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Title: The Fifth Queen (Penguin Classics) by Ford Madox Ford, A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0-14-118130-3 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Intrigue and romance in the court of Henry VIII
Comment: Intrigue and romance in the court of Henry VIII
Katherine Howard, armed only with education, wit and honesty, becomes the Fifth Queen, Henry VIII's fifth wife in this amazing historical trilogy. The plot-ridden court comes to vivid life as everyone high and low maneuvers for advantage. Everyone except Katherine Howard, whose unwillingness to scheme will make her queen and defenseless at the same moment. Even knowing the general story this is a fascinating and occasionally shocking novel, with a stunning ending...
Rating: 4
Summary: A New Spin on an Old Queen!
Comment: Fans of Tudor history will enjoy this meaty volume which delivers a very different take on the life of Queen Katherine Howard...she is hardly the hysterical and promiscuous girl so often depicted. Especially interesting characterizations of "Bloody" Mary Tudor and Henry VIII, as well. Strictly for fans of the subject, however, or otherwise tedious reading.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Parable
Comment: Ford Madox Ford's "The Fifth Queen" - actually a collection of three separate novels - is a fictionalized account of the fifth wife of England's Henry VIII, Katharine Howard. As A.S. Byatt explains in her Introduction, "This figure bears little relation to what we have about the real Katharine . . ." and thus the reader should be conscious that Ford's Katharine - a young, pretty, pious woman who yearns for a return to Catholicism after Henry's split with Rome - is strictly fictional. That said, the only real failure of this work is that Katharine is the least appealing, least interesting character; we first meet her as a dispossessed ingenue seeking entrance to Henry's court around the time of his disasterous fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves, and it is this description which will follow her throughout the book. Even as she becomes Queen, it is almost by accident, surviving the machinations of Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal and the recklessness of her devoted cousin Culpepper. She is Queen by default. She constantly protests that all she seeks is a Catholic England - the "old ways" - and yet throughout she resigns herself to letting events happen to her, as if she cannot control the consequences of her own life. Indeed, her final speech to Henry where she confesses to an adultery which did not occur, becomes her last fatal act of passivity, for which she pays with her life. She cannot see that there are those who wish to help her and that her naive, narcissistic piety does not have to be her ruin. What holds these novels together is the rich supporting cast: the aforementioned Cromwell, who has his own sovereign Protestant image of England, free from the entanglements of Rome. There is the brooding Princess Mary, Henry's daughter by his first wife, who knows how to carry a grudge for her mother's divorce, the super-spy Throckmorton, the lecherous Magister Udal and more. Ford uses Katharine to show that the blind commitment to an ideal - any ideal - will only result in failure, that this world is more than ideas and faiths, but of people who are imperfect, people who will fail. It is a world five hundred years in the past, but it is also our own.
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Title: Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford, Robie Macauley ISBN: 0141186615 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 05 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics) by Ford Madox Ford, Thomas C. Moser ISBN: 019283620X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Wives of Henry VIII: The Rose Without a Thorn by Jean Plaidy ISBN: 0609810170 Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA) Pub. Date: 24 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Wives of Henry VIII: The Lady in the Tower by Jean Plaidy ISBN: 1400047854 Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA) Pub. Date: 24 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Tudor Princesses: The Thistle and the Rose by Jean Plaidy ISBN: 0609810227 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 27 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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