Community Chat

[Honeybit]

I'm trying to identify a novel I once read set in Elizabethan England. It would have been published in the 1960's or 1970's -- not current fiction. It wasn't written from Elizabeth's viewpoint, but one of the secondary characters was Penelope Rich, described as a blonde with brown eyes. (The description stuck with me because I had only known blue-eyed blondes.) One descriptive phrase said, "Her voice was as rich as her name." One portion of the book was set at the battlefield where Sir Philip Sidney died. (Historically some of Sidney's poems are believed to have been written about Penelope Rich.)

At one time I read a lot of historical fiction about Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and Lady Jane Grey -- and even Henry VIII and his wives. I have some notes I made about this particular book, but (naturally) I didn't include the title or author. I've exhausted the references in the Galileo "reads like" data base and any online searches I can think of.

This little literary puzzle is really bugging me -- I hope maybe there's a fan of historical novels on this forum who can suggest some authors I haven't thought of, or who may happen to know this particular book.

Many thanks for thinking about it!