THE POLARISATION OF ELIZABETHAN POLITICS: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597.

First edition, first printing. Original brown cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper reproducing a 1599 engraving of Robert Devereux by Thomas Cockson. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Lightly rubbed and pushed to spine tips. In the lightly creased dustwrapper, showing a little edgewear and a closed tear (c. 2 cm) to the upper edge of the rear spine fold. A presentable copy of a volume scarce in the original cloth.

Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, favourite of the queen, soldier, statesman, spymaster, patron of the arts (and more) was seemingly involved with everything significant during the later years of Elizabeth's reign. At the centre of a circle numbering Sir Philip Sidney (Essex would later marry Sidney's widow), Fulke Greville, and Francis Bacon among its members, it was his rivalry with Robert Cecil for the queen's favour (and ear), and the factional conflict that grew out of it (the polarisation of Hammer's title), that led to his ill-fated 'rebellion', estrangement from the queen, and eventual execution. Hammer's book – which doesn't cover the years of decline and death – is a remarkable feat of scholarship, and essential reading for political, military, and literary historians of the period. As Patrick Collinson, in his LRB review of the book (11 November 1999), wrote, "This is the first time that the bulk of Essex's career has been reconstructed from something like the totality of the surviving manuscript documentation, and for Elizabethan historians Hammer's achievement is a major event." (London Review of Books, 11 November 1999).