Part 22 (2/2)
10. What is the motivation behind Elizabeth's ”sudden crazy decision” to leave the garden gate unlocked in chapter 25? What is she really trying to prove with this test? Who is she testing? Perkin? Or Henry?
11. Early on, Henry promises Elizabeth that he is no murderer, and yet she suspects it of him more than once, even suspecting him of wanting her to die in childbirth. What is your verdict of Henry-is he a man capable of murder? Is he indeed a murderer?
12. Margaret Campbell Barnes's writing career first took off in the years following World War II. She published ten books of historical fiction between 1944 and 1962. She was a volunteer in the ambulance service during the war and lost her eldest son in the battles in Normandy, ”a bitter loss which she must live with all her life.” All of this-the climate of the times, her own personal loss-came to bear very strongly on her writing. Where is this influence apparent in The Tudor Rose?
Reading Group Guide written by Elizabeth R. Blaufox, great-granddaughter of Margaret Campbell Barnes MARGARET CAMPBELL BARNES LIVED from 1891 to 1962. She was the youngest of ten children born into a happy, loving family in Victorian England. She grew up in the Suss.e.x countryside and was educated at small private schools in London and Paris.
Margaret was already a published writer when she married Peter, a furniture salesman, in 1917. Over the next twenty years, a steady stream of short stories and verse appeared under her name (and several noms de plume) in leading English periodicals of the time, including Windsor, London, Quiver, and others. Later, Margaret's agents, Curtis Brown Ltd., encouraged her to try her hand at historical novels. Between 1944 and 1962, Margaret wrote ten historical novels. Many of these were bestsellers, book club selections, and translated into foreign editions.
Between World Wars I and II, Margaret and Peter brought up two sons, Michael and John. In August 1944, Michael, a lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps, was killed in his tank in the Allied advance from Caen to Falaise in Normandy. Margaret and Peter grieved terribly the rest of their lives. Glimpses of Michael s.h.i.+ne through in each of Margaret's later novels.
In 1945 Margaret bought a small thatched cottage on the Isle of Wight, off England's south coast. It had at one time been a smuggler's cottage, but to Margaret it was a special place in which to recover the spirit and carry on writing. And write she did. All together, over two million copies of Margaret Campbell Barnes's historical novels have been sold worldwide.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM.
Margaret Campbell Barnes.
Brief Gaudy Hour.
__________________________________________________.
978-1-4022-1175-1 ~ $14.95 U.S./$17.95 CAN.
__________________________________________________.
”A moving and life-like portrait... a thoroughly delightful novel.”
-New York Times My Lady of Cleves __________________________________________________.
978-1-4022-1431-8 ~ $14.95 U.S./$15.99 CAN.
__________________________________________________.
”At long last Anne of Cleves gets her day as a n.o.ble and highminded heroine in the lists of historical fiction!”
-Chicago Tribune King's Fool __________________________________________________.
978-1-4022-1902-3 ~ $14.99 U.S./$15.99 CAN.
__________________________________________________.
”An absorbing picture of King Henry VIII and his court.”
-Booklist MORE THAN 2 MILLION COPIES OF.
MARGARET CAMPBELL BARNES'S NOVELS HAVE.
BEEN SOLD WORLDWIDE.
Also by Margaret Campbell Barnes.
Brief Gaudy Hour.
My Lady of Cleves.
King's Fool.
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