Wolf Hall

This article is about the novel. For the Seymour family seat in England, see Wulfhall.

Wolf Hall

Author	Hilary Mantel
Language	English
Genre	Historical Novel
Publisher	Fourth Estate (UK)
Publication date	April 30, 2009
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	672
ISBN	0007230184
Dewey Decimal	823/.914 22
LC Class	PR6063.A438 W65 2009

Wolf Hall (2009) is a historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate. It won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Set in the period from 1500 to 1535, Wolf Hall is a fictionalized biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex in the court of Henry VIII of England.

The story of the reign of King Henry VIII and the people around him, including Thomas Cromwell, is familiar to anyone with an interest in English history. Born to a working-class family of no position or name, Cromwell rose to became the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, adviser to the King. He survived Wolsey's fall from grace to eventually take his place as the most powerful of Henry's ministers. In that role, he oversaw Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, the English church's break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries. The novel ends with the execution of Thomas More, bringing Cromwell to the height of his power and influence.

Historical and literary accounts in the following centuries have not been kind to Cromwell; in Robert Bolt's well-known play A Man for All Seasons, for example, he is portrayed as the calculating, unprincipled opposite of Thomas More's honour and rectitude. Mantel's novel offers an alternative to that characterization, a more intimate and well-rounded portrait of Cromwell as a pragmatic and talented man attempting to serve king and country amid the political machinations of Henry's court and the religious upheavals of the Protestant reformation. The narrative fleshes out the historical record of Cromwell's life to produce a complete and compelling character. It also portrays Thomas More in a negative way, as a religious fanatic.

Mantel spent five years researching and writing the book; the trickiest part, she said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, was trying to match her version of events to the historical record. To avoid contradicting history, she created a card catalogue, organized alphabetically by character, with each card containing notes indicating where a particular historical figure was on relevant dates. "You really need to know, where is the Duke of Suffolk at the moment? You can't have him in London if he's supposed to be somewhere else," she explained. This depth of research is especially important when all the novel's main characters are historical figures.

Characters

Wolf Hall includes a large cast of fictionalized historical persons. In addition to those already mentioned, prominent characters include:

• Stephen Gardiner, Master Secretary to King Henry
• Mary, the daughter and only surviving child of Henry and Catherine, later Queen Mary I of England
• Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne
• Thomas Boleyn, father of Anne and Mary
• Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, Anne's uncle
• Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury
• Jane Seymour, who later became the third of Henry's six wives

The title

The title comes from the name of the Seymour family seat at Wolf Hall or Wulfhall in Wiltshire; the title's allusion to the old Latin saying "Man is wolf to man" serves as a constant reminder of the dangerously opportunistic nature of the world through which Cromwell navigates. Interestingly, very little of the action occurs at Wolf Hall.

Critical reaction

• ... Wolf Hall succeeds on its own terms and then some, both as a non-frothy historical novel and as a display of Mantel's extraordinary talent. Lyrically yet cleanly and tightly written, solidly imagined yet filled with spooky resonances, and very funny at times, it's not like much else in contemporary British fiction. A sequel is apparently in the works, and it's not the least of Mantel's achievements that the reader finishes this 650-page book wanting more. The Guardian

• Over two decades, she has gained a reputation as an elegant anatomiser of malevolence and cruelty. From the French Revolution of A Place of Greater Safety (1992) to the Middle England of Beyond Black (2005), hers are scrupulously moral - and scrupulously unmoralistic - books that refuse to shy away from the underside of life, finding even in disaster a kind of bleak and unconsoling humour. It is that supple movement between laughter and horror that makes this rich pageant of Tudor life her most humane and bewitching novel. The Observer

• ... as soon as I opened the book I was gripped. I read it almost non-stop. When I did have to put it down, I was full of regret the story was over, a regret I still feel. This is a wonderful and intelligently imagined retelling of a familiar tale from an unfamiliar angle — one that makes the drama unfolding nearly five centuries ago look new again, and shocking again, too. The Times

Awards and nominations

• Winner - 2009 Man Booker Prize James Naughtie, the chairman of the Booker prize judges, said the decision to give Wolf Hall the award was "... based on the sheer bigness of the book. The boldness of its narrative, its scene setting ... The extraordinary way that Hilary Mantel has created what one of the judges has said was a contemporary novel, a modern novel, which happens to be set in the 16th century."
• Winner - 2010 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.

See also

• Cultural depictions of Henry VIII of England

External links

• Wolf Hall iPhone App
• Hilary Mantel on Wolf Hall, interview by Man Booker.
• Wolf Hall at complete review, an aggregation of reviews from papers and magazines.
• (Video) Hilary Mantel on Wolf Hall, The Guardian
• Rubin, Martin (2009-10-10). "A Man for All Tasks and Times". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 13 October 2009.