Queen Emma and Queen Edith

Pauline Stafford was born and educated in Leeds and received her first degree and doctorate from Oxford University. She now holds a personal Chair at the University of Huddersfield. She is author of numerous articles on early English history, and on the history of early medieval women. Her previous books include Queens, Concubines and Dowagers (1983) and Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (1989). She was consultant editor of The Biographical Dictionary of British Women (1996) and is a member of the editorial Collective of Gender & History. She is married with three children.

There is much learning, originality and, indeed, entertainment in Pauline Stafford's Queen Emma and Queen Edith...This book develops a most interesting subject with learning and insight which illuminate the period as a whole." (English Historical Review)"It provides fascinating insights into medieval family structures, the manipulation of saints' cults, the nature of royal estates and patronage, to name but a few of its themes. Anyone who wants to understand the power structures of the early Middle Ages will want to read it." (History) "The stories of Queen Emma and Queen Edith are satisfyingly rich in the telling in Pauline Stafford's latest book, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. The sources which provide these riches are varied and Stafford's use of them masterly." (Parergon) "Readable and learned, it is an admirable illustration of the way in which gender studies may be used to enrich understanding of the whole history of a period." (Times Higher Education Supplement) "It will become an indispensable tool on undergraduate courses dealing with gender, power and politics in the middle ages ... It also represents a clear, elegantly written and meticulously documented contribution to the study of the eleventh (and tenth) century in England." (Gender and History) "(Stafford) has used her two queens to suggest a great deal, not only about queens and court politics in eleventh-century England but also about the society and politics of a whole period of west European history." (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford: The Brown Book)

• List of Figures. Preface.Acknowledgements.Part I: The Stories. .Prologue.1. Emma and Edith in the Narratives of the Eleventh Century.2. Emma's and Edith's Narratives.Part II: The Structures. .3. The Faces of the Queen.4. Family: Structures and Ideals.5. Household, Land and Patronage.6. Queen and Queenship.7. The Fluctuating Power of the Queen: Witnessing and Identities.Part III: The Lives. .8. Emma.9. Edith.Appendix I The Lands and Revenues of Edith in Domesday Book.Appendix II Emma's and Edith's Household Followers.Appendix III Genealogical Tables.Bibliography.Index.