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Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners
Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners
Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners
Ebook218 pages3 hours

Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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The Tudor era belongs to its women. No other period of English history has produced so many notable and interesting women, and into other periods have they so powerfully influenced the course of political events. Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I and, at moments of high drama, Mary Queen of Scots dominated the political scene for more than half a century, while in the previous fifty years Henry VIII's marital escapades brought six more women to the centre of attention. In this book the women of the royal family are the central characters; the royal women set the style and between them they provide a dazzling variety of personalities as well as illustrating almost every aspect of life as it affected women in Tudor England. We know what they ate, how they dressed, the books they read and the letters they wrote. Even the greatest of them suffered the universal legal and physiological disabilities of womanhood - some survived them, some went under. Now revised and updated, Alison Plowden's beautifully written account of the women behind the scenes and at the forefront of sixteenth-century English history will be welcomed by anyone interested in exploring this popular period of history from the point of view of the women who made it.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 31, 2011
ISBN9780752467160
Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners

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Rating: 3.7037036851851854 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    FanTABulous. I haven’t read a history book that’s this much fun in years. This is a great introduction to or refresher in the Tudor monarchs. It’s focused on women—King Henry VIII’s death and his son Edward VI’s reign get only a few sentences each—which provides a nice, tight focus to a turbulent era. The title is only half right; no commoners are mentioned by name in the book, although their mob-like reactions to moral issues or political events are recorded. (The very last chapter is a fun, fast look at the basic mores and customs of women, whatever their social status, but it's an afterthought.) The book is instead about the highest ranking women in the land from Henry VII through Elizabeth I, starting with Margaret Beaufort. The writing style is taut, yet it leaves room for lots of judiciously chosen tidbits from the women’s personal lives. I've read at least a dozen of Plowden's English history books, and this read like the distillation of all that If anyone’s looking into getting into Tudor history, I would recommend this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is a brief biography of some of the important women in the Tudor period, such as Elizabeth Woodville, Henry VIII’s wives, Lady Jane Grey, Mary and Elizabeth. It also talks about marriage, education and attitudes towards women. I felt that the title was a little misleading as there wasn’t much coverage of ‘commoners’ as the title suggested; the life of Elizabethan women is given a brief overview in an epilogue at the end (it’s not even a numbered chapter). While this is a good introductory book to significant women of the period, I didn’t feel that it told me anything new (but then, I am a history student and the Tudors are one of my favourite periods to study, so perhaps that’s why). It wasn’t particularly indepth, but is a quick read, making a good starting point for those wishing to know more about the women of this period. While a lot of it is speculation (we can’t know for sure how they felt) the author does portray them all in a sympathetic light and it seemed reasonably historically accurate with lots of quotes from contemporary sources, and, after all, a lot of the situations women faced in the 1400 and 1500s are much the same as women do now – I’m sure many can relate to Catherine of Aragon seeing her husband being ‘taken’ from her by a younger, ‘newer’ model (Anne Boleyn), and Mary’s resentment of Henry’s treatment of her mother during this time.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a good book but it didn't tell me anything new about Tudor women. Also, it did not focus on the commoners, mainly Henry VIII's wives and his daughters. It is interesting and very easy to read but doesn't have any new information in it.

    1 person found this helpful

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Tudor Women - Alison Plowden

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