Exclusive interview with author Anna Easter Smith and review of her new novel Royal Mistress about King Edward IV mistress Jane Shore
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“The discovery of Richard III’s bones has to be the most momentous event in the writing of any of my books about the Yorks,” says Royal Mistress author Anna Easter Smith. “I have steeped myself in Richard’s story since my early twenties, and to know that we finally have found his remains was an amazing piece of serendipity for me.”
Richard III was the last Plantagenet king of England, depicted by Shakespeare as a hunchback who murdered two princes in the Tower of London. Crying out, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Richard III was killed defending his crown at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, ending The Wars of the Roses civil war between the houses of York and Tudor and ushering in the Tudor era of King Henry VII became king.
Royal Mistress is well worth reading, especially if you like Jean Plaidy’s the Goldsmiths’s Wife, also about Jane Shore. Smith has new details Plaidy’s book is missing. Royal Mistress is told from Jane Shore’s point of view. The details and dialog drop you right into the story. Jane is an intelligent woman who must use her wits and wiles to survive. Smith’s research is always very detailed, and you learn much as you read her novels.
Jane Lambert is still unmarried at twenty-two. Her silk merchant father finally finds her a match, and she’s married off. Her new husband is William Shore, a silk merchant like her father, and who is old, dull and not interested in having children. Jane flirts with Will Hastings, who is the king’s man. Will knows what King Edward IV looks for in a mistress. Will knows Edward will find her irresistible.
“I found out during the writing of my second book that the maiden name of my paternal grandmother, which my siblings and I always thought was Cave, was actually York,” says Smith. “No wonder I was so drawn to write about this medieval family.”
Smith has an extensive library about the Wars of the Roses and its characters. Smith took a three-week trip to walk many of the City of London’s streets, including the Square Mile, the area that was enclosed by the medieval wall.
Smith has authored four other novels; A Rose for the Crown tells Richard III’s story through the eyes of a woman who might have been his mistress. Daughter of York follows Richard’s sister from Edward IV’s court to a marriage to the powerful Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold. The King’s Grace, which unfolds after the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and seeks to unravel the mystery of the pretender to the crown, Perkin Warbeck. And the first chronologically, but last to be published, Queen By Right, starts the York story from the beginning with Cecily Neville as protagonist.
The King’s Grace won the Romantic Times Book Review for Best Historical Biography in 2010. Queen By Right was nominated by the same publication for Best Historical Novel in 2011. Smith says she’s working on a new book proposal, but will first make sure Royal Mistress gets a royal launch in May.
Anna Easter Smith lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She was born in Hampshire, spent her childhood in Egypt, and in her boarding school years and early twenties she lived in Surrey.
Royal Mistress: A Novel by Anne Easter Smith. Trade Paperback, 512 pages, Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (May 7, 2013). Language: English, ISBN: 9781451648621 $16.00
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