Courtiers - 900 Years of Court Life

London: Victor Gollancz, 1986. A Fine unmarked copy with near Fine dustjacket which is price clipped. 219 pages. 15 illustrations. Here is a galaxy of odd and wonderful characters: sycophants and time-servers, royal lovers and intriguers, Chief Sewers and Grooms of the Stole. In the tradition of John Aubrey's Brief Lives Thomas Hinde invites us to share the public and private lives of some hundred characters at court - from Eudo, Chief Steward to William the Conqueror, to Frederick Ponsonby, George V's Keeper of the Privy Purse. Geoffrey Chaucer, Nell Gwyn, Barbara Villiers, Jane Shore, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Robert Carr, Sir Thomas Overbury, Fanny Burney, Abigail Hill, Talbot Edwards and the Earl of Rochester: these celebrated courtiers jostle with others less famous to form a procession of royal favourites; harlots and poets, adventurers and dwarfs, dukes and orange sellers. Most extracted titles and wealth or political power from their patron, others slipped from favour to rot in prison, or languish in genteel obscurity, whilst many Tudor courtiers had their careers terminated by the axe. **** NOT EX LIB **** 12. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Near Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.