Helen Castor’s new book will feature Lady Jane Grey.
‘She Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth’ is due to be published by Faber & Faber in the UK on 7 October 2010. It will be published in the US by HarperCollins early in 2011.
Dr Castor looks at the events of 1553 from the perspective of politics and power. The book will mainly focus on four medieval queens, Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou but one chapter will look at the events of Jane’s reign and another at how she was named as Edward’s heir.
Amazon.co.uk describes it as:
‘The fascinating story of how royal power came to lie female hands for the first time under the Tudor queens – and of the four women who came before them and who, whilst never reigning monarchs, held great power.
The boy in the bed was just fifteen years old. He had been handsome, perhaps even recently; but now his face was swollen and disfigured by disease, and by the treatments his doctors had prescribed in the attempt to ward off its ravages. Their failure could no longer be mistaken. When Edward VI – Henry VIII’s longed-for son – died in 1553, extraordinarily, there was no one left to claim the title King of England. For the first time, all the contenders for the crown were female. In 1553, England was about to experience the ‘monstrous regiment’ – the unnatural rule – of a woman. But female rule in England also had a past. Four hundred years before Edward’s death, Matilda, daughter of Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conquerer, came tantalisingly close to securing her hold on the power of the crown. And between the 12th and the 15th centuries three more exceptional women – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, and Margaret of Anjou – discovered, as queens consort and dowager, how much was possible if the presumptions of male rule were not confronted so explicitly. The stories of these women – told here in all their vivid humanity – illustrate the paradox which the female heirs to the Tudor throne had no choice but to negotiate. Man was the head of woman; and the king was the head of all. How, then, could a woman be king, how could royal power lie in female hands? ‘
From Amazon.co.uk
Dr Castor’s previous book, ‘Blood & Roses’ was published by Faber & Faber in 2004.
‘The Wars of the Roses turned England upside down. Between 1455 and 1485 four kings lost their thrones, more than forty noblemen lost their lives on the battlefield or their heads on the block, and thousands of the men who followed them met violent deaths. The letters of the Pastons, an ambitious nouveau riche Norfolk family striving to establish themselves among the landed gentry, offer us a unique and fascinating insight into the tumult of that age. Helen Castor explores the Pastons’ experiences of birth, marriage, love, death, and the realities of daily life, and unravels the turbulent politics of the family’s affairs against the backdrop of civil war between York and Lancaster.’
From Faber & Faber
Helen Castor at Faber & Faber
Further details – Amazon.co.uk
Book spotted by Sonja-Marie at The Lady Jane Grey Internet Museum.
