Anne of Cleves - Literature

Literature

Anne is the subject of three biographies: Julia Hamilton's Anne of Cleves (1972), and Mary Saaler's Anne of Cleves: fourth wife of Henry VIII (1995), and Elizabeth Norton's Anne of Cleves: Henry VIII's Discarded Bride (2009). Retha Warnicke has written an academic study on Anne's marriage called The Marrying of Anne of Cleves. Royal Protocol in Early Modern England (2000).

Anne of Cleves appears as a character in many historical novels about Henry's reign. In The Fifth Queen (1906) by Ford Madox Ford she is portrayed as a sensible, practical woman who happily settles for divorce in return for material benefits. Anne of Cleves is the main character of My Lady of Cleves (1946) by Margaret Campbell Barnes. About a third of The Boleyn Inheritance (2006) by Philippa Gregory is recounted from Anne's point of view, covering the period of Henry VIII's marriages to her and to her successor Catherine Howard. The book concludes with Anne living away from court, and avoiding the execution ceremonies of Howard and of Jane Boleyn, sister-in-law to one of Henry's queens and lady-in-waiting to all the others, including Anne. Gregory includes Anne in a non-fictional review of the period at the end of the book.

Anne and her Holbein portrait in the Louvre are the focus of the novel Amenable Women (2009) by Mavis Cheek. Anne and Catherine Howard are the subject of The Queen's Mistake by Diane Haeger (2009), while Anne and Jane Seymour are covered in Volume 3 of Dixie Atkins's tetralogy A Golden Sorrow (2010).