ The Legacy\ An Epilogue

While the authors have the luxury of footnotes and the skill to do proper academic research they have the good fortune to be able to write for a general audience... An excellent biography.
Every stage of [Raleigh's] life, works and reputation is carefully anatomized by Nicholls and Williams, and their biography will bring him vividly before new generations of readers.
Featured in London Review of Books, Volume 34, Number 5.
[Ralegh's career is] described with immense care and judiciousness by Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams in what will surely become the standard biography.
'With this landmark book, Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams debunk the legends, giving us instead a story that is all the more engrossing for its sophistication.'
'Even in our own times, Ralegh has hardly lacked for either scholarly or popular interpreters, this new biography, learned and accessible in equal measure, is nonetheless highly welcome. It will surely become the standard starting point for any one interested in his career and writings.'
'There is so much more to Ralegh, more than one column - or one book - can cover. But Nicholls and Williams have given us a set of Ralegh stories that could keep us busy for a lifetime.'
Nicholls and Williams seek to dismember many myths that have grown around Raleigh yet in a book of great depth probe the ambitious and adventurous character of a man who was deeply interested in the New World... a tribute to [Raleigh] and his absorbing life.
Nicholls and Williams are excellent on the narrative... they really come into their own in the accounts of the in-fighting at court and the way they bring out Ralegh's charisma and his duplicity.
'This is a thorough biography.'
A man of middling birth, boundless enterprise, prodigious talent, sparkling charisma, and overweening ambition, Sir Walter Raleigh is a great subject for a great biography. Here it is. Stylishly written, judicious in its verdicts, based on archival research and the latest scholarship, this book, by a pair of Oxbridge dons, probes the infighting at court, grand affairs of state, religious and cultural developments, and Raleigh's literary achievement with equal rigor and acuity.
Overall, Nicholls and Williams have produced an incredibly readable biography which analyzes several aspects of this enigmatic figure who paid the ultimate price for his ambitions at court.