Why read The Creation of Anne Boleyn?

Book cover of The Creation of Anne Boleyn: In Search of the Tudors' Most Notorious Queen

Book description

Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne's life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination.

Why is Anne so compelling? Why does she inspire such extreme reactions? And what really was the colour of her hair?…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Creation of Anne Boleyn as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tracy Adams

Author

This book is a delight, from start to finish. I read it in one sitting. Like Lucrezia Borgia, it is both popular and erudite, but it does not recount the titular protagonist’s biography. Instead, it goes through all of the myths that have been floating around this unfortunate queen since her own lifetime. Bordo separates contemporary slander from fact, but then goes on to follow how the legend of Anne Boleyn was developed over the centuries in histories, fiction, and film. This study is also explicitly a study of how a legend takes hold and evolves.

From Tracy's list on The best books that restore vilified early-modern European queens and noblewomen.