Hostage to Fortune: Francis Bacon: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon 1561 - 1626 by Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Minor marks on top edge.

Francis Bacon - statesman and philosopher - has inspired more popular myths than any other single figure of the English Renaissance.

In this controversial biography, Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart draw upon a mass of previously untapped sources to produce the definitive life of one of the great figures of English history. They present Bacon as essentially a product of his time, his birth and upbringing, placing in historical and intellectual context his long and gruelling life: son of Elizabeth I's Lord Keeper; raised for a high place, but without the material means to achieve it; supporting himself by more or less dubious employment - from "intelligencer" to royal prosecutor; rising nevertheless to become Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam. Impeached for bribery in 1621, the last five years of his life were devoted to the major scientific works for which he is largely remembered today. (back cover)