This set provides a detailed and intimate account of the Elizabethan and Jacobean World picture. Elizabethan Journals These fascinating journals offer a panorama of one of England's most colourful periods in history. The volumes vividly convey life as it was in the days of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In so doing, they provide an essential background for enlightened reading of Elizabethan literature. An Elizabethan Journal covers the years from 1591-1594, A Second Elizabethan Journal , the period 1595-1598, and A Last Elizabethan Journal , 1599-1603. Jacobean Journals As with Elizabethan Journals , these texts work in the realization that Jacobean literature cannot be fully understood without some knowledge of those matters which were exciting to the original reader. A Jacobean Journal covers 1603-1606. Among several hundred other events, the Journal recounts the accession of King James and his journey to London; the great plague of 1603 and its horrors; the first voyage to the West Indies; the trial of Raleigh; the foundation of Virginia, and the Gunpowder Plot. A Second Jacobean Journal spans the years 1607-1610 and includes the rapid degeneration of the Court of King James; the first storms between King and Parliament which led ultimately to the Civil War; the bitter religious persecutions; the first impact of Galileo's discoveries; crimes, scandals, wrecks, murders and entertainments.