Bloody Mary

Rating:
Summary: Boody Mary
Review: After years of failed pregnancies and infant deaths, a daughter was born to Henry III and Katherine of England.She was the first female child in England's history to be given the throne as a birthright.But it would be a life of strife and emotional turmoil for Mary Tudor. After being declared a bastard for the sake of her father's notorious romances and being prosecuted for her religion, Mary gradually makes her way past all the hardships only to face a new set of challenges.

I thought this book was smart, albeit rather dull. I would reccommend this book only to readers who find this subject interesting and who have a large vocabulary. This book won't pull you in, you have to walk. In comparision to other books, this book is really quite eloquent and shows the intensity of Mary's struggle to keep her principles, yet to remain loyal to her father.

Rating:
Summary: A Biography that Answers Many Questions
Review: I found this book extremely interesting and absorbing to the point where I did not want to put it down. I would recommend it to anyone who, like me, wanted to find out what the foundations were of Mary Tudor's policies and also what she was really like as a person. The detail is so great that one learns even what her voice sounded like. It is as though Mary were alive again and not a figure from the 16th century. As some other reviewers have noted here somewhat critically, the book spends a lot of time discussing Mary's life before her accession to the throne. To me, this is to its' credit as an understanding of the forces, personalities and occurrences in Mary's early life are ESSENTIAL to answering questions about Mary's policies and actions as queen. I enjoyed Carolly's writing style. She is able to convey the complex interweaving of people and events in Mary's time in a manner that is easy to understand and follow along. Highly recommended, as is "Great Harry" also written by Carolly which I am reading now.

Rating:
Summary: Better than nothing
Review: I gave this book 3 stars because it's the only full length biography of Mary Tudor that I've found, but I think Erickson woefully misjudges her subject. Mary was certainly a tragic character, and had a life filled with misery, but she was not a competent monarch. She came to the throne filled with a determination to restore Catholicism to England, which given her personal history was totally understandable. However, she was completely out of touch with the political reality that England did not want Catholicism restored, at least not by force. She then proceeded to make England's treasury and foreign policy a cat's-paw of her Spanish husband, to the great fury of her subjects. This is NOT a success story. I am also puzzled by Erickson's double standard with regard to Mary's conduct versus Elizabeth's before each came to the throne. Mary was in frequent contact with the ambassadors from Spain/Holy Roman Empire, and even plotted with one of them to be smuggled out of England to the continent, probably to be married eventually to a Catholic prince and used as a figurehead in a Catholic conquest of England. Erickson relates this without any editorial comment. However, when Elizabeth, during Mary's reign, is even SUSPECTED OF being in touch with the French ambassador, she's a traitor and locked up in the Tower for betraying her sister. So how come Mary wasn't a traitor to her father for doing the same thing?
Erickson also does not point out that after five years on the throne Mary was a burnt-out shell who'd suffered at least one hysterical pregnancy -- whereas Elizabeth ruled for 45 years and showed no sign of burn-out or exhaustion til she was on her deathbed at the age of 69 -- and her life was certainly as miserable and unstable as Mary's.

C'mon, Erickson, either apply your standard equally or acknowledge your bias.

Rating:
Summary: Good Biography of Tragic Life
Review: In Carolly Erickson's "Bloody Mary", the life of Mary Tudor, the author provides an in-depth analysis of a monarch much maligned in her own -- and our -- time. From her early years as Henry VIII's cherished daughter, to his rejection of her and her mother (Catherine of Aragon), to the parade of wives Henry used and abused, Erickson paints a vivid picture of English court life during the mid-1500s. Sometimes, the picture is too vivid and the digressions from the main story of Mary and her trials and tribulations are too extensive. By the time Mary miraculously becomes queen in 1553, the reader is exhausted; the author also seems to have run out of steam, and all the painstaking research and background give way to an almost cursory examination of Mary's brief reign. The book also stresses Mary's Catholic piety a little too much, perhaps as a justification of the persecution of Protestants that earned her the nickname of "Bloody". On the good side, Erickson makes Mary a real person -- a very troubled real person; on the slightly negative side, Mary gets lost in the details provided on the court, the machinations, and the politics of the age. You'll need a lot of time and patience to finish this book, but the reward is an excellent interpretation of a woman who paved the way for her much more popular sister: Elizabeth I.

Rating:
Summary: more of a history of the times than a biography of the Queen
Review: While Carolly Erickson does a commendable job in addressing the topics of the time she spends more time on the associates of Queen Mary then with the Queen herself. Perhaps this is because of the lack of information on the Queen's early years but perhaps a more scholarly assessment of her reign and how it affected England in the long term would contribute more to the success of the book. Erickson does a very good job in presenting an unbiased view of the woman who has been degraded in 350 years of English Protestant Literature. While Mary did have her strong religious convictions that did bring many to the stake she was not a "bloody" tyrant as the Protestants would like her to be remembered. Her successor Elizabeth deserves this title more than this great Queen. Erickson however does not write enough on two famous executions during her reign, those of Lady Jane Grey and Archbishop Cranmer. It seems that these 2 proponents of the Protestant cause deserved more then the passing reference to their exections. On the whole, the book was extremely entertaning and well written. Erickson has a way to capture her audience and evoke both pathos and awe for the only Catholic Queen of England.