Anne Boleyn : A New Life of England's Tragic Queen - Hardcover

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9780749950170: Anne Boleyn : A New Life of England's Tragic Queen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 074995017X ISBN 13: 9780749950170

Publisher: Portrait, 1711

Anne Boleyn has been persistently vilified, even after her execution in May 1536 - on trumped up charges of adultery - she has been pursued beyond the grave, subjected to all manner of accusations. Was she really the scheming temptress portrayed by her enemies, guilty of incest and witchcraft? Was she deformed? Could a woman with the abnormalities described by her detractors have drawn and held the love of the king for more than ten years? Joanna Denny's biography plunges the reader into the heart of the intrigue, romance and danger of the Tudor court, and paints a picture of the real woman - attractive, highly intelligent and devout - that has been hidden for centuries by the distortions of politics and religion.

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About the Author:

Joanna Denny was born near Hever Castle in Kent, Anne Boleyn's family home. Her interest in Tudor history was triggered by research into her ancestor, Sir Anthony Denny, one of Henry VIII's courtiers and she is the author of a fictional trilogy on the Tudors. She lives near Eastbourne.

From Publishers Weekly:

Denny seeks to redeem Anne Boleyn from the slanders of Catholic propagandists hired to paint her as a monster. Anne and her diplomat father, Thomas, were advocates of the "New Religion"—the Protestantism spreading through England in the early 16th century. The Boleyn family's meteoric rise in status and influence threatened Cardinal Wolsey and his Catholic power base even before Henry VIII divorced the Catholic Catherine of Aragon in order to marry her lady-in-waiting, Anne, thus initiating England's Protestant Reformation. While effectively setting this scene of high-stakes intrigue, Denny focuses on Anne; in her interpretation, Anne's integrity and moral courage lay at the center of the period's vortex of personal and political strife. Brilliantly evoking Henry's bullish intensity, Denny mines the 17 existing love letters that reveal the king's impatient infatuation with Anne. By contrast, she portrays Anne as reticent, acquiescing to the king out of commitment to the Protestant Reformation rather than personal desire. Denny lucidly catalogues the technicalities of Henry's seven-year legal struggle to make Anne his wife and how Anne fell from favor when she failed to produce a male heir. Finally, Denny (the author of a fictional trilogy on the Tudors) records Anne's stoicism as she was charged with incest and adultery, tried and, in 1536, executed. Although she sometimes idealizes her subject, Denny's defense of Anne is coherent and thoroughly readable. (Apr.)
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