Devices and Desires: Bess of Hardwick and the Building of Elizabethan England

“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 humb...