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This is really less a love story about John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford than it is a life story of Katherine herself, complete with a large cast of major and minor players. The course of their affair is charted to a degree by a series of grants in registers, although the registers are incomplete so they do not provide us with a full picture. Do, however, go expecting the story to suck you right in and sweep you along, and do go expecting to keep your pillow-sharer awake from the fanning of turning pages. It's based on the true story of the 14th-century love affair between Katherine de Roet and John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. First published in 1954, when it was branded as “obscene and evil” by critics, it has never been out of print, and made the top hundred favourite books in the BBC’s The Big Read in 2003.
Katherine - Kindle edition by Seton, Anya. Literature
With Katherine already married, the love between her and John persists throughout the decades, despite the war and turmoil that surrounds them at the time.
Relevant events in the lives of the main characters, political upheaval, they’re just glossed over and not properly explained. It is commonly regarded as a prime example of historical fiction and has been continuously in print since its publication date.
Katherine - Anya Seton - Google Books
In a poll conducted in the 1990s by Ladies' Home Journal, the novel ranked among the top-ten all-time best love stories.
Katherine tells the true story of Katherine de Roet, born the daughter of a minor Flemish herald, later knight. I bought Katherine by Anya Seton a couple of years ago, way back when I first decided to read by way through the BBC Top 100.
Review: Katherine - Anya Seton - The Literary Edit Review: Katherine - Anya Seton - The Literary Edit
Her books have reached the top of many reader’s polls, as she is regarded as one of the leading pioneers within her genre.Nearly everything about her is controversial: her ancestry, the important dates in her life, the number of children she bore, her character, what she looked like, and – above all – her relationship with her princely lover. We also get to meet characters such as John Chaucer (married to Katherine's sister) and the mystic Nun, St Julian. She was generously treated by Richard II, notwithstanding his seizure of the Lancastrian estates, and by his successor, John’s heir, now Henry IV, who, after he had deposed Richard and usurped the throne in 1399, referred to Katherine as “the King’s mother” in official documents.
Katherine by Anya Seton, First Edition - AbeBooks Katherine by Anya Seton, First Edition - AbeBooks
While her older sister Phillipa gained a position in the royal court, Katherine through her beauty and charm, beguiled the powerful nobleman John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster, father of Henry IV, and ancestor of most of today's royal family, through his eventual marriage to Katherine, his long time paramour.
Born commoners, Katherine and her older sister Philippa, who married Geoffrey Chaucer, were left poor, and while Philippa obtained a position in the household of the Queen, wife to King Edward III of England, Katherine was sent to a convent.
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