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Mary Boleyn: The True Story Of Henry VIII's Favourite Mistress (2009)

by Josepha Josephine Wilkinson(Favorite Author)

4.05 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1848680899 (ISBN13: 9781848680890)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Amberley Publishing

review 1: The slimness of this book reflects the scarcity of knowledge about Mary Boleyn, mistress to Henry VIII prior to his marriage to Anne. It feels as though the author has to imagine far more than there is evidence for, and certain sections, especially regarding her children, feel somewhat repetitive. Overall though, this is a very easy read however it is best to have a bit of knowledge of the established Tudor chronology to put this in context.
review 2: As a very basic history of the Henrican court this just about works, so long as you take the author's flights of fancy with a pinch of salt; as a history of it's title subject, Mary Bolelyn this sucks. As it's such a slim work I wasn't expecting an in depth biography, but I was expecting more that one paragraph in... more five to concern 'the other Bolelyn girl'. Even in the rare moments that Mary get's a mention in her own book, there is so much wild conjecture, and so little evidence as to make it rather pointless. Heavy use of fictionalized narrative further weakens the credentials of this work. It is possible to see how the author would have felt and acted had she been placed in Mary's position, but the motives and feelings of Mary are either absurdly assumed or simply missing. I accept that there is a lack of historical evidence concerning Mary, however that does not make it acceptable to assume that the surviving documents about other people vaguely connected to the court can be directly applied to Mary's life. The one point where the author uses a variety of sources is concerning the parentage of Mary's two children. The author goes to great pains to explain the pros and cons of the argument that they were fathered by Henry; eventually admitting that the majority of the evidence leans towards them being fathered by Mary's husband, and not by her lover. Once this, small piece of scholarship, is complete the author proceeds to ignore it, making the assumption for the rest of the work that the children were Henry's, and using this assumption as the basis for further assumptions. I think the author would be better placed writing historical fiction rather than passing her 'fiction' off as fact. less

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