Volume 28, Number 10 · June 11, 1981

Tiptoe Through the Tudors

By Christopher Hill
The Lisle Letters
edited by Muriel St. Clare Byrne

University of Chicago Press, 3,952, six volumes pp., $250

This is, I think, the largest single work I have ever had to review. Epic in size and scope, tragic in the story it tells, it is also epic in its conception and execution, a remarkable triumph of persistence and determination. Miss Muriel St. Clare Byrne conceived of the idea of editing the Lisle correspondence in 1932. Now at last this colossal work appears as an eighty-sixth birthday present for Miss Byrne. Some two thousand letters—and they are only a selection!—are embedded in a running commentary in a work of nearly 4,000 pages.



Review, 3639 words

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