|
The First Queen of England: The Myth of "Bloody Mary" | 
 enlarge | Author: Linda Porter
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $16.00
You Save: $11.95 (43%)
New (23) Used (5) from $16.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 75325
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 5.8 x 1.4
ISBN: 0312368372
Dewey Decimal Number: 942.054092
EAN: 9780312368371
ASIN: 0312368372
Publication Date: July 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: V20080825034147S
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In this groundbreaking new biography of “Bloody Mary,” Linda Porter brings to life a queen best remembered for burning hundreds of Protestant heretics at the stake, but whose passion, will, and sophistication have for centuries been overlooked. Daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, wife of Philip of Spain, and sister of Edward VI, Mary Tudor was a cultured Renaissance princess. A Latin scholar and outstanding musician, her love of fashion was matched only by her zeal for gambling. It is the tragedy of Queen Mary that today, 450 years after her death, she remains the most hated, least understood monarch in English history. Linda Porter’s pioneering new biography—based on contemporary documents and drawing from recent scholarship—cuts through the myths to reveal the truth about the first queen to rule England in her own right. Mary learned politics in a hard school, and was cruelly treated by her father and bullied by the strongmen of her brother, Edward VI. An audacious coup brought her to the throne, and she needed all her strong will and courage to keep it. Mary made a grand marriage to Philip of Spain, but her attempts to revitalize England at home and abroad were cut short by her premature death at the age of forty-two. The first popular biography of Mary in thirty years, The First Queen of England offers a fascinating, controversial look at this much-maligned queen.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 A Long Overdue Fresh Look at 'Bloody' Mary August 6, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Dr Linda Porter has meticulously researched the tragic life of England's first queen regnant in her vivid and well-written book. For readers who only know the 'myth' of Bloody Mary, Porter's book offers a real glimpse of the all-too-human queen behind that myth. For those who think they know the 'real' Mary, they, too, will have a stunning surprise and fascinating read. We see Mary hurtling toward disaster after disaster, from the moment she's put in the care of her tutor, Jean de Vives; to the confrontations of long, obdurate duration with her father, Henry VIII; through the separations from her mother and her half-siblings; and headlong into a disastrous, love-struck marriage with Philip II of Spain. Mary's story has been much neglected by historians to date -- with the great Dr David Starkey even lumping her together with her half-brother Edward VI as the 'forgotten Tudors'. Yet Mary's reign (as well as that of her brother Edward) was a watershed, not only in English history, but in the history of the Protestant reformation movement that spread with England's nascent empire during her half-sister Elizabeth I's reign. Without understand Mary Tudor, we can't understand why and how Elizabeth and other monarchs acted after her. This is a must read for anyone interested in British history, family history, or the history of Catholicism and the Protestant reformation.
 Not impartial, more of a whitewash July 28, 2008
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
Periodically some historian writes a new biography of "Bloody" Mary I, queen of England from 1553-1558, seeking to rehabilitate her reputation. Her short reign was marked by a rise in religious reaction that resulted in some 270 deaths through judicial murder, the flight of some 800 important Protestants abroad seeking to save their lives, and largely alienated the English public from the Roman Catholic Church. In this book, author and historian Linda Porter sets out to show Mary as a cultured Renaissance monarch, moderate, but determined to revitalize England.
Overall, I found this to be a disappointing book. I think that the author did a good job of showing how Mary had been cruelly treated by her father, and by the powerful men who ruled Tudor England before her ascension to the throne. However, once the narrative reaches Mary's coronation, that earlier treatment seems to be forgotten - as showing her to have been vengeful, or perhaps just another player in the Tudor blood sport of politics, would have undercut the author's recasting of Mary as enlightened monarch.
Further, the author eschews any discussion of Mary's mental instability, for example not going into any great detail on Mary's two phantom pregnancies, or their significance. The author laid a great deal of blame for Mary's subsequent reputation on the person of John Foxe, the author of the Book of Martyrs, but fails to go into any detail on how one book could so overcome the "truth" of Mary's enlightenment.
No, I must say that I did not find this to be a good, impartial book on Queen Mary I, but saw it as more of a whitewash of her flaws. Has Mary been mistreated by historians since her reign? Most certainly. But, was she an enlightened and humanistic ruler, one of England's best monarchs? I think that that is going more than a little too far. Overall, I do not recommend this book.
The Other Tudor Girl July 8, 2008
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
Mary I of England (1516-1558), the elder daughter of Henry VIII, has long been overshadowed by her younger half-sister Elizabeth. As it happens, Mary's "Bloody" reputation is a partly a construct of the following era, due largely to John Foxe and encouraged by Elizabeth herself. But many of the successes of the Elizabethan period, resulting in economic prosperity and flourishing of the arts, were actually continuations of Mary's reforms and policies. One of Elizabeth's advantages was sheer longevity, together with the country remaining Protestant. As a result, historians have traditionally had a rather foreshortened view of Mary's reign.
In her new biography, Linda Porter aims to rehabilitate Mary as a good and competent monarch on balance, and as a pioneer among reigning queens. Porter sets out by explaining the woman that Mary became, examining the people and events that shaped her life--especially her increasingly complicated family and its drama. The resulting depiction of Mary, usually convincing and very well-written, is a worthy addition to historical studies of the Tudor era and queens regnant.
From her mother Katherine of Aragon, Mary learned at an impressionable age that "conscience was the most important justification for behaviour that anyone could make." Katherine refused to step out of the way for Henry's dynastic concerns--she wouldn't even countenance retiring to a nunnery, though Henry, by declaring their marriage invalid from the beginning, actually foreclosed that option. Because Henry divorced Katherine in the end, Mary had to be declared illegitimate.
Strangely--or naively--Henry didn't think that displacing Mary in this way would affect her negatively. But for the young lady who had yielded precedence within the kingdom only to her parents, being uprooted from her (as she saw it) God-given place was simply inconceivable. She objected to any perceived affront, and Henry in his lenience only made the matter worse by not forcing her obedience right away. "The delay raised false hopes and developed in her a pattern of opposition based on conscience and self-identity, where suffering almost became a goal in itself."
Anne Boleyn's jealousy towards Mary grew as the king's divorce dragged on, and in 1531 she became so defensive ("Did she fear that Mary could still salvage her parents' marriage?") that she didn't allow Mary at court at Christmas. Even after Henry married Anne, Mary refused to recognize her as queen, and their encounters always degenerated into rudeness and reprisals. The moral victory was always Mary's:
"A more subtle woman [than Anne] might have considered outmanoeuvring Mary by occasionally bringing her to court, treating her with kindness and consideration and letting her show the world that, if she continued to defy her father, she was just a sulky, jealous child and a disobedient daughter. The new queen, who liked to be the centre of attention, feared Mary too much to follow such a strategy."
After Anne's death (which Mary may have helped bring about indirectly) and a brief euphoric period in which Mary thought she would be restored to her former position, Henry finally forced his older daughter to submit and acknowledge her reduced status. Mary endured another fifteen years of subjection, first to her father (although she got along quite well with Catherine Parr, her last stepmother) and then to her half-brother Edward VI, whose tolerance of her Catholic observance did not last.
Against the background of this understanding of Mary's character, the events of the last six years of her life fall into place: She rose up with the support of the people to triumph over John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who would have ruled in the name of his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey. She resumed the practice of the traditional religion, whose beauty and mystery most people probably missed (Northumberland even reverted to the Catholic faith, a huge propaganda victory for the new regime). She married Philip of Spain somewhat reluctantly, it seems, and made it clear that her motherly relationship to her people would take priority. She encouraged trade and reformed the currency that both her father and brother had debased. As for her sobriquet, the level of violence during her reign, although inexcusable to our sensibilities, was not that different from other early modern regimes. As for Calais and its loss, the author glosses it over as ultimately untenable and not all that valuable (an explanation that is not completely satisfying). But when Mary's poor health finally overtook her, she brought about a smooth transition to the next regime by acknowledging Elizabeth as her heir.
Only in the last thirty years or so has Mary I has been rehabilitated and recognized for her own accomplishments, by a series of sympathetic (but not hagiographic) biographers starting with David Loades (newer version), and continuing with Carolly Erickson, J. A. Froude, and others. Porter's biography is not just the latest of these, but also one of the best, with an admirable level of detail and accuracy (especially in the characterizations of supporting figures like Catherine Parr). It is a riveting book, and I finished it with the sense that the traditional smears had been peeled back to reveal something of the pivotal ruler that Mary actually was.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
