Elizabeth I was celebrated for her verbal eloquence and writing style in her own day, but that praise did not carry over into particular solicitude for the preservation of her writings.  Ironically, the standard equation made by literary critics between a developing political authority and literary authorship in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century doesn't apply to the most successful monarch of the period, even though she wrote (and orated) throughout her long career as a monarch.  This  chapter surveys problems peculiar to editing the writings and speeches of a woman who happened to be a queen but otherwise displayed some of the habits as a writer that have bedeviled editing of her works:  anonymous circulation, collective authorship that makes it difficult to specify the queen's contribution, and unreliability of printed versions of her compositions, especially speeches.  The chapter also considers ways in which editing Elizabeth I can change our view of literary style in the period.  In particular, Elizabeth was an early anti-Ciceronian whose writings were widely valued for pith and simplicity of style in advance of ‘Senecan’ or ‘Attic’ style, which is usually attributed to Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century.