Thursday, June 02, 2011

Question from Valerie - Literary patronage of Henry VIII's wives

I am currently a doctoral student in the USA, and next year I will beging the dissertation stage of my program.

I know I would like to write my dissertation on the patronage of the wives of Henry VIII, but I am not sure from what aspect I would like to do this.

So far, I have been thinking about writing on the books dedicated to the wives of Henry VIII. Literary patronage of the wives has not been done as a comprehensive study, and print culture is a very current historical trend.

I have already gathered the titles of all of the books dedicated to the wives, but I am not sure where to go from here. Is there even enough information to complete this type of study?

3 comments:

Roland H. said...

Try 'The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives' by James P. Carley.

You can buy it at Amazon.com

shtove said...

Slightly beyond your question, but this paper might give you some ideas:

The Library of Mildred Cooke Cecil, Lady Burghley

You should be able to google the full pdf - as far as I recall it does cover female patronage for the later period.

tudor princess said...

No, go for it, I think it would fascinating! If my memory serves me right, you have contrasts such as Vives' scholarly works, dedicated to Katherine of Aragon to a book of midwifery which was dedicated to Catherine Howard.

Professor Carley's book is highly readable and I second Roland's recommendation. You could also broaden it out to include dedications to Henry VIII as part of the humanist influences at court, if need be.

Good luck!