#Jean Plaidy

[period-dramallama]

Jean Plaidy covers are so lovely and for WHAT

[shinyasahalo]

Writing a fem character as a villain by making her abusive toward her children, have her obsess over a man, and be vain about her appearance, makes her a boring villainess.

[unanchored-ship]

rereading Mary's death scene in Plaidy and Bowen to torture myself (and William) on purpose 👍👍

oh and after reading all the Plaidy books with M&W in them (except for Courting Her Highness, if they appear) I deem Royal Sisters the most well written imo because obv PLAIDY UNFUCKEFIED (tumblr counts that as a word ashfdaugh) WILLIAM and the conflicting views between the two sisters is very interesting! And the thing is she wrote well of William in this book but in The Queen's Devotion, which was published many years later, she fucked him up again (and I deem William the coldest in Queens Devotion out of all her books) but wehh i enjoy reading her stuff most of the time anyway

I also gotta say Plaidy probably took many liberties and threw in some most likely fictional characters//misnamed actual people//used people who had nothing to do with what she made them do.

For example she gave Shrewsbury a mistress by the name of Ms. Lundy who was supposedly Robert Lundy(an infamous traitor)'s daughter, but I can scarcely find info on her(if she exists, i could only find a daughter named Aramintha who was not associated with Shrewsbury at all). Oh and she said Mary had some sorta-maybe-romantic feelings for Shrewsbury. WHich im pretty sure she made up because she wanted to add more drama and romance into the story. Kinda like what she maybe did to Danby in The Loves of Charles II and some others I have noticed throughout her books so yeah I don't think she intended to make these books as historically accurate as possible BUUUT she keeps most of the peeps in character so she could've at least done the same for william and a few others!!

oops these books are keeping me up at night sorry for dumping my thoughts here

[m-andrade-87]

RECOMENDACIONES PARA EL #LEOAUTORASOCT 2024

Hola mis pequeños dragones, un año más os traigo algunas recomendaciones de libros escritos por mujeres para celebrar el mes de las autoras, y si, ya sé que hoy no es el día habitual de publicación, pero como ya dije en X (antiguo Twitter) y habréis podido comprobar este mes la celebración de Halloween (ya sabéis que la fiesta se celebra durante todo el mes en el blog) cae en jueves por lo que…

[angelfall33]

Mi Opinión: Madame Du Barry; Amante Real – Jean Plaidy 

[myprinceandprincessofwalesblog]

I used to collect Jean Plaidy books as I love Tudor history I found St Thomas Eve and The Royal Road to Forthingay in a charity shop and loved them then I started finding other ones and was thrilled to find Murder Most Royal as I had been dying to find that one, at first all of the ones I had were the 1970s Pan style ones then when I actively began collecting I found some of the older ones were a different style which I wasn't too happy with as I wanted them all too match  but hey it meant i had the book so...and then others I could only find in hardback then they started reprinting them and I thought great it will take a while but I can start re-buying them so I will have a matching collection but NO they have only reprinted certain titles so I would still have gaps...so frustrating 

think I have slight OCD in regards to having to have things like this matching as I have all my books in the bookcase just now and it really bugs me they are all different styles lol 

I know it wont happen but would love for them to reprint them in the old 70s style or at least reprint them all and not just certain ones 

Jean Plaidy paperback details, 1970s.

[fideidefenswhore]

Your thoughts on the prolific author Jean Plaidy? Did you read any of her books? Do you have favorite/most hated? What do you think about her view on the Tudors, Boleyn's, Yorks, Stuarts, Hapsburgs, etc?

I have found them very dull, paint by the numbers, etc. Honestly I find most of the novels from that era of that era that way, though, it's part of why I can't stand Weir's, hers just feel like a complete emulation of Norah Loft's which are also that way for me. I feel like newer authors of the genre are more likely to take risks, even if all their creative decisions are not my favorite, I can respect that (Suzannah Dunn, Christopher Rae, etc).

To be more specific, as a Henry VIII Enjoyer, these novels miss the mark for me. He's always very one-dimensional, sadistic satyr meets bluff hail-fellow-well-met, extremely pliable and easy to manipulate; it's just very boring and not satisfying to read.

[zippocreed501]

AUTHOR EXTRAORDINAIRE

'Respect your characters, even the ­minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's.'

'Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I've got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish–they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.'

'Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . .'

'. . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.'

Author Extraordinaire Sarah Waters

[celebrateeachnewday]

Artist Jane Crowther

My 2024 Booklist

Found in a Bookshop by Stephanie Butland The Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods The Last List of Mabel Beaumont by Laura Pearson The Color Purple by Alice Walker Maskerade by Terry Pratchet (#18 of Discworld) The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey The Rainbow Trail by Zane Grey The Great Gatzby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Coraline by Neil Gaiman The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L'Engle Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones Murder Most Royal by Jean Plaidy A Man Called Peter by Catherine Marshall

[bforbetterthanyou]

I hate when I'm trying to find good historical fiction centered around the wives and I have to go through all the Allison Weir novels to find decent stuff

On a semi-related note, do you have any recommendations?

Yeah, for some reason the Tudor period attracts a lot of trash (both fiction and, frankly, non-fiction). I honestly have no idea why this is. I don’t know maybe because I’m American so I didn’t learn about the Tudors in school growing up (in the World History class I was required to take in high school our textbook had a single paragraph that mentioned Henry VIII and the Reformation and then Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada: even when we studied Shakespeare we only read his plays as works of literature and learned nothing whatsoever about the time period he lived—for the longest time I actually didn’t know that Shakespeare lived in the Tudor period)…so maybe it has something to do with how the Tudors is taught in British schools (from what I’ve heard, apparently history in British schools is basically just Romans, Tudors, Nazis)

If you’re looking at fiction about the wives, specifically…shockingly there actually isn’t that much.

Jean Plaidy is always a good way to go. All of her novels were published in the 40s and 50s and they can be a bit overly romantic at times but they’re pre-when Tudor fiction started to get really trashy. The upcoming film Firebrand is based on a novel called Queen’s Gambit. I haven’t actually read the novel, but it’s one of the few that focuses on Kathryn Parr.

There are others not directly about the wives but that feature them like Adrienne Dillard’s The Raven’s Widow which is about Jane Boleyn post-May 1536.

Dead Queen’s Club is underrated.

Here are some others that are on my list (but I haven’t actually read them yet so can’t attest to their quality):

Anne & Henry by Dawn Ius

Anne Boleyn by Evelyn Anthony

The Kiss of the Concubine by Judith Arnopp

[overgrown-ruins]

Book Sale

I’ll be moving shorty and will need to find homes for the following list of books (under the cut).

If you are interested in any of these titles, or anything else I am planning to rehome (board games, dvds, stationary, home goods, etc.), either reply to this post or send me a message.

All items will be shipped from the UK.

Name your price! Minimum is the cost of shipping. Payment can be made via paypal.

Fiction, Classics

Une Vie - Guy de Maupassant [text in French; 1988, J’ai Lu ed.]

The Mabinogion – trans. by Gwyn Jones & Thomas Jones [1974, Everyman’s Library ed.]

The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie [2001, Agatha Christie Signature ed.]

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand [Penguin Modern Classics ed.; NEW]

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte [2009, Oxford World’s Classics; annotated]

Gothic Tales – Arthur Conan Doyle [2018, Oxford World’s Classics]

Fiction, Modern

The Vampire Lestat (1986 paperback) Anne Rice

The Lady in the Tower (2003 paperback) Jean Plaidy

The Fallen Blade (2011 paperback) Jon Courtenay Grimwood

The North Water (2016 paperback) Ian McGuire

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free (2019 paperback) Andrew Miller [NEW]

The Midnight Library (2020 hardback) Matt Haig

Science

Chemistry3 2nd ed.  (2013) Burrows et al. [annotated]

The Periodic Table (2017) Tom Jackson

What’s that Bird? (2016) Rob Hume [UK bird pocket id guide]

Philosophy

The Problem of Knowledge (1988 reprint) A.J. Ayer

Language, Truth and Logic (1990 reprint) A.J. Ayer

New Age

Horoscopes: Your Daily Fate and Fortune (1987)

The Witch’s Shield (2010) Christopher Penczak [NEW; with CD]

The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology (2011) April Elliott Kent

The Kitchen Witch (2011) Soraya

Making Magic (2019) Briana Saussy [NEW]

Paganism in Depth (2019) John Beckett [NEW]

And breathe… (2020) Sarah Rudell Beach [NEW]

Misc. Non-Fiction

A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (2007) Kate L. Turabian

Mug Cakes (2014) Mima Sinclair [NEW]

Learn to knit block by block (2018) Che Lam [NEW]

Find out What Your Cat is Really Thinking (2018) Trevor Warner [NEW]

Speak Welsh (2019 reprint) John Jones [NEW]

[period-dramallama]

I do owe Jean Plaidy something of an apology, I posted a long while back about her rushing her historical fiction books by writing so many. It seems her publisher required 2 Jean Plaidy novels and 1 Victoria Holt novel (gothic fiction) every year. No wonder it was microwaved history. Jean Plaidy novels were probably the wikipedia summary before Wikipedia summaries were a thing.

Honestly a false economy if you ask me. Better wait for something nuanced and researched than churn out forgettable historical fiction that will never be reread.

[brokenbluebouquet]

George Villiers 1st Duke of Buckingham in Fiction - a partial summary

CW: discussions of biphobia and homophobia in historical fiction and current historiography.

Feeling both inspired and outraged in equal measure by the upcoming Mary&George series, and having been fascinated with this remarkable man since forever, I have decided to post this partial overview of portrayals of George in fiction. The ones in bold are the ones I have read. Feel free to add to the list.

The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas 

The Honey and The Sting, Elizabeth Freemantle 

My Queen My Love, E.M Vidal 

Cavalier Queen, Fiona Mountain 

The Dangerous Kingdom Of Love, Neil Blackmore 

The Fallen Angel, Tracy Borman

Wife Of Great Buckingham, Hilda Lewis

Darling Of Kings, P J Womack

The Queens Dwarf, Ella March Chase

The Smallest Man, Frances Owen

The Spanish Match, Brennan Purcell

Captain Alatriste, Arturo Pérez-Reverte

The Cardinal and The Queen, Evelyn Anthony 

Earthly Joys, Philippa Gregory

Myself My Enemy, Jean Plaidy

Charles The King, Evelyn Anthony 

The Young And Lonely King, Jane Lane

The Fortunes Of Nigel, Walter Scott 

The Crowned Lovers, E Barrington

The Minion, Raphael Sabiniti 

The Murder In The Tower, Jean Plaidy 

A Net For Small Fishes, Lucy Jago 

The Arm and the Darkness, Taylor Caldwell

Les Gloires et les perils (?), Robert Merle

And a few I’m not so sure about where George is mentioned in passing: . 

Viper Wine, Hermionie Eyre

John Saturnalls Feast, Lawrence Norfolk 

Rebels and traitors, Lindsay Davis

The Assassin, Ronald Blythe 

Some observations, in no particular order:

Novels set mostly in James reign often have George as a rival to Robert Carr and will attempt to foreshadow how much worse he will be compared to Carr.

The ones that feature Henrietta Maria as Protagonist or at least POV character, where George is normally a baddie trying to sabotage HM and Charles I's relationship, and his death is often portrayed as some sort of salvation for HM. In these books George will often be lamed for things which were IRL Charles's fault such as the expulsion of HMs French household in 1626.

Three Musketeers is practically a category in its own right due to all the film/tv adaptions but has had relatively few clones or imitators in English which is something of a surprise

George is only a protagonist in one of these books (Darling of Kings, P J Womack) in the rest he's a cameo or a villain

Rumours that I suspect authors know is nonsense are repeated verbatim such as Tracy Borman's baseless speculation about G offing the Manners brothers, king James, and his rumoured involvement with the occult.

Georges relationships with James and Charles respectively are mentioned but not meaningfully explored. neither are any other personal relationships he had.

The insights and shifts in terms of post 1970s revisionist and post revisionist scholarship esp. Roger Lockyer's bio of George have not found their way into any fiction set in this era. Georges capability as an administrator and manager of patronage is more often than not totally absent.

the general view of George and why he's often shown in such a negative light is pretty much "well, he was willing to god knows what with that dirty old man James; who knows what other depravities he was capable of" and its female authors who really seem to lean into this, which I find fascinating and disturbing.

EDIT (can’t believe I forgot this) George’s murder in 1628 is always the result of some sort of aristocratic conspiracy rather than the act of terrorism it was IRL. I do get why authors do this - the amount of world building and foreshadowing needed to make it seem plausible rather than random in universe. However making it the result of personal grudge rather than ideological violence detracts from why it was so shocking and important.

[unanchored-ship]

i just realized that despite drawing so many people surrounding her I HAVE NOT DRAWN A HIGH QUALITY PIC OF MARY AT ALL. There's like three scribbled scenes of her in my animation storyboard but THATS IT oh my god

[m-andrade-87]

LECTURAS Y PELÍCULAS VARIAS

Hola mis pequeños dragones, hoy, bajo un título tan genérico, os traigo un pequeño resumen de algunas cosas que he estado viendo y leyendo durante los últimos días y que, si bien no voy a dedicarle una entrada como tal, si quería hablar un poco sobre estas cosillas. Como siempre espero que alguna de estas cosas os resulte interesante. Empezamos BBC SIX WIVES WITH LUCY WORSLEY En este primer…

[acrossthewavesoftime]

They took it down!

After 6 or so emails written to Amazon via two of their e-mail addresses, several of them being returned to me with a notice simply telling me I would have to log in to file a report (I don't use Amazon, by the way), Amazon appear to have taken my complaint seriously.

Their handling of the issue by never actually replying and only someone repeatedly hitting a button to send me two variations of the same standard message about logging into my account/them being unable to identify my account each time I tried to contact them (I could tell since as soon as I started directly addressing the name of the person supposedly handling my complaint, they started leaving the field blank and accidentally copied the salutation in a second time) on one of the addresses was far from friendly, but apparently my persistence was rewarded with swift removal.

However, Plush Books, the alleged publisher of many if not potentially all of the works affected, are still allowed to continue to operate on Amazon and their 20+-page catalogue still features a few titles with covers suggesting these might be other plagiarised fan works.

If you're an author of fanfiction or original fiction published on sites such as Fanfiction.net or Archives of Our Own and want to check whether your work has been plagiarised, a lovely, supportive community of fannish creators has created this spreadsheet (expanding) with all works that have been identified so far.

Even FicLab, whose software was used to download the stories and put them into a publishable format, have put out a statement and help guide for affected authors, which you can find here. I had contacted them, too, and was surprised by the friendly and helpful message I received.

It is sad that there are people out there who try to make money off of the labours of love of others (not to speak it being illegal to sell fanfiction, anyway).

But while this find did rock my already shaken faith in humanity, my heart was warmed by the fannish community looking out for each other, regardless of interests or fandom. Without a lovely person on AO3 who, aware of the mass-plagiarism, ran my story through the list because they apparently liked it so much they remembered it and then sent me the kindest long message explaining the matter at hand, I would never have known. I have never before had been in contact with this user, nor have they ever commented on my stories. And then there are all the wonderful people who helped create and edit the spreadsheet or informed others via social media.

This goes to show that perhaps, there is yet a glimmer of hope for humanity, that there are people with good intentions who help and look out for each other- thank you to all of you.

In order to shield myself from future nasty surprises, I have however deleted 2 original works from my AO3 account. I don't want to find out I've authored a, as the cover claimed, "number one best selling novel" by chance yet again.

My anxiety at finding this out has finally dissolved, though I am still angry at the person or persons behind Plush Books for hurting fannish authors and trying to make money off other people's intellectual property.

The only thing I am a bit disappointed about is that now the story is taken down, you can no longer look it up on Amazon, where it was placed just above a book by Jean Plaidy with a similar title...

So I just learned thanks to a helpful fellow user that someone has taken a story from my old, barely active AO3 account and is selling it as an eBook on Amazon.

Please, fellow authors both active and former, check your works for similar copyright infringements and report them.