Lucy Aikin was best known in her lifetime, and for many decades thereafter, for her three, two-volume court histories, Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (1818), Memoirs of the Court of James the First (1822) and Memoirs of the Court of Charles the First (1833). They were published by Longman, one of the leading presses of the day: their titles included the Edinburgh Review and their authors included Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Moore and Scott. All of Aikin’s histories sold well: Elizabeth was in its fourth edition in 1819, a year after its debut, and its eighth printing by 1869; James was in its third edition in 1823; and Charles was in its second edition within the first few months of its publication. The Memoirs were popular in America and the Continent as well: Elizabeth was first printed in America in 1821, with at least four more printings by 1870, and it was translated into German in 1819, Dutch in 1821 and French in 1827. James and Charles were both reprinted in America in the first year of their appearance. Lengthy, largely favourable reviews in the major periodicals of the day signalled the importance of the Memoirs. The Eclectic Review spoke for many when it declared, in 1819, that with Elizabeth readers were ‘put into possession of more correct information relating to those times, than they could obtain from any other single work’. Fifteen years later, in 1834, an American reviewer summed up her achievement as follows: ‘Aikin has done more to illustrate modern English history than almost any of the numerous and able writers, who, within the last fifty years, have turned their attention to the subject.’ Readers were impressed by Aikin’s skill in marshalling a large body of material – gathered from both print and manuscript collections, in private hands and public institutions, scattered across the country – and transforming it into an entertaining, elegant and scrupulously objective narrative covering the period from Elizabeth’s birth in 1533 to Charles I’s death in 1649.