ABSTRACT
An obese, lascivious, and cantankerous old man: this perception of Henry VIII has come down through the centuries in popular culture. Many academic historians, such as Lacey Baldwin Smith, have cemented this negative perception of Great Harry in the past fifty years.1 Known throughout history as the king who started the English Reformation by severing ties with Rome and as the man with six wives, two of whom he had executed, Henry VIII’s personality has often appeared to be that of a one-dimensional power-hungry, lustful megalomaniac. Historians have understood for a long time, though, that Henry was much more complex, and in the late twentieth century, Margaret George decided to work on rehabilitating the character of Henry for a popular audience with her fictional work The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers.2 George’s Autobiography was her first novel, and she wrote it to present a unique picture of Henry VIII. A plethora of novels have been published on the period since Margaret George’s book, from works by C. J. Sansom, Philippa Gregory, and Alison Weir to the new Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, but George’s work still retains currency today. George’s work is the only one that imagines Henry’s own thoughts and emotions from his boyhood to his death, giving a thorough psychological study of the great king. She places her account, though, within a largely accurate historical reality. In the novel, she demonstrates how the king’s experiences helped him to transform himself from an innocent boy, a second son who she says was prepared for a religious career, into the king who began the English Reformation and gained infamy as a result of his marital exploits. She takes Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s seventeenth-century claim that Henry VII had
originally planned to send his second son to the priesthood in order use religion as a basis for much of Henry’s personality.3 In The Autobiography, George creates a bridge between fiction and history that allows for the painting of a vivid and multi-dimensional Henry VIII. She also tells his story from multiple perspectives, adding to the depth of the character of the king.4 Although many twentieth-century historians have presented fairly negative views of the king, by looking at Henry through both his own fictional voice and through the fictional eyes of his historically real fool, Will Somers, Margaret George presents a generally sympathetic view of Henry VIII, to whom she gives great agency over the actions that defined his reign.
