Book dossier

Anne Cooke Bacon

by Valerie Wayne

"Little is known of the upbringing of Lady Eleanor Davies, but what is known is that her life was mired in both flamboyant personal conflict and in the notoriety of the Castlehaven scandal (resulting in the execution of her brother), and that her writings were embroiled in political affairs." "Married in 1609 to Sir John Davies, her husband tried to discourage her prophetic writing and burned her early treatises. Her second husband, Sir Archibald Douglas was equally critical. Once free from the censorship of her husbands, her prophetic career spanned the years between 1625 and 1652. During that time she published some 69 treatises, spent years in prison, and some time in Bedlam, and made astonishing predictions on a wide range of subjects. Viewed as both an inspired seer and a mad "ladie" by her contemporaries, Lady Eleanor has received a great deal of scholarly attention, not least of all because of her densely allusive and complex prose style." "Reproduced here is the 1625 treatise A Warning to the Dragon and all his Angels, which is a classic example of the kind of apocalyptic writing that predominates in late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century England."--BOOK JACKET.