Mistress Anne by Carolly Erickson Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.98 You Save: $14.01 (74%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.99 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Mistress Anne
Book Review: Awful
Summary: 1 Stars
I started reading this book at the same time I was reading another biography of Anne Boleyn(eric ives) and the difference is striking. I confess that I didn't finish Carolly Erickson's attempt. That's how utterly I disliked it. This is popular history at it's lowest, full of clichés and stereotypes with Anne a sex pot on the loose in Henry VIII's England.
Do not read this book if you want to get a clear, complete and true image of Anne Boleyn.
Book Review: Bad history
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought a number of Carolly Erickson's Tudor biographies with a gift certificate; I hope that the others impress me more than "Mistress Anne" did. Miss Erickson uses about six main sources and quotes endlessly from them--the number of quotation marks on each page grows tiresome--which is a sure sign of lazy writing. The picture section in the middle, for some reason, includes pictures of Catherine Parr and Mary Queen of Scots--important figures in Tudor history, to be sure, but, historically, they didn't even show up until after Anne Boleyn's death; and they appear nowhere in the book, as well! Talk about sloppy! I was completely unimpressed with this 'pop history' of Anne Boleyn, but plan on reading the other biographies I purchased. If I'm happier with the others, maybe I'll post a more positive review of one of them.Book Review: Extremely dull
Summary: 1 Stars
I have to agree with the other reviews I've read. I was thoroughly disappointed with this book. I bought it because I am interested in anything having to do with Anne Boleyn/Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I.
While there was some good factual information in this book, that's all it really was- information. The book itself was very dry and had no real substance to it. I've never read a book by this author before, so I don't know if this her usual delivery or not. But, she took what could have been an outstanding book about a very intriguing period of history and basically wasted a lot of good paper.
Book Review: Get Something Better
Summary: 1 Stars
I expected a bit more by an author who's done several such books in the Tudor period. Sadly, the book reads like it is simply a high school student's history notes (not even the 'final paper'). The style is jagged and choppy, with so many 'we really don't know much about this woman' comments that I almost gave up on finishing it. I understand not wanting to embellish history and keeping a book historically accurate, but there are ways of doing it without driving one's reader batty. If I could have given it 0 stars, I would have.Book Review: Inevitable limitations
Summary: 2 Stars
Erickson's avowed practice of giving equal weight to each part of a subject's life, rather than concentrating on the period when the subject was "famous," causes two major problems this time. First, there is (or was at the time of Erickson's work) little or no documentation of Anne Boleyn's early life; thus, for much of the book we are repeatedly confronted with statements of how Anne "must have" felt, reacted, behaved, etc. Second, the short period in which Anne strutted upon the world stage skims by far too quickly, with too little detail. True, Anne "must have" felt that way about events herself -- but surely the benefit of time and perspective is that we can linger and delve into the subject. Perhaps it is impossible to write a really adequate biography of Anne Boleyn.