I received an email about a new book on the whole Tudor dynasty that is coming out next year (apologies to the person who sent it… this post was accidentally still sitting in my drafts folder!). I don’t have any additional information about it and there isn’t much on the Amazon page, but I’m sure more will come as the publication date gets closer.
The usual Amazon pre-order links below:
I received an email about this new book from The History Press – Cromwell to Cromwell: Reformation to Civil War
From the link above:
The English reformers of the 1530s, with Thomas Cromwell at their head, continued to have a strong belief in kingly rule and authority, despite their radical approach to the power of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. Resisting the king was tantamount to resisting God in their eyes, and even on a matter of conscience the will of the king should prevail. Yet just over 100 years later, Charles I was called the ‘man of blood’, and Oliver Cromwell famously declared that ‘we will cut off his head with the crown on it’. But how did we get from the one to the other? How did the deferential Reformation become a redical revolution? Following on from his biography of Thomas Cromwell, John Schofield examines how the English character and the way it perceived royal rule changed between the time of Thomas Cromwell and that of his great-great-grandnephew Oliver.
And here is an info sheet about the book (PDF) which includes a discount offer.
And finally, the standard Amazon affiliate links below:
Congratulations to Hilary Mantel for winning The Man Booker Prize in Fiction with her novel about Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power, Wolf Hall.
I posted about Hilary Mantel’s novel on Thomas Cromwell Wolf Hall back in May and today I got an email from the US publisher with the US release date of October 13. Some of you have probably also seen that the book is on the short list for The Man Booker Prize, which will be announced Oct. 6.
Here are the pre-order links again, for anyone who is interested:
Yet another big anniversary this year…
From The Telegraph:
Six centuries in the same house
Sacred mysteries: The Throckmortons arrived at Coughton Court in 1409. Christopher Howse went to see the traces the generations have left
Side by side on the stairs at Coughton Court, in Warwickshire, hang two portraits of brothers born in the reign of Henry VIII.
One, Sir Nicholas, followed fortune at Court, died, some said of a poisoned salad, and left his name to Throgmorton Street in the City.
The other, Sir Robert, ruined his career by holding to the religion in which he was raised. Fines and prison dogged his family, but this year his descendants mark the 600th anniversary of the arrivals of Throckmortons at Coughton.
Also, David Starkey will be at the Throckmorton Literary Festival at Coughton Court later this month. Here is the official site for Coughton Court and information on the Literary Festival.
And David Starkey has written the introduction to a forthcoming book on the Throckmorton Family and an extract of that introduction has been published by the Catholic Herald – The family who defied the taint of treason
Update: Leanda de Lisle will be at the Throckmorton Literary Festival on September 20 if anyone wants to ask questions!
Update: I just received an email from Leanda de Lisle with some more information on the US edition and the UK paperback. First, the US edition will have updated information from the UK hardcover edition, including information on the Spinola letter. And second, the UK paperback has been pushed back to March to coincide with the National Gallery exhibition I blogged about previously. She’s also going to be giving at talk at the gallery that month on the 5th.
The first is a reminder of sorts, since the book has been out in the UK for a while – but the US edition of Leanda de Lisle’s The Sisters Who Would Be Queen is due out in the US in October, along with UK paperback edition (update – the paperback is now due out in March 2010). Here are both the US and UK pre-order links:
Next is a book I’ve mentioned in passing, but I haven’t put up affiliate links for – Alison Weir’s latest, The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn. See the podcast of her talk at the British Library for more information about the book.
And finally, I haven’t posted anything about this lately, but Eric Ives’ book on Lady Jane Grey is also due out in the UK in October. I haven’t found anything on a US release yet, but I’ll keep an eye out. UK Amazon pre-order link below.
I just recently heard about this forthcoming book during the podcast talk by Alison Weir at the British Library. I haven’t found any information on whether there will be a US edition, but I’m going to send a few emails and see if I can find out.
Update: I emailed Ms. Borman and she said that a US edition is due in September of 2010! I’ll post a reminder about it when we get closer to that date.
From author Tracy Borman’s website:
Tracy’s next book, Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen, will be published by Jonathan Cape on 24th September 2009. It will explore all of the most important women in Elizabeth’s life: from her bewitching mother, Anne Boleyn, to her dangerously obsessive sister, Mary Tudor, and from the rivals to her throne such as Mary, Queen of Scots and the sisters of Lady Jane Grey, to the ‘flouting wenches’ like Lettice Knollys who stole her closest male favourite. These were the women who shaped the Virgin Queen and it is through their eyes that the real Elizabeth, stripped of her carefully cultivated image, is revealed.
And here’s my Amazon.uk affiliate link if you want to pre-order and throw a few pence my way. 
I received a little more information on the upcoming book on Arthur Tudor edited by Steven Gunn and Linda Monckton. [Previous post, with pre-order links]
Click the image below for a larger version (sorry if it is hard to read, that’s the largest size image I have). You can also read the information on the publisher’s website.
Kathy discovered while at Steven Gunn’s talk on Charles Brandon that Gunn has edited an upcoming work on Arthur Tudor. Unfortunately it has the high pricing of a small-run academic work, but if you are interested, here are the pre-order links:
And the product description from Amazon.co.uk:
Prince Arthur (1486-1502), son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, was the great hope of early Tudor England. Today he is largely forgotten, remembered only as Henry VIII’s shadowy elder brother, the first husband of Katherine of Aragon. But in his lifetime Arthur counted for much more than that. Groomed for kingship, sent to govern Wales and the Marches, married to secure the Spanish alliance, celebrated in portraits, poems and pageants, Arthur stood at the centre of his father’s plans. His death brought a grand funeral and a lasting monument, the chantry chapel covered in Tudor badges that still stands in Worcester Cathedral. These richly illustrated essays, by historians, art historians and archaeologists, investigate Arthur’s life and posthumous commemoration from every angle. They set him in the context of the fledgling Tudor regime and of the religion, art and architecture of late medieval death and memory. They close with an exploration of the re-enactment of Arthur’s funeral at Worcester in 2002, an event that sought to rescue the prince from the oblivion that has been his lot for five hundred years. CONTRIBUTORS: STEVEN GUNN, IAN ARTHURSON, FREDERICK HEPBURN, JOHN MORGAN-GUY, RALPH HOULBROOKE, MARK DUFFY, CHRIS GUY, JOHN HUNTER, LINDA MONCKTON, PHILLIP LINDLEY, JULIAN LITTEN
I received an email about Philippa Gregory’s next novel, The White Queen, which is about Elizabeth Woodville and will start a trilogy set during the Wars of the Roses. The book is due out on August 18 in both the UK and US. Amazon pre-order links below:
A new book is out about another anniversary this year – the first publication of a complete collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets in 1609. It seems that a lot of interesting things happened in years ending in a 9!
So Long as Men Can Breathe
By Clinton HeylinShakespeare’s Sonnets are famous the world over, but did their author intend to keep them from ever being published? In this lively, fascinating account of the publication of the Sonnets, noted biographer Clinton Heylin brings their convoluted history to light, beginning with the first complete appearance of the Sonnets in print in May, 1609. He introduces us to the “unholy alliance” involved in this precarious enterprise: Thomas Thorpe, the publisher, a self-described “well wishing adventurer;” George Eld, the printer, heavily embroiled in large-scale pirating; William Aspley, the prestigious bookseller, who mysteriously ended his association with Thorpe soon after. Leaving the calamitous world of Elizabethan publishing, Heylin goes on to chart the many editions of the Sonnets through the years and the editorial decisions that led to their present configuration. Passionate, astute, and brilliantly entertaining, the result is a concise and vivid history of perhaps the greatest poetry ever written.
Here’s the How to Order page from the publisher and my usual Amazon links are below (standard disclaimer – I earn a small amount from books purchased through the affiliate links):
Sorry I have been a little quiet on this blog over the last week or so! I’m just going to do a quick round up of a few things that I wanted to post about this week but got behind on.
From the London Evening Standard, an article about one of the winners at the Chelsea Flower show, which grew plants used in a recipe to create perfume for Elizabeth I.
Here’s another article about Henry VIII’s annulment request document that I blogged about previously.
Sent to me through Twitter – News on Alison Weir’s upcoming book launch at the Tower of London for her new bio on Anne Boleyn and details for a tour of Tudor England she’ll be leading in 2010, as well as news on other upcoming books (including a sequel to “The Lady Elizabeth”).
And finally, from Pop Tudors (the blog for the Showtime series “The Tudors”) – Ask a Tudor!. Your chance to ask Mark Hildreth, the actor playing Cardinal Reginald Pole, a question. You can submit them in the comments on the page linked to above.
I’ve been seeing a few interesting reviews about “Wolf Hall”, a novel about Thomas Cromwell, coming through on my Google news alerts and I also received a recommendation from Foose, so I thought it was time to look into this book some more! Here’s the product description from Amazon, as well as an order link for Amazon UK (where the book is already out) and a pre-order link for the US Amazon, where it will be out in October. I’m personally hoping it is eventually at Audible, since that’s how I “read” a lot of books these days!
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII’s court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king’s favor and ascend to the heights of political power
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king’s freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum.
Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.
(Picture taken with my laptop’s built-in webcam in my office at work)
I haven’t had a chance to do a thorough flip-through yet, but I can’t wait to dig in!
The book for Henry VIII: Man and Monarch at the British Library will be released next week in the UK.
Here are the Amazon.co.uk order links (paperback and hardcover):
And the US order link (I think they will just be sending it from the UK, since it doesn’t look like there is specifically a US edition at this time):
From The Daily Mail:
Power, treason and the best legs in court
HOUSE OF TREASON BY ROBERT HUTCHINSON
What is treason? In Tudor times, as in Stalin’s, it is the charge by which anyone whom a tyrant fears as a rival can be permanently removed – by execution.
The Howards, Dukes of Norfolk, were not only rich and powerful, they were extremely vain. They called themselves ‘right high and mighty princes’. They built themselves palaces with tennis courts – the indoor sort.
And out of the four successive fathers and sons considered here, two were beheaded and two came within an ace of having their arrogant heads severed.
There were no more regular guests in the Tower of London than the high and mighty Howards.
Add to this that two of Henry VIII’s wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, beheaded for cuckolding him, were Howards – well, Anne’s mother was – and you have a full house of losers in the lethal game of musical chairs that was the Tudor court.
You might say they had it coming. But you might also say they were victims of Tudor paranoia – the Howards were powers behind the throne, so no wonder Henry and Elizabeth felt insecure.
Amazon links (of course… I always feel like I’m bashing you guys over the head with these things!)
This time it is some written works -
From The Telegraph:
Academic ‘discovers’ six works by William Shakespeare
An academic claims to have discovered six previously unrecognised works by William Shakespeare.
Dr John Casson claims to have unearthed Shakespeare’s first published poem, the Phaeton sonnet, his first comedy, Mucedorus, and his first tragedies, Locrine and Arden of Faversham.
He also explores the plays Thomas of Woodstock and A Yorkshire Tragedy, and claims to prove that a ‘lost play’ called Cardenio is a genuine work by Shakespeare and fellow playwright John Fletcher.
Dr Casson spent three years studying writings thought to be connected to Shakespeare and poring over the life and letters of aristocrat Sir Henry Neville, considered by some academics to be the latest candidate for the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.
He has published his findings in a book, titled Enter Pursued by a Bear.
“Some people have said, ‘we don’t know if this is by William Shakespeare’, so I’ve been able to study them and say ‘yes, here’s the evidence for Shakespeare but here’s also the evidence for Neville,’ so I’ve been able to link the two,” Dr Casson said.
“I started off looking at works where we weren’t sure whether they were by Shakespeare or not and I tested them to see if there was any evidence for Henry Neville.
“I’ve found evidence pouring out and I’ve been able to show Shakespeare’s development from his early days.”
…
Dr Casson, an independent researcher and psychotherapist, said: “The folio on display contains what many think are the complete works of Shakespeare, but I have discovered six new plays that are all by the Bard, but which never made it into this 400-year-old collection.”He added: “What we thought were the first plays by Shakespeare appeared anonymously in the early 1590s.
And for anyone interested in getting the book, here are the Amazon links from my affiliate store:
These two volumes continue the work started with the excellent Elizabeth I: Collected Works edited by Leah Marcus, et. al. and Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals, edited by Janel Muler et. al.
The first volume is already out and covers 1544-1589 and the second volume is to be published soon and covers 1592-1598. I’m hoping that these will someday come out in paperback like the Collected Works eventually did, since they tend to be cheaper and not take up as much room (both of which are big issues for me!).
And of course, Amazon affiliate store links below (just for the new translation volumes… if you want to support the site and buy the other ones, you can click through the links on the right.)
I received an email from The History Press about this upcoming book, which sounds interesting. And it will save me the trouble of trying to assemble that “mistresses timeline” I mentioned in a thread on the Q&A blog! It is due out on April 6 in the UK and June 1 in the US (according to Amazon). Text from the information sheet is copied below.
The Mistresses of Henry VIII by Kelly Hart
April 2009 is the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the throne. This book is the first to bring together accounts of the lives of Henry VIII’s mistresses: many of whom helped influence the massive religious and social changes Henry carried out.
Although Henry’s wives reflected and, to some extent, directed his politics, his mistresses also helped shape his actions. He was very susceptible to subtle influence from his paramours, as his courtiers well knew and an intelligent woman could exploit.• Covers his most famous mistresses and some lesser-known but important lovers including: Bessie Blount; Mary Boleyn; Lady Anne Stafford; Jane Popincourt, his sisters’ French Tutor; poet Mary Shelton; Elizabeth Amadas a ‘witch and prophetess’; Elizabeth Brooke; Étienette; Anne Bassett, Henry’s daughter-in-law; as well as women he kept in secret houses and the wives of two of his close friends.
• Reveals that although Henry had many lovers, he was usually faithful to each in turn and considered these relationships as private affairs.
• Looks at the tactics employed by some of the families who sought to gain power and influence through putting their female relatives in the king’s bedchamber.
• Contains a useful chronology of Henry’s marriages, liaisons and childrenKelly Hart is an historian, author and teacher, specialising in the women of the Tudor period. She lives in Glasgow.
And Amazon affiliate store pre-order links below:
Going on the past successes of the Henry: Virtuous Prince and The Sisters Who Would Be Queen threads, here’s the next one!
When I posted about Derek Wilson’s new book A Brief History of Henry VIII, PhD Historian generously offered to do a “blog as you read” for this one. Since this book is inexpensive, this would be a good one to also do as a read-along for anyone who is interested. It is currently listed as “dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks” by Amazon UK and is “In Stock” at Amazon US (although the release date is technically March 9). And full disclosure, if you order through the links on the post above, it goes to my affiliate store and I get a small portion of the sale, which goes towards paying for web hosting and research books.
