The book is the first in a trilogy; the sequel Bring Up the Bodies was published in 2012.[4] The last book in the trilogy is The Mirror and the Light (2020), which covers the last four years of Cromwell's life.[5]
Summary
In 1500, the teenage Thomas Cromwell ran away from home to flee his abusive father and sought his fortune as a soldier in France.
By 1527, the well-travelled Cromwell had returned to England and was now a lawyer, a married father of three, and highly respected as the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, with a reputation for successful deal-making. His life takes a tragic turn when his wife and two daughters abruptly die of the sweating sickness, leaving him a widower. His sister-in-law, Johane, comes to keep house for him.
Cromwell is still in Wolsey's service in 1529 when the Cardinal falls out of favour with King Henry VIII because he failed to arrange an annulment of the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Cromwell manages to buy the Cardinal a little time before everything the Cardinal owns is repossessed and given to Henry's mistress, Anne Boleyn. Cromwell subsequently decides to relocate the Cardinal and his entourage to a second home in Esher, and the Cardinal moves on to York.
Though he knows the Cardinal is doomed, Cromwell begins negotiations on his behalf with the King. During his visits, he meets the recently widowed Mary Boleyn, Anne's elder sister, and is intrigued by her. Cromwell is eventually summoned to meet Anne and finds Henry's loyalty to her unfathomable.
Continuing to gain favour with both the King and Anne, Cromwell is disturbed by Wolsey's activities in York but is shocked when he learns that the Cardinal has been recalled to London to face treason charges and has died on the way. Cromwell mourns his death and vows to take vengeance on those involved in his downfall. Despite his known loyalty to Wolsey, Cromwell retains his favoured status with the King and is sworn into the King's council after interpreting one of Henry's nightmares about his deceased elder brother as a symbol that Henry should govern with the blessing of his late father and brother.
Cromwell continues to advise Anne and works towards her ascent to Queen, hoping he will rise too. Just as the wedding appears imminent, Henry Percy, a former lover of Anne's, declares that he is her legal husband and still loves her. Cromwell visits Percy on Anne's behalf and threatens him into silence, securing his position as a favourite in the Howard household.
King Henry travels to France for a successful conference with the French. Finally, secure in her position, Anne can marry Henry privately and consummate their relationship. She quickly becomes pregnant, and Henry has her crowned Queen in a ceremony that Cromwell perfectly organises.
Historical background
Born to a working-class family of no position or name, Cromwell became the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, adviser to the King. He survived Wolsey's fall from grace to eventually become the most powerful of Henry's ministers. In that role, he observed turning points in English history, as Henry asserted his authority to declare his marriage annulled from Catherine of Aragon, married Anne Boleyn, broke from Rome, established the independence of the Church of England, and called for the dissolution of the monasteries.
The novel is a re-envisioning of historical and literary records; in Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons Cromwell is portrayed as the calculating, unprincipled opposite of Thomas More's honour and decency. Mantel's novel offers an alternative to that portrayal, an intimate portrait of Cromwell as a tolerant, pragmatic, and talented man attempting to serve King, country, and family amid the political machinations of Henry's court and the religious upheavals of the Reformation, in contrast to More's viciously punitive adherence to the old Roman Catholic order that Henry is sweeping away.
Process
Mantel said she spent five years researching and writing the book, trying to match her fiction to the historical record.[6] To avoid contradicting history she created a card catalogue, organised 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.
In an interview with The Guardian, Mantel stated her aim to place the reader in "that time and that place, putting you into Henry's entourage. The essence of the thing is not to judge with hindsight, not to pass judgment from the lofty perch of the 21st century when we know what happened. It's to be there with them in that hunting party at Wolf Hall, moving forward with imperfect information and perhaps wrong expectations, but in any case, moving forward into a future that is not pre-determined but where chance and hazard will play a terrific role."[7]
Characters
Wolf Hall includes a large cast of fictionalised historical persons. In addition to those already mentioned, prominent characters include:
The title comes from the name of the Seymour family seat at Wolfhall or Wulfhall in Wiltshire; the title's allusion to the old Latin saying Homo homini lupus ("Man is wolf to man") serves as a constant reminder of the dangerously opportunistic nature of the world through which Cromwell navigates.[8]
Reception
Critical reception
Wolf Hall received generally positive reviews from critics.[9][10] On The Omnivore, based on British press, the book received an "omniscore" of 4.5 out of 5.[11] According to Book Marks, the book received, based on primarily American publications, "rave" consensus, based on eleven critic reviews: seven "rave" and four "positive".[12]Culture Critic assessed it an aggregated critic score of 82%,[13][14] while The BookScore assessed it an aggregated critic score of 9.0/10 based on an accumulation of British and American press reviews.[15] The book received a 80% from The Lit Review based on twenty-two critic reviews.[16] In January/February 2010 issue of Bookmarks, the book received 4 out of 5 stars, with a summary saying, "Wolf Hall offers a fascinating and expertly researched look at a man famously villainised in the play and film A Man for All Seasons and Showtimes's more recent bodice-ripping series The Tudors".[17] On BookBrowse, the book received 5 out of 5 stars from "Critics' Consensus" and for the media reviews on a rating scale out of five: The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, The Times, The Washington Post, and Library Journal reviews under five and The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly reviews under four.[18] Globally, the work was received generally well (with rating assessments based on the critic reviews from Complete Review ranging from scores such as B+) with Complete Review saying on the review consensus, "Very positive – and see it as a possible breakout book for her".[19]
In The Guardian, Christopher Tayler wrote "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."[20]
Susan Bassnett, in Times Higher Education, wrote in a rare negative review, "dreadfully badly written... Mantel just wrote and wrote and wrote. I have yet to meet anyone outside the Booker panel who managed to get to the end of this tedious tome. God forbid there might be a sequel, which I fear is on the horizon."[21]
In The Observer, Olivia Laing wrote, "Over two decades, she has gained a reputation as an elegant anatomiser of malice 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 bleak and unconsoling humour. That supple movement between laughter and horror makes this rich pageant of Tudor life her most humane and bewitching novel."[22]
Vanora Bennett in The Times wrote, "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."[23]
Controversy over historical accuracy
In the Washington Post, Gregory Wolfe notes
"One of her stated goals in writing Wolf Hall was to take on Robert Bolt's 1954 stage play, A Man for All Seasons ", which lauded Thomas More.[24] Furthermore, "Critics have pointed out that the author’s liberties with the historical record demonstrate a clear ideological bias. Mantel was raised Catholic but is now a vocal critic of that church, which she has said 'is not an institution for respectable people'."[25]
Wolfe cites historians:
(atheist[26]) David Starkey: that there is "not a scrap of evidence" for the narrative and describing the plot as "total fiction",
(Jewish[27]) Simon Schama: "the documents shouted to high heaven that Thomas Cromwell was, in fact, a detestably self-serving, bullying monster who perfected state terror in England, cooked the evidence, and extracted confessions by torture," and
(Catholic[28]) Eamon Duffy who elsewhere "despises Cromwell. He is mystified by his makeover in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall from a thuggish, ruthless commoner to a thoughtful, sensitive figure."[29]
Neo-conservative Catholic author George Weigel described the novels as "bad history" but cited their success as proof that "that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable bigotry in elite circles in the Anglosphere." He wrote, "Protestant anti-Catholicism in the U.K. has long since been superseded by secular anti-Catholicism, but the cultural afterburn remains virtually identical: to the Hillary Mantels of 21st-century Britain, Catholicism is retrograde, priggish, obsessive, fanatical, and, well, un-English."[30]
Awards and lists
The book continued to receive acclaim among many critics' lists: according to The Greatest Books, a site that aggregates book lists, it is "The 213th greatest book of all time".[31] A poll of literary experts by the Independent Bath Literature Festival voted Wolf Hall the greatest novel from 1995 to 2015.[32] It also ranked third in a BBC Culture poll of the best novels since 2000.[33] In 2019, The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century ranked Wolf Hall first.[34]
Winner – 2009 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".[36]
Producers Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel brought the London productions of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, starring Ben Miles as Thomas Cromwell; Lydia Leonard as Anne Boleyn; Lucy Briers as Catherine of Aragon; and Nathaniel Parker as Henry VIII, to Broadway'sWinter Garden Theatre[43] in March 2015 for a 15-week run. The double-bill has been re-titled Wolf Hall, Parts 1 and 2 for American audiences.[44] The play was nominated for eight Tony Awards, including Best Play.
In 2012, the BBC announced it would adapt Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies for BBC Two, for broadcast in 2015.[45] On 8 March 2013, the BBC announced Mark Rylance had been cast as Thomas Cromwell.[46] The first episode was broadcast in the United States on PBS's Masterpiece on 5 April 2015.[47] In June 2015, Amazon announced exclusive rights to stream Masterpiece programmes, including Wolf Hall, on Amazon Prime.[48] After suffering an extensive delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the second series adapting the third book, The Mirror and the Light, was filmed between November 2023 and April 2024 [49] and aired in the UK on 10 November 2024.[50]
Translations
Dutch: Wolf Hall. Translated by Ine Willems. Amsterdam: Signatuur. 1st September 2010. ISBN9789056723620.
Portuguese: Wolf Hall. Translated by Beatriz Sequeira. São Paulo: Civilização. 9th April 2010. ISBN9789722631044.
Italian: Wolf Hall. Translated by Giuseppina Oneto. Rome: Fazi. 14th January 2011. ISBN9788864111957.
Finnish: Susipalatsi. Translated by Kaisa Sivenius. Helsinki: Teos. 21st April 2011. ISBN9789518513349.
German: Wölfe, lit. 'Wolves'. Translated by Christiane Trabant. Cologne: DuMont. 2nd April 2012. ISBN9783832161934.
Polish: W komnatach Wolf Hall, lit. 'In the Chambers of Wolf Hall'. Translated by Urszula Gardner. Katowice: Sonia Draga. 15th May 2013. ISBN9788375087956.
Vietnamese: Lâu Đài Sói. Translated by Nguyễn Chí Hoan. Hanoi: Nhã Nam. 9th September 2016. ISBN9786046984733.
