The Fifth Queen Crowned

(Hardback)

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The Fifth Queen Crowned (1908) is a novel by Ford Madox Ford. The third and final installment of Fords The Fifth Queen Trilogy is set during the reign of Henry VIII, a tumultuous time of political and religious oppression in a land at the mercy of a murderous King. Fords trilogy recreates Tudor England in a masterful story of court intrigue, romance, and betrayal. Focusing on the tragic figure of Katharine Howard, the fifth wife of the King, Ford investigates the interconnection of sex and power in a political atmosphere clouded by violence and espionage. Depicting some of the eras most notorious figures, including Thomas Cromwell, Bloody Mary, and the King himself, Ford makes history both entertaining and undeniably human. Brought to the court of King Henry VIII by her cousin Thomas Culpeper, Katharine Howard, a noblewoman whose familys fortunes had been in decline for some time, inadvertently catches the eye of his majesty. Given a position as a lady in waiting for Lady Mary, Howardthough opposed by the brutally efficient schemer Thomas Cromwellsoon distinguishes herself in the eyes of the King, who makes her his fifth Queen. Thrust into the spotlight at the age of seventeen, she finds herself forced into an impossible role as a public figure whose every move could enrage her notoriously violent husband. Howard has traditionally been seen as a minor figure in the history of Tudor England. For Ford, however, a master storyteller with an eye for tragedy and a skill for developing flawed, convincingly human characters, Howard is a woman whose life and death are not only worthy of literature, but instructive for the men and women of Edwardian England. In The Fifth Queen Crowned, he continues the story of Katharine in the aftermath of Thomas Cromwells demise. Now married to Henry VIII, she finds herself increasingly powerless at court and fears angering the King. Strong willed and eminently good, Katharine is drawn into the controversy surrounding Nicholas Throckmorton, who has been implicated in Wyatts Rebellion and thrown in prison. As the King grows tired of her willpower and jealous of her relationship with Culpeper, her time as Queen grows increasingly tenuous. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Ford Madox Fords The Fifth Queen Crowned is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.

Author Bio

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was an English novelist, poet, and editor. Born in Wimbledon, Ford was the son of Pre-Raphaelite artist Catherine Madox Brown and music critic Francis Hueffer. In 1894, he eloped with his girlfriend Elsie Martindale and eventually settled in Winchelsea, where they lived near Henry James and H. G. Wells. Ford left his wife and two daughters in 1909 for writer Isobel Violet Hunt, with whom he launched The English Review, an influential magazine that published such writers as Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, and D. H. Lawrence. As Ford Madox Hueffer, he established himself with such novels as The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903), cowritten with Joseph Conrad, and The Fifth Queen (1906-1907), a trilogy of historical novels. During the Great War, however, he began using the penname Ford Madox Ford to avoid anti-German sentiment. The Good Soldier (1915), considered by many to be Fords masterpiece, earned him a reputation as a leading novelist of his generation and continues to be named among the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Recognized as a pioneering modernist for his poem Antwerp (1915) and his tetralogy Parades End (1924-1928), Ford was a friend of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Jean Rhys. Despite his reputation and influence as an artist and publisher who promoted the early work of some of the greatest English and American writers of his time, Ford has been largely overshadowed by his contemporaries, some of whom took to disparaging him as their own reputations took flight.