By firmly anchoring each woman's fate in Henry's failure to be philoprogenitive-most crucially in not producing male heirs-Fraser makes a major contribution to feminist scholarship. Unlettered, 21-year-old Katherine Howard, queen for just 18 months when she was beheaded in 1542 for the ``violent presumption'' she had committed adultery, met death on the block where her cousin Anne Boleyn had died six years earlier. Anne Boleyn, a learned woman, was innocent of the adultery she was accused of, but was beheaded because she could not produce a son. Catherine of Aragon, married to Henry for 20 years, displayed cleverness and bravery when she fought her husband's attempts to divorce her. From her scrupulous research and informed interpretations of historical events, Fraser succeeds in presenting Henry's queens as complex and intelligent women who struggled to express themselves in a world where females were subservient to and ruled by men. She was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to Literature in 2011.Fraser ( Mary, Queen of Scots ) here turns to the reign of Henry VIII, who ruled from 1509-1547, and the six women he married: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr. 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 is also the author of Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter. The Wives of Henry VIII interweaves passion and power, personality and politics, into a superb work of history.Ībout 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. And we gain fresh understanding of Jane Seymour's circumspect wisdom, the touching dignity of Anna of Cleves, and the youthful naivete that led to Katherine Howard's fatal indiscretions. Under Antonia Fraser's intent scrutiny, Catherine of Aragon emerges as a scholar-queen who steadfastly refused to grant a divorce to her royal husband Anne Boleyn is absolved of everything but a sharp tongue and an inability to produce a male heir and Catherine Parr is revealed as a religious reformer with the good sense to tack with the treacherous winds of the Tudor court. 32 pages of illustrations.īook Synopsis The New York Times bestselling history of the legendary six wives of Henry VIII-from the acclaimed author of Marie Antoinette. "Admirably succeed(s) in bringing to life the six women who married England's ruler.
About the Book The six-week New York Times bestselling history of the legendary six wives of Henry VIII-from an acclaimed biographer.
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