Six Wives by David Starkey

Six Wives by David Starkey

"Extraordinary. . . . It is a tribute to Starkey's narrative drive, his puckish wit, and sharp discrimination that it doesn't seem a page too long. . . . With each queen, Starkey offers a vivid character study but also has fresh discoveries that subtly alter the picture he started out with." -- Sunday Times (London)

The dramatic, legendary story of Henry VIII, his six wives, and the England they ruled--told by one of the world's preeminent historians of the Tudor era.

Perhaps no one in history had a more eventful career in matrimony than Henry VIII. His marriages were tumultuous and complicated, and made instant legends of six very different women. Henry took his first bride, Catherine of Aragon, when he was 17. Their 24-year marriage was a relatively stable prelude to what followed. Anne Boleyn, a pretty, French-educated Protestant who was the mother of Elizabeth I, was eventually beheaded. Jane Seymour served as a demure contrast to the vampish Boleyn, and gave birth to Henry's longed-for son (Edward VI). After a brief marriage to the plain Anne of Cleves, Henry married a flirtatious teenager, Catherine Howard, who would be the second of his brides to lose her head along with the king's favor. Finally, there was Catherine Parr, a shrewd Protestant bluestocking.

In this brilliant new work, one of the world's most respected historians weaves startling new facts and fresh interpretations into a spellbinding account of the emotional drama and political intrigue that attended Henry's six marriages. With a keen eye for both the personal and the global stage, David Starkey masterfully recaptures the Tudor era--and the wives of Henry VIII--as only he can.

David Starkey is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College. He is the editor of two collections of creative writing pedagogy, Teaching Writing Creatively (1998) and Genre by Example: Writing What We Teach (2001), and he has been active in all four genres. His poetry collections include Adventures of the Minor Poet (2007); Ways of Being Dead: New and Selected Poems (2006); and Fear of Everything (2000). Several poems from his most recent collection, A Few Things You Should Know about the Weasel (2010) were featured on Garrison Keillor s The Writer s Almanac. His fiction has appeared in American Literary Review, Rio Grande Review, Sou wester, and in the anthology Blue Cathedral: Contemporary Fiction for the New Millennium. His creative nonfiction has been published in Cimarron Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, Tampa Review, and in the book Living Blue in the Red States (2007), which he edited. His plays have been produced in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Toronto, and elsewhere.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780694010431
ISBN 10	069401043X
Title	Six Wives
Author	David Starkey
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Year published	2003-07-08
Number of pages	852
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable