Elizabethan England is the magnum opus of the author and historian Eva Mabel Tenison (1880­–1961), begun in the 1920s and published by subscription from 1933 until her death in 1961. Making use of a large number of original manuscripts from British and Spanish collections, many of which had never before been published, the 12-volume work was an extensive survey of the social and literary history of late-sixteenth century England. Each volume was copiously illustrated with maps, portraits and facsimiles. Despite its thorough research, Elizabethan England was unpopular with experts as it contradicted many long-standing views of that period in English history. However, ideas from the series soon found their way into the works of others.

Tenison lived a reclusive life and deliberately concealed her gender from fellow academics, publishing books using her initials ‘E M Tenison’, as here, or using pseudonyms including ‘Michael Barrington’ (reserved for her historical novels), ‘Nauticus’ (for articles published in the Mariner’s Mirror) or ‘Historicus’.

The subscription for Royal Library’s set of Elizabethan England was presented to King George V and Queen Mary by the mayors and chairmen of the boroughs of Northamptonshire in commemoration of the King’s Silver Jubilee in 1935.

Due to its binding, this book was one of those selected by Olwen Hedley in the 1960s as a fine example of bookbinding in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Hedley’s ‘Additional Bookbindings’ serve as a supplement to the catalogue of fine bindings compiled in 1893 by the Royal Librarian Richard Rivington Holmes. The set is uniformly bound in navy goatskin and tooled with the Royal Arms and the cypher of King George V.