Known for his scholarship in history, his insight into literature, and his own literary creativity, A. L. Rowse is also respected as one of the foremost British biographers of the twentieth century. Focusing on but not limiting himself to the Elizabethan period, Rowse has written many volumes in history, biography, literary scholarship, poetry, and fiction with characteristically colorful style, extensive detail, strong historical scholarship, and assertively presented hypotheses. But over his long career, he has received dramatically varied responses to his works from readers. Among his more controversial qualities are his strong dependence on history as the basis of literary analysis, his paradoxically elitist and colloquial tone, his subjectivity, and his sometimes dogmatic pronouncements. Rowse is extremely prolific and over the years has developed a style that is not easily mistaken for that of any other scholar-writer.

Alfred Leslie Rowse was born on 4 December 1903 in Saint Austell, Cornwall...