SPRING SALE đź“š Buy 3+ Books | Get 25% Off

The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: The Wives of Henry VIII, Antonia Fraser

The Wives of Henry VIII

Antonia Fraser

The wives of Henry VIII have come down to us through history narrowly defined by the roles they played in the larger story of the King's life, and most commonly remembered for the manner in which each did - or did not - survive marriage to him. Now, in this richly dramatic and singularly illuminating study, Antonia Fraser uncovers the complex and fascinating individuals whose true characters have been shrouded for centuries by stereotype and legend. In a sweeping narrative and with her own enthralling amalgam of meticulous scholarship and the lively play of ideas, Fraser makes clear the remarkably high level of strength and intelligence displayed by these six women at a time when their sex traditionally possessed little of either. She brings to light, for example: the tenacious self-possession displayed by Catherine of Aragon when, toward the end of her twenty-four-year marriage, she met the King's demands for a divorce with steadfast refusal . . . Anne Boleyn's 'curiously modern' independence of mind - initially dazzling to the King (and shocking to most everyone else), but ultimately the cause of her gruesome demise . . . the circumspect wisdom that allowed Jane Seymour to emerge as an object of universal welcome and lasting admiration in a year that saw two other queens as well ... the touching dignity of Anna of Cleves - dubbed 'The Flanders Mare' by an insensitive court - during her bewilderingly short and demeaning tenure as consort . . . the naivete of Katherine Howard - not yet twenty when the King turned his eye toward her - whose indiscretions were more nearly the result of innocence than deviousness . . . the surprisingly subversive side of the otherwise submissive CatherineParr, one of only eight women whose writings were published during the sixty years of the first two Tudor reigns. The author traces the ascent and decline of each woman - and the linkages between them - delineating the cultural, familial, and political roots of the behavior and i

Book Details

  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publish Date: Nov 30th, 1993
  • Pages: 544
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.20in - 1.13in - 1.00lb
  • EAN: 9780679730019
  • Categories: • Women's Studies• Historical• Europe - Great Britain - General

About the Author

Antonia Fraser is the author of many internationally bestselling historical works, including Love and Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, which was made into a film by Sofia Coppola, The Wives of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot, and Perilous Question: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832. She is also the author of Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter. She has received the Wolfson Prize for History, the 2000 Norton Medlicott Medal of Britain's Historical Association, and the Franco-British Society's Enid McLeod Literary Prize. She was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to Literature in 2011.

More books by Antonia Fraser

Book Cover for: Marie Antoinette: The Journey, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Lady Caroline Lamb: A Free Spirit, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Mary Queen of Scots, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Warrior Queens: The Legends and the Lives of the Women Who Have Led Their Nations to War, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: The Case of the Married Woman: Caroline Norton and Her Fight for Women's Justice, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Must You Go?: My LIfe With Harold Pinter, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Quiet as a Nun: A Jemima Shore Mystery, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780-1829, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Political Death: Political Death: A Jemima Shore Novel, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Cromwell, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Perilous Question: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Cool Repentence: A Jemima Shore Mystery, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: Jemima Shore's First Case: And Other Stories, Antonia Fraser
Book Cover for: My History: A Memoir of Growing Up, Antonia Fraser