Anne Boleyn from 1900 to 1950

Abstract

As the women’s historical novel became an increasingly popular form, novels about Anne Boleyn proliferated. These novels stressed Anne’s relatability to female readers, with Mary Hasting Bradley’s novel The Favor of Kings, for example, presenting Anne as a “normal” girl who becomes involved in extraordinary events. The early twentieth century also saw a master narrative about Anne’s life emerge: Anne is imagined to be genuinely in love with Henry Percy, and it is only when she is divided from him that she turns to ambition. That ambition, and her desire to revenge herself on either the King or Cardinal Wolsey, eventually brings about her downfall. In novels such as Margaret Campbell Barnes’s Brief Gaudy Hour, Anne is imagined as the Tudor equivalent to Scarlett O’Hara.