This edition has been many years in the making and has left me with numerous debts. I first began working with Anne Bacon's letters during my doctoral research. After my initial despair over the indecipherable nature of Anne's handwriting, the correspondence formed an important part of my thesis and subsequent monograph. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Felicity Heal, who supervised my doctoral studies and who has been kind enough to guide and encourage my labours ever since. The suggestion that I should compile an edition first came from James Daybell, over a cup of tea in Blackwell's coffee shop in Oxford. I am very much indebted to James for his support of the project ever since and for generously sharing his expertise in early modern epistolary culture. Lynne Magnusson and Alan Stewart both read the edition in its entirety at a particularly busy point in the academic year. I am hugely grateful for their herculean efforts; their erudition and detailed knowledge of the Bacon archive has saved me from countless errors. As literary director for the Camden series, Ian Archer has shown unstinting patience as more letters were discovered and deadlines were revised; I am grateful too for his perceptive comments on various letters. Many other scholars were generous with advice and references, including Timothy Barnes, Susan Brigden, Susan Doran, Clive Holmes, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Michael McVaugh, Alison Wall, and Alison Wiggins. My colleagues at both Pembroke College and, more recently, the Open University have encouraged my labours with the letters; I am most grateful to them all and in particular to Eleanor Betts, Amanda Goodrich, Helen King, Anne Laurence, Donna Loftus, Rosemary O'Day, and Gabriella Zuccolin. I must also acknowledge the patience shown by my students, for indulging my enthusiasm when Anne Bacon letters made appearances in tutorials.

This edition includes translations of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French, and I have to thank many colleagues for their help in the very difficult task of deciphering and translating the foreign languages used in the letters. Carolinne White and David Butterfield assisted with the Latin and Greek translations; they were hugely generous with both their expertise and their time. Joshua Teplitsky and Aaron Graham translated the Hebrew for me, while Dunlaith Bird and Thibault Miguet provided guidance regarding the French translations. I am most grateful to them all for assistance. Without the great intellectual generosity shown to me by academic colleagues across the world, this would have been a much poorer edition. The errors that remain are, of course, my own.

Various institutions have provided financial support for the numerous archive trips involved in producing this edition, particularly Jesus College, Oxford, and the Open University. I am also indebted to the repositories that hold Anne Bacon's letters for allowing me to reproduce transcriptions in this edition. In particular I must acknowledge the kindness of Heather Wolfe at the Folger Shakespeare Library; Gill Cannell at the Parker Library; Mary Robertson at the Huntington Library; Cornelia Hopf at the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha; Daniel Meyer and Christine Colburn at the University of Chicago Special Collections; Michael Frost and Margaret Clay at the Inner Temple Library; and Robin Harcourt Williams and Vicki Perry at Hatfield House. I am also grateful to the staff at the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, and the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies Centre. My greatest thanks must be reserved for the staff at Lambeth Palace Library. They have provided invaluable assistance on my countless visits over the last few years, never tiring of repeatedly fetching the heavy Bacon volumes for me. It really is a special archive and I feel very lucky to have been able to spend so much time working there. Joaneath Spicer was kind enough to allow me to see the Anne Bacon miniature held by the Walters Art Museum when I visited Baltimore in 2008. The image now forms the cover of this edition and I am grateful to Ruth Bowler for making special arrangements for new colour photography. My sincere thanks also go to Daniel Pearce and the staff at Cambridge University Press for all their support of this volume, as well as to Hester Higton for her meticulous copy-editing.

Finally, I must thank my friends and family for their encouragement and patience during the completion of the edition. My mother and sister, Vanessa and Francesca Allen, chivvied me along the long road to completion; my mother's frequent refrain that ‘it's just like a detective story’ at times of particular bewilderment over Anne's handwriting or over the dating of letters was always a comforting spur to action. My greatest debt is to my husband, Edward Arnold. He has heard every development in the progress of the edition, has put up with me spending evenings and weekends at the computer, and has kept me going when it seemed an impossible task to complete. That it is eventually finished is all down to Edward. It will be strange for us both to live without Lady B. in our midst. While at times editing her letters has proved exasperating, they have never been dull; I'll miss having Anne around.

Gemma Allen,

Oxford, July 2013