Review by Booklist Review
History buffs, historical-fiction fans, and cable-television viewers are well acquainted with the lives of Tudor royalty and nobility but may be less familiar with the stories of those of humbler lineage. Norton's (The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor, 2016) collective biography examines the lives of Tudor women of all social standings, with brief accompanying essays on a variety of related topics, including contraception, childbirth, costume, and cookery. Queens, servants, widows, nuns, harlots, and more are depicted in a rich tapestry of meticulous scholarship, historical detail, and insightful observations that begins with the first Elizabeth Tudor, daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and ends with Queen Elizabeth I. Life as a Tudor woman was frequently harsh, carefully circumscribed, and often short. Education was minimal at best; marriage was primarily a legal arrangement, and childbirth was frequently dangerous. Some of the stories include truly harrowing accounts of imprisonment, torture, and even martyrdom. Anyone interested in expanding and enriching her of his view of the Tudor era will enjoy Norton's skillfully written study.--Mulac, Carolyn Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In these absorbing and well-researched portraits, Norton (The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor), an authority on the queens of England, juxtaposes the experiences of prominent and ordinary women across the social, economic, and religious spectra during the Tudor period (1485-1603). Norton frames her work with the lives of Henry VIII's younger sister Elizabeth (1492-1495) and his younger daughter, Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603). She posits that women passed through Shakespeare's "seven ages of man" in parallel fashion. This construct proves awkward, as for women there was no fourth or fifth age comparable to those of a soldier or man at the peak of his professional success. Thus, two of the book's middle sections devolve into narratives about well-known, exceptional women caught up in the religious turmoil of the 1530s-1550s. The earlier and later ages more successfully encompass a broad range of experiences, including those of wet nurses, witches, the poor, servants, and widows. Readers will learn about cooking and medicine, church pews and contraception, ladies in waiting, rape and prostitution, ecclesiastical courts, Lady Jane Grey, cosmetics, and more. Despite occasionally stretching the material to suit her thesis, Norton weaves her stories with an expert hand and illuminates many rarely discussed aspects of daily life for Tudor women. Illus. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Riffing on Shakespeare's "Seven Stages of Man" monolog in As You Like It, Norton (England's Queens) describes the lives of women of the Tudor period (1485-1603) from infancy to old age. Considering women from peasants to prophetesses to royalty, Norton's thoroughly researched work examines issues that touched all Tudor females, regardless of class, including the dangers of childbirth, education, courting and marriage, work opportunities, and the influence of the church. Listeners may be quite familiar with many of Norton's subjects such as Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon, and Lady Jane Grey. However, she offers equal time to figures such as Elizabeth Barton, a maidservant-turned-religious visionary who was eventually hanged for treason, and Cecily Burbage, wet nurse to Elizabeth Tudor, Henry VIII's sister who died in childhood. Narrator Jennifer Dixon can't really give a dramatic performance of this heavily researched work, but her clear reading is well paced and keeps the non-fiction narrative moving along. -VERDICT Norton straightforwardly covers subjects such as rape, infanticide, and prostitution, so her work provides a nice balance to the many novels and films that romanticize the Tudor age. ["Norton provides further evidence of her position as a leading authority on Tudor history. Highly recommended for readers interested in the period": LJ 6/1/17 review of the Pegasus hc.]-Beth -Farrell, -Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A portrait of "the diverse lives enjoyedor enduredby women living in Tudor England, and together constituting a multifaceted impression of female humanity of the period."British historian Norton (The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor: Elizabeth I, Thomas Seymour, and the Making of a Virgin Queen, 2015) delivers less a social history than a well-researched description of the lives of women in 16th-century Britain. Inevitably, archival documents emphasize rulers, the rich, and the lurid, so Norton has much to say about royalty, aristocrats, female entrepreneurs, criminals, and martyrs. Readers may squirm to learn how badly Tudor law, religion, and custom treated women; almost every woman accepted this, and only a small number prospered. The author has a predilection for namesakes, so she recounts the royal nursery routine of Elizabeth Tudor. Little of Queen Elizabeth I's life was hidden, but readers will learn perhaps more than they want to know about her relentless rejection of suitors and struggles against aging. Elizabeth Boleyn reached the top of the greasy pole of court politics, surviving even the infamous beheading of her daughter, Anne. Elizabeth Barton, the "Nun of Kent," was wildly popular in a time when religion was a matter of life and death. For almost a decade, she heard the voice of God until her execution by Henry VIII; her pronouncements opposed his wishes. Those in search of a genuine social history of this era should turn to Ian Mortimer's A Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England (2017). Norton occasionally digresses into subjects like Tudor diet, hygiene, and morals, but mostly she writes minibiographies of women who struggled with varying degrees of success in an unjust man's world. Readers with a low toleration for outrage will have a difficult time, but most will find this a satisfying series of historical vignettes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
