THE QUILL AND THE CROSS

THE QUILL AND THE CROSS

Set in Elizabethan and Jacobean times, the historical novel The Quill and the Cross brings to life as never before the behind-the-scenes drama and intrigue that led to the creation of the Shakespeare canon of plays and poetry and the King James Bible, two literary landmarks that mark the start of the modern age of English and have shaped indelibly the world-view and thought patterns of educated people to this day. Challenging the orthodox premise regarding the authorship of those works, The Quill and the Cross recounts the adventures of Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxenford, presented in the novel as the single pen who provided unity to those masterpieces of world literature. The novel brings to life, blending the historical record with the author’s imagination, well-known figures such as Queen Elizabeth I, William Cecil, Robert Cecil, King James I, Oxenford’s daughter, Susan de Vere Herbert, as well as Philip Herbert, her husband, and William Herbert, her brother-in-law, the “most incomparable pair of noble brethren” to whom Shakespeare’s First Folio is dedicated. Above all, the novel encourages the reader to keep an open mind on received historical narratives and wherever possible to pull back the veil behind which many decisive events of history have been cloaked for political and other reasons.