“The Letters of a Stuart Princess: The Complete Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia” – published by Oxford University Press.
- Volume 1: 1603-1631
- Volume 2: 1632-1642
- Volume 3: 1643-1662
Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662), the daughter of King James VI & I, and sister of Charles I, also known as Electress Palatine of the Rhine or Queen of Bohemia, was both a popular and controversial figure in seventeenth-century Europe. In 1613 this Scottish born princess married the Calvinist German Elector Palatine, Frederick V. They lived in Heidelberg, the capital of the Lower Palatinate, for a number of years, until 1619, when they were offered the Crown of Bohemia. They only managed to rule over that kingdom for a single year before they were driven out of Prague by Catholic armies. As a consequence, they not only lost Bohemia but also the Palatinate, their lands and dignities in Germany. They fled and eventually found refuge in The Hague. As family members of Fredrick V – they were his maternal uncles – the Princes of Orange allowed him and Elizabeth to set up a court in exile in The Hague. Frederick would die near the battle field in Germany somewhat more than ten years later, but Elizabeth continued to live in voluntary exile in The Hague until 1661, when she finally returned to England. Also referred to as the Queen of Hearts because of her many admirers, and as the Winter Queen because she only ruled over Bohemia for a single season, Elizabeth became a martyr for Protestantism during and after her lifetime, which led to several hagiographies and mythical narratives.
Even the two most scholarly yet dated biographical accounts of Elizabeth – M. A. Green’s Elizabeth, Electress Palatine and Queen of Bohemia (1909) and Carola Oman, The Winter Queen: Elizabeth of Bohemia (1938; repr. 2000) – perpetuate the view that Elizabeth was a passive victim of historical events. Yet while her life was full of hardship, Elizabeth was also an active political and cultural agent who wielded much influence during the Thirty Years’ War and whose role as a patron of the arts contributed greatly to European court culture. Her correspondence, which spans more than half of the seventeenth century, from 1603 to 1662, reflects that Elizabeth was a key cultural, political, and religious figure in Early Modern Europe. Her letters were the principal means by which she could assert her influence. She used her extensive epistolary network to try and regain the lands that her husband and she had lost during the Thirty Years’ War. Her letters were thus political missives intended to restore the Palatinate to her family.
“The Letters of a Stuart Princess” will be the first comprehensive edition of her letters ever published. It will show how this strong-willed and unruly princess-turned-queen is more complex and contradictory than the clichés that have existed since the seventeenth century and have survived until now. In Elizabeth’s own letters the reader will meet a woman who was as uncompromising as her grandmother Mary Queen of Scots, as politically active as her godmother Elizabeth I, and as culturally-minded as her mother, Anna of Denmark. Under the tutelage of her mother, Elizabeth was exposed to the rich court culture in England and sought to emulate and extend cultural activities at her own courts in Heidelberg and The Hague, drawing also on German and Dutch traditions. As a perceptive and skilled patron of the arts, Elizabeth greatly influenced English royal art during the reigns of Charles I and Charles II. While she was more unsuccessful than successful, she was as much responsible for her own failures as anybody else. Averse to the pacifist tactics of her father, James I, and her brother, Charles I, Elizabeth steered her own daring political course.
Besides presenting an intriguing and detailed portrait of a Stuart princess from childhood to old age, covering her marriage, her court life in Heidelberg and Prague, her decades in exile in The Hague, and ultimately her return to England, “The Letters of a Stuart Princess” will be a viable treasure trove for anyone interested in Early Modern Studies. Not only did Elizabeth correspond with some of the most powerful statesmen and stateswomen, politicians, cardinals, archbishops, and diplomats in Denmark, England, France, Germany, the Low Countries, Scotland, and Sweden, Elizabeth and her correspondents are so detailed in their letters that the three volumes will provide a mass of information that will be relevant to a host of international scholars in a myriad of academic fields (including history, literature, geography, diplomacy, history of communication, and women’s studies). In the second volume of her letters alone (which spans Elizabeth’s most political years from 1632 to 1642), Elizabeth and her correspondents refer to nearly 700 people, most of whom were influential politically, culturally, or historically.
