Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Question from George - Letter from Anne B. to Henry from the Tower

I am led to believe that most scholars dismiss the letter said to be from Anne Boleyn to Henry from the Tower. Can anyone point me towards a book or article where the authenticity of the letter is considered?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are two distinguished experts on Anne Boleyn whose works you can access for the arguments for and against the authenticity of the letter. Both are (or were) professors of history at major universities. Eric Ives is an older, more traditional British male historian who has written extensively on Anne Boleyn. Retha Warnicke is an American woman who writes from a feminist perspective. Both of these individuals have written biographies of Anne Boleyn that are readily available in most university libraries as well as through online booksellers like Amazon. They have also written numerous articles on Boleyn for academic journals, including a series in "English Historical Review" (in 1992-3) in which they debated specifically Boleyn's fall from favor. Lastly, you might find partiuclarly interesting and useful Retha Warnicke's chapter on Anne Boleyn entitled "Anne Boleyn in History, Drama and Film" in the book "High and Mighty Queens of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations," edited by Carole Levin and others (Palgrave MacMillian, 2003). As the title of the book indicates, the chapter addresses many of the myths about Anne Boleyn.

Anonymous said...

On the point of the letter, both Warnicke and Ives dismiss it as a forgery. If you are looking for a source specifically promoting the letter as authentic, look at Joanna Denny's biography of Anne and d'Aubigny's 2 volume study of the English Reformation.