Recounts the adventurous life of the English explorer and courtier who spelled his name "Ralegh" and led many expeditions to the New World.
We can imagine it this way: a small group of scholars at Durham House along with pilots and sailors, perhaps a wizard with his black cap and white beard, and, at the center, the dashing Ralegh in his black and pearls. Great maps are spread across wooden tables beside diaries, logs, and reports in many languages. As the men peer into the blank spaces at the edges of the parchments, they slowly add lines. Coasts begin to take shape. America is emerging out of legend into fact. Ralegh leads the way. He pushes forward into the blank spaces, bringing his own lore and legends with him.
Sir Walter played the starring role in a life that was a series of romantic, almost too-spectacular-to-be-true adventures. h.om the dazzling court of Queen Elizabeth to the dense jungles of South America, from daring sea raids to the epic struggle against the Spanish Armada, from his luminous historical writings to his intimate poetry, Ralegh left his mark on the age. His life was as dramatic and complex as a Shakespearean play. Ralegh was a man of great contradictions: He participated in the massacre of Catholics in Ireland, yet later supported religious toleration; he was a calculating courtier resented by many, yet he spoke so eloquently for the rights of individuals that he became a popular hero. His quest to find the legendary city of El Dorado and the fate of the famous Lost Colony he had sponsored in the New World are representative of both the soaring hopes and nightmarish realities that Europeans brought with them across the seas. In this extraordinarily well researched biography, Marc Aronson passionately reveals the charisma and bravery of a man whose personality could not have been better suited to his era, a time filled with political intrigue, fierce battles, and courageous souls questing after impossible dreams.
—from the dust jacket
Sir Walter Ralegh has always struck Marc Aronson as a wonderful dark hero, a passionate man dogged by problems partly born of his own pride, partly the product of an age that would not let a commoner rise. It was as a child that Aronson first became interested in Ralegh. His fascination was renewed when he visited the site of the Lost Colony on North Carolina's Outer Banks. He later traveled to Guyana to see the landscape Ralegh explored in search of El Dorado. This book is his effort to honor a man who was imperfect, but gloriously so. Marc Aronson is a senior editor at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers and the author of Art Attack: A Short Cultural History of the Avant-Garde. He lives with his wife in New York City.
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