Sir Walter Ralegh: A Biography

by William Stebbing

This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1891 edition by the Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Genres: Biography, History

430 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[P.J. Sullivan]

This is “the plain story of an eventful life,” said the author, but it is written in ornate and archaic language. It is not an easy read. Understandable, yes, if you are willing to make the effort, but I sometimes had to read paragraphs two or three times to make sense of them. It is biased in Ralegh’s favor, even to calling him a genius and a great man. It mentions, without condemning, his genocidal brutality to the Irish. Stebbing says that he endeavored not “to find affection for the man incompatible with the condemnation of his errors.” Genocide is a crime, Mr. Stebbing, not an “error.” Ralegh’s behavior in Ireland marks him as a brute, but you would not know it from this book.

That said, this book is very thorough and detailed and well-researched, from primary and secondary sources. Unlike most biographies of Ralegh, it gets his surname right—he never used the name “Raleigh.”