I mentioned this book in a “Sunday Short Takes”, but it was kind of buried so I thought I would move it to its own post and update the info now that it is available at the US Amazon.
This is the article that I linked to in the previous post – from the Times Online:
FOR more than four centuries it has been one of the great unsolved deaths of the Tudor age. Did Amy, wife of Elizabeth I
Catching up with more on Wolf Hall (and yes, I know I still owe everyone a review, although at this point I’m not sure there is much my voice can add):
Last week, Wolf Hall picked up another prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award. Here’s an article from the LA Times: National Book Critics Circle Awards announced
And there was an interesting interview with Hilary Mantel in the Telegraph a few weeks ago where among other things, she does mention her work on Wolf Hall‘s sequel The Mirror and the Light: Hilary Mantel interview
And I think I forgot to post that the book is now available in paperback in the UK, but won’t be out in paperback in the US until August. Usual Amazon links below:
From a National Portrait Gallery press release:
IMAGINED LIVES: MYSTERY PORTRAITS 1520-1640
17 March 2010-October 2011
The National Trust’s Montacute House, near Yeovil, SomersetA new National Portrait Gallery display of unseen paintings of 16th and 17th-century mystery figures opens at one of its regional partners, the National Trust’s Montacute House, on 17 March 2010. Over the last 450 years, the identities of the sitters featured in the portraits on display have been either lost or mistaken. This will be the first opportunity to see these portraits, which have either been recently restored or not exhibited for over half a century.
Inspired by the mystery that surrounds the unknown sitters, the Gallery has invited writers John Banville, Tracy Chevalier, Julian Fellowes, Sir Terry Pratchett, Sarah Singleton, Joanna Trollope and Minette Walters to contribute short imaginative stories on what their lives might have been like. These fantasy character sketches and fictional biographies accompany the portraits in the display and help bring the sitters to life.
New research undertaken by History of Art MA students at the University of Bristol, working with Dr Tatiana String – and supervised by the Gallery’s 16th Century Curator Dr Tarnya Cooper – has meant that they can now be brought back into full view with a clearer understanding of their past.
The display features portraits of men and women whose identities are no longer known. They appear to depict courtiers, musicians, writers, soldiers and others who hoped to preserve their memory by sitting for a portrait. They were purchased by the National Portrait Gallery from 1858 to 1971. When the identity of these portraits was disproved or disputed, the paintings were often removed from display or lent to other collections. Recent conservation work and new research has meant that some portraits can now be re-identified.
Link to full text of press release
Excerpts from the stories published by the Times Online
Update: I meant to add a link about the work done to identify one of these previously un-or-mis-identified portraits. The portrait subject of the story written by Tracy Chevalier is now thought to be Sir Robert Dudley, the illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Here is a news release from the University of Bristol about the students who made the identification.
I know I’m a little late getting this posted…
From The Guardian:
Anne Boleyn was guilty of adultery, new biography claims
Charges for which she was executed, long thought to have been cooked up, are likely to have been true, says historian George Bernard
A new biography of Anne Boleyn is set to claim that, far from being framed for adultery, Henry VIII’s second queen may not have been innocent of the affairs for which she was sentenced to death.
The widely held view among contemporary historians is that the charges brought against Anne
* Henry VIII to be staged this season at the Globe (from the BBC). Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself with this production! They will also have two new productions this year: one a play about Anne Boleyn and another that will be the first play performed at the Globe from a woman playwright (from The Guardian).
* History Today has an article by Linda Porter – Katherine Parr: An Ideal Stepmother. Porter has a new biography on Parr due out in March in the UK (you can sign up to be notified for the US release at the link below).
* There are several upcoming Tudor Events at Hampton Court Palace that look interesting. As always, if anyone gets a chance to go to any of these, I’d love to hear about it!
* A new book on the death of Amy Robsart Dudley is out in the UK (article from The Times Online). UK Amazon link below (and another US “sign up to be notified”)
Because it’s getting late and I’m tired, here are the other three things I wanted to post tonight, all in one post:
* Alison Weir, Arguing the Case for Anne Boleyn – Interview and book excerpt at NPR
* The British Library’s new Timelines: Sources from History – Neat timelines with document images, and the few that I looked at included links where you could print or download a PDF of the documents.
* Middle Temple Hall launched a new website with some cool virtual tours. The Hall is one of the Inns of Court and was constructed between 1563 and 1572. It was also the site of the first performance of Twelfth Night in 1602.
This hasn’t been published yet, but I thought I would go ahead and ask if any of you have read this? It looks interesting:
Review from The Times Online:
Robert Winder may just have redefined literary chutzpah. Not only has he produced a novel with Shakespeare as its principal character, he has also put into it the complete text of Shakespeare
This year it is 50% off downloads! Just head on over to the TannerRitchie Publishing website to take advantage of the offer.
They also have a blog, are on Twitter and an RSS feed of new titles, which I just added to my newsreader so I can keep up with things they are adding to their collection. It has been a while since I checked their site and it turns out I missed a lot of new additions!
Okay, it was actually several weeks ago, but most of October was a blur for me…
The publisher, Wiley-Blackwell, has more information and some excerpts up on their web page for the book.
And here are the Amazon links again, now with the US one. And again, thanks to everyone who purchases through my affiliate links. I appreciate it!
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.
[Comments are closed on some older posts that were attracting a lot of spam. If you wish to make a comment on this post, please contact Lara via the link in the sidebar.]
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):
