| Wolf Hall | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Hilary Mantel |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Historical Fiction |
| Publisher | Fourth Estate/HarperCollins (UK) |
| Publication date | April 30, 2009 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 672 |
| ISBN | 0007230184 |
| Dewey Decimal | 823/.914 22 |
| LC Classification | PR6063.A438 W65 2009 |
Wolf Hall (2009) is a multi-award winning historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate. Set in the period from 1500 to 1535, Wolf Hall is a fictionalized biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex in the court of Henry VIII of England. The novel won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.[1][2]
Contents |
Born to a working-class family of no position or name, Cromwell rose to become the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, adviser to the King. He survived Wolsey's fall from grace to eventually take his place as the most powerful of Henry's ministers. In that role, he oversaw Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, the English church's break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries.
Historical and literary accounts in the following centuries have not been kind to Cromwell; in Robert Bolt's well-known play A Man for All Seasons he is portrayed as the calculating, unprincipled opposite of Thomas More's honour and rectitude.
Mantel's novel offers an alternative to that characterization, a more intimate and well-rounded portrait of Cromwell as a pragmatic and talented man attempting to serve king and country amid the political machinations of Henry's court and the religious upheavals of the Protestant reformation. The narrative fleshes out the historical record of Cromwell's life to produce a complete and compelling character. It also portrays Thomas More in a negative way, as a religious fanatic. The novel ends with the execution of Thomas More, bringing Cromwell to the height of his power and influence.
Mantel spent five years researching and writing the book; the trickiest part, she said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal,[3] was trying to match her version of events to the historical record. To avoid contradicting history, she created a card catalogue, organized alphabetically by character, with each card containing notes indicating where a particular historical figure was on relevant dates. "You really need to know, where is the Duke of Suffolk at the moment? You can't have him in London if he's supposed to be somewhere else," she explained. This depth of research is especially important when all the novel's main characters are historical figures.
Wolf Hall includes a large cast of fictionalized historical persons. In addition to those already mentioned, prominent characters include:
The title comes from the name of the Seymour family seat at Wolf Hall or Wulfhall in Wiltshire; the title's allusion to the old Latin saying "Man is wolf to man" serves as a constant reminder of the dangerously opportunistic nature of the world through which Cromwell navigates.[4] None of the action occurs at Wolf Hall.
| “ | ... Wolf Hall succeeds on its own terms and then some, both as a non-frothy historical novel and as a display of Mantel's extraordinary talent. Lyrically yet cleanly and tightly written, solidly imagined yet filled with spooky resonances, and very funny at times, it's not like much else in contemporary British fiction. A sequel is apparently in the works, and it's not the least of Mantel's achievements that the reader finishes this 650-page book wanting more. —Christopher Tayler in The Guardian [5] | ” |
| “ | Over two decades, she has gained a reputation as an elegant anatomiser of malevolence and cruelty. From the French Revolution of A Place of Greater Safety (1992) to the Middle England of Beyond Black (2005), hers are scrupulously moral - and scrupulously unmoralistic - books that refuse to shy away from the underside of life, finding even in disaster a kind of bleak and unconsoling humour. It is that supple movement between laughter and horror that makes this rich pageant of Tudor life her most humane and bewitching novel. — Olivia Laing in The Observer [6] | ” |
| “ | ... as soon as I opened the book I was gripped. I read it almost non-stop. When I did have to put it down, I was full of regret the story was over, a regret I still feel. This is a wonderful and intelligently imagined retelling of a familiar tale from an unfamiliar angle — one that makes the drama unfolding nearly five centuries ago look new again, and shocking again, too. —Vanora Bennett in The Times[7] | ” |
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The White Tiger |
Man Booker Prize recipient 2009 |
Succeeded by The Finkler Question |
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