Wives Of Henry VIII

The six-week New York Times bestselling history of the legendary six wives of Henry VIII--from an acclaimed biographer. "Admirably succeed(s) in bringing to life the six women who married England's ruler. . . ."--New York Times Book Review. 16 color plates. 32 pages of illustrations.

"There is a lengthy bibliography which includes all the major secondary sources on the reign and most of the printed primary ones as well. {Fraser} has even consulted some manuscripts....Assembling all of this into a book must have cost a lot of labour; it is certainly very laborious to read. Part of the trouble is the length...and the number of characters, on the one hand,and the absence of organizational devices, on the other....{Fraser} offers no coherent account of religious differences {and} has little sense of contemporary money values....But none of this need have mattered much if the story itself had been told well....{Fraser} rearranges words to rob them of all music, and events to deprive them of any impact. The result . . . succeeds, where almost all others have failed, in making the reign of Henry VIII boring." David Starkey, The Times Literary Supplement

"Fraser here attempts to provide a fuller view of the six women who unenviably danced around the maypole that was the corpulent King of England. Fraser, the distinguished author of many historical studies, including The Weaker Vessel, portrays in fascinating detail the women who sought to be included in and were sometimes destroyed by the power structure of the times. Inevitably, more time is spent on Catherine of Aragon (after all, Catherine and Henry were married 24 years, whereas all five of his other marriages only totaled a little over ten years), and although Fraser claims to have tried to avoid any bias, she betrays a lingering sympathy for Henry's first queen. One cannot help but speculate, as the author does, what history would have been like if Catherine had provided Henry with a male heir. Not only were Henry's wives prisoners of their biology, but also Henry himself. Fraser's readable style, empathy for her subjects, and piquant use of historical details and anecdotes make this a satisfying addition to the history shelves." Katherine Gillen, Library Journal

"Putting these life stories together...turns out to have an unexpected advantage: it throws into relief the ways in which six women of very different character and background learned — or failed to learn — to cope with a prodigiously difficult man....Despite her obvious disgust with Henry, Lady Antonia is determined to be fair. She puts events carefully in context, supplying the political and social underpinnings of what looks to 20th-century eyes suspiciously like one long royal nervous breakdown....(The book) does, as it promises, admirably succeed in bringing to life, with economy of detail, the sixwomen who married England's ruler. But, despite Lady Antonia's assertion that 'this is not his story,' the biography's focus keeps wandering inevitably back to {Henry}....This may be, however, an unavoidable consequence of the fact that what these six women had in common was coming to terms with Henry. Finally, the book's greatest interest lies in its deeply engaging portrait of a marriage — in serial." Angeline Goreau, The New York Times Book Review

"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. 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. Catherine of Aragon, married to Henry for 20 years, displayed cleverness and bravery when she fought her husband's attempts to divorce her. Anne Boleyn, a learned woman, was innocent of the adultery she was accused of, but was beheaded because she could not produce a son. 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. 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." Publishers Weekly

TheNew York Times bestselling history of the legendary six wives of Henry VIII--from the acclaimed author ofMarie Antoinette. UnderAntonia 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 treacherouswinds of the Tudor court. 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. The Wives of Henry VIII interweaves passion and power, personality and politics, into a superb work of history."