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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
New York Times bestselling author and noted British historian Alison Weir gives us the first full-scale, in-depth biography of Mary Boleyn, sister to Queen Anne as well as mistress to Anne’s husband, Henry VIII—and one of the most misunderstood figures of the Tudor age. Making use of extensive original research, Weir shares revelations on the ambitious Boleyn family and the likely nature of the relationship between the Boleyn sisters. Unraveling the truth about Mary’s much-vaunted notoriety at the French court and her relations with King François I, Weir also explores Mary’s role at the English court and how she became Henry VIII’s lover. She tracks the probable course of their affair and investigates the truth behind Mary’s notorious reputation. With new and compelling evidence, Weir presents the most conclusive answer to date on the paternity of Mary’s children, long speculated to have been Henry VIII’s progeny. Alison Weir pieces together a life steeped in mystery and misfortune, debunking centuries-old myths to give us the truth about Mary Boleyn, the so-called “great and infamous whore.”
Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
New York Times bestselling author and noted British historian Alison Weir gives us the first full-scale, in-depth biography of Mary Boleyn, sister to Queen Anne as well as mistress to Anne’s husband, Henry VIII—and one of the most misunderstood figures of the Tudor age. Making use of extensive original research, Weir shares revelations on the ambitious Boleyn family and the likely nature of the relationship between the Boleyn sisters. Unraveling the truth about Mary’s much-vaunted notoriety at the French court and her relations with King François I, Weir also explores Mary’s role at the English court and how she became Henry VIII’s lover. She tracks the probable course of their affair and investigates the truth behind Mary’s notorious reputation. With new and compelling evidence, Weir presents the most conclusive answer to date on the paternity of Mary’s children, long speculated to have been Henry VIII’s progeny. Alison Weir pieces together a life steeped in mystery and misfortune, debunking centuries-old myths to give us the truth about Mary Boleyn, the so-called “great and infamous whore.”
Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
Chapter One
1
The Eldest Daughter
Blickling Hall, one of England's greatest Jacobean showpiece mansions, lies not two miles northwest of Aylsham in Norfolk. It is a beautiful place, surrounded by woods, farms, sweeping parkland and gardens- gardens that were old in the fifteenth century, and which once surrounded the fifteenth century moated manor house of the Boleyn family, the predecessor of the present building. That house is long gone, but it was in its day the cradle of a remarkable dynasty; and here, in those ancient gardens, and within the mellow, red-brick gabled house, in the dawning years of the sixteenth century, the three children who were its brightest scions once played in the spacious and halcyon summers of their early childhood, long before they made their dramatic debut on the stage of history: Anne Boleyn, who would one day become Queen of England; her brother George Boleyn, who would also court fame and glory, but who would ultimately share his sister's tragic and brutal fate; and their sister Mary Boleyn, who would become the mistress of kings, and gain a notoriety that is almost certainly undeserved.
Blickling was where the Boleyn siblings' lives probably began, the protective setting for their infant years, nestling in the broad, rolling landscape of Norfolk, circled by a wilderness of woodland sprinkled with myriad flowers such as bluebells, meadowsweet, loosestrife, and marsh orchids, and swept by the eastern winds. Norfolk was the land that shaped them, that remote corner of England that had grown prosperous through the wool-cloth trade, its chief city, Norwich-which lay just a few miles to the south-being second in size only to London in the Boleyns' time. Norfolk also boasted more churches than any other English shire, miles of beautiful coastline and a countryside and waterways teeming with a wealth of wildlife. Here, at Blickling, nine miles from the sea, the Boleyn children took their first steps, learned early on that they had been born into an important and rising family, and began their first lessons.
Anne and George Boleyn were to take center-stage roles in the play of England's history. By comparison, Mary was left in the wings, with fame and fortune always eluding her. Instead, she is remembered as an infamous whore. And yet, of those three Boleyn siblings, she was ultimately the luckiest, and the most happy.
This is Mary's story.
Mary Boleyn has aptly been described as "a young lady of both breeding and lineage." She was born of a prosperous landed Norfolk family of the knightly class. The Boleyns, whom Anne Boleyn claimed were originally of French extraction, were settled at Salle, near Aylsham, before 1283, when the register of Walsingham Abbey records a John Boleyne living there, but the family can be traced in Norfolk back to the reign of Henry II (1154-89). The earliest Boleyn inscription in the Salle church is to John's great-great-grandson, Thomas Boleyn, who died in 1411; he was the son of another John Boleyn and related to Ralph Boleyn, who was living in 1402. Several other early members of the family, including Mary's great-great-grandparents, Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn, were buried in the Salle church, which is like a small cathedral, rising tall and stately in its perpendicular splendor in the flat Norfolk landscape. The prosperous village it once served, which thrived upon the profitable wool trade with the Low Countries, has mostly disappeared.
The surname Boleyn was spelled in several ways, there being no uniformity in spelling in former times, when it was given as Boleyn, Boleyne, Bolleyne, Bollegne, Boleigne, Bolen, Bullen, Boulen, Boullant, or Boullan, the French form. The bulls' heads...
About the Author-
Alison Weir is the New York Times bestselling author of many historical biographies, including The Lady in the Tower, Mistress of the Monarchy, Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Life of Elizabeth I, and The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and of the novels Captive Queen, Innocent Traitor, and The Lady Elizabeth. She lives in Surrey, England, with her husband.
Reviews-
July 11, 2011 Mistress of Henry VIII and his rival François I, Mary Boleyn has often been romanticized and misrepresented in histories and in popular novels like Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl, argues historian Weir (The Lady in the Tower) in this fresh take on Anne Boleyn's sister. Weir's rigorous reassessment makes the case (long debated by historians) that Mary was likely the elder sister, based on her grandson's written assertion of this. Mary was never the great, infamous whore described by papal representative Rodolfo Pio; her liaisons with both François and Henry "were conducted so discreetly that not a single comment was made about them at the time," and she probably had little choice in becoming their mistress. Mary's first husband, William Carey, was not an insignificant courtier on whom Mary could be palmed off as "soiled goods"; he was the king's cousin and a rising star. Despite rumors that both Mary's children were Henry's, Weir cites evidence that her son was Carey's. After Anne's fall, it is highly unlikely that Mary tried to intercede for her or was even at court at the time. This nuanced, smart, and assertive biography reclaims the life of a Tudor matriarch whose illustrious descendants include Elizabeth II, Churchill, and Princess Diana. 16 pages of color illus.
May 1, 2011
She was the "other Boleyn girl," as Philippa Gregory styled her, and the lover of both Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England. The author of serious nonfiction (The Lady in the Tower) and juicy fiction (Innocent Traitor) about Tudor England, Weir has a good chance of bringing Mary alive. With a tour by request and decent if not overwhelming promotion.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 1, 2011 This highly regarded and vastly popular British historian, known especially for her rewarding tilling of the rich soil of the Tudor period in English history, turns detective in her latest engaging biography, about the elder sister of Henry VIII's second queen, the briefly enthroned, violently terminated Anne Boleyn. The problem faced by a biographer of Mary Boleynand thus, the reason Weir performs sleuth work hereis the obscurity of the subject herself. So many pockets of misinformation and gaps in knowledge hamper accurate documentation of her life. Was Mary actually older than Anne? Was Mary more attractive than her famously seductive sister or less so? Sent to France in the retinue of Henry VIII's sister, who was to marry the elderly King Louis XII of France, did Mary have an affair with Louis' successor, King Francis I, as her reputation has insisted? And was she later a mistress of King Henry himself, before his tragic involvement with her sister? In answering those questions vital to understanding the life of Mary Boleyn, Weir matches her usual professional skills in research and interpretation to her customary, felicitous style. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling historian Alison Weir has 1.3 million copies of her fiction and nonfiction in print; NPR reviews, an author tour, and national review attention for her new book will be supplemented by an online Tudor Tour sweepstakes hosted on the author's website (www.alisonweir.org.uk).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
August 1, 2011
Having explored the final days of Anne Boleyn in The Lady in the Tower, popular historian Weir now turns her attention to Anne's sister Mary. Briefly the mistress of the French king Francis I and later of Henry VIII, Mary eventually wed a commoner for love and faded into relative obscurity--until Philippa Gregory's novel The Other Boleyn Girl drew her onto the stage again. Though any study of Mary is bound to be hampered by the scarcity of solid evidence about large parts of her life, Weir has striven to provide the most complete assessment possible; while she indulges in some well-researched speculation to fill the gaps, she remains clear about facts vs. what must be left to guesswork. Furthermore, she devotes much effort to examining the development of Mary's historical stature and dispelling the most egregious rumors--in particular, those surrounding Mary's reputation as "a very great whore" (neatly dismissed by Weir as a myth) and the paternity of her two eldest children. VERDICT As the first full biography of Mary Boleyn, this is a valuable resource both for historians and for casual readers interested in an accurate account of this recently popularized historical figure. [See Prepub Alert, 4/4/11.]--Kathleen McCallister, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, Lib.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
The New York Times
"[Weir] is well equipped to parse the evidence, ferret out the misconceptions and arrive at sturdy hypotheses about what actually befell Anne."
Booklist
"Well-researched and compulsively readable . . . Acclaimed novelist and historian Weir continues to successfully mine the Tudor era, once again excavating literary gold."
The Independent (U.K.)
"It is a testament to Weir's artfulness and elegance as a writer that The Lady in the Tower remains fresh and suspenseful, even though the reader knows what's coming."
The Oregonian
"Compelling stuff, full of political intrigue and packing an emotional wallop."
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