Welcome to the Lady Jane Grey Reference Guide. The aim of this site is to provide a guide to the location of information about Lady Jane Grey, the nine days queen, including primary accounts, paintings, her own writings, legends, media representations and a general bibliography.
When I created the site in September 2001, there were only a handful of books available about Jane. The latest biography by Alison Plowden, ‘Lady Jane Grey and the House of Suffolk’ had been published in 1985 and Jane had also featured in Alison Weir’s ‘Children of England: The Heirs of King Henry VIII’ published in 1997.
My interest in Lady Jane began in 1994 whilst studying A-Level History and really took off in 1997 when I started to collect books about her. It was the lack of readily available books that led me to set up the site, so other people interested in the nine days queen, would know where to locate the information they required.
In the years since 2001, I am pleased to say that Jane biographies have been published by Leanda de Lisle, Eric Ives and Alison Plowden. She has also featured in books by Helen Castor and Linda Porter and in historical fiction by Alison Weir, Susan Higginbotham and Ella March Chase.
Since 1996 there has been no authenticated contemporary portrait of Lady Jane. A number of possible portraits have appeared in recent years and Dr Stephan Edwards is currently analysing existing portraits, searching for an authentic image of the nine days queen.
