JANE BOLEYN: THE INFAMOUS LADY ROCHFORD PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Julia Fox | 416 pages | 02 Apr 2009 | Orion Publishing Co | 9780753823866 | English | London, United Kingdom Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford by Julia Fox Unfortunately, there was apparently little to unearth. In over pages, Jane is quoted exactly Julia Fox. As powerful men and women around her became victims of Henry's ruthless and absolute power, including her own husband and sister-in-law, Queen Anne Boleyn, Jane's allegience to the volatile monarchy was sustained and rewarded. But the price for her loyalty would eventually be her undoing and the ruination of her name. For centuries, little beyond rumor and scandal has been associated with "the infamous Lady Rochford. Born to aristocratic parents in the English countryside, young Jane Parker found a suitable match in George Boleyn, brother to Anne, the woman who would eventually be the touchstone of England's greatest political and religious crisis. Although to be fair the issue with Fox is the complete lack of sources, not her critical evaluation of them and their biases and reliability which is frequently the problem with other 'historians' e. So overall I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it - but treat it like a Philippa Gregory novel rather than researched and verified 'history'. Aug 27, Maggie rated it it was ok. However, Jane herself appears precious little in this account. This is not so much a biography of Jane as a retelling of the rise and fall of the Boleyn and connected families through the lens of what Jane may or may not have possibly seen whilst at court. Again, this is history that reads more like a novel, so I was often unsure as to what was documented fact and what was a probably but unconfirmed situation. Jane herself appears, briefly and tantalizingly, towards the end of the book when Fox goes into a discussion of how Jane secured her financial situation following the downfall of George. I appreciate that Fox might not have had much primary source material to work with that pertained specifically to Jane, but I still felt her absence throughout the entire work. I continued on hoping that Fox would untangle the question as to why Jane allegedly betrayed the Boleyns and yet aided and abetted Katherine Howard in her scandalous end. Again, Fox touches on this only at the very end of the work, though the discussion of how history came to portray Jane is an admirable piece of work. I just wish she had given the rest of the book a similar treatment. Jun 27, Caroline rated it it was ok Shelves: nonfiction , prose , audio , library. I've been trying to reconstruct the process by which this book was published, and I've come to the conclusion that a few years ago, somebody was buying everything with the name "Boleyn" in it. There's still some worthwhile material here -- the first half of the book is a decent enough account of Anne Boleyn's rise and fall, and since the author clearly has more to say about Anne than about her sister in law, I kind of wish she'd written that book, or one about the lives of ladies-in- waiting in general, or basically any focus but this! May 30, Iset rated it really liked it Shelves: renaissance-agetoce-fact. Although there is no disputing that Jane Parker was an accessory to the adultery of Queen Catherine Howard, there is actually no evidence to suggest that she was involved in the downfall of the Boleyns: the aforementioned witness was never named and only identified, by Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, as an unnamed lady, and could well have been the Countess of Worcester whose public and out-of-hand argument with her brother had provided some hearsay that had fuelled the invented charges, or Lady Wingfield. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that Jane remained loyal to the family she had married into, writing to her imprisoned husband and pleading for clemency. The writing style is wonderfully smooth, the narrative style flowing and engaging. Indeed, Fox paints a real picture of events, and gets rather creatively imaginative on that front — to the point where I found myself genuinely enjoying the remarkably evocative portrait being painted, but I wonder whether such style would be considered professional for an academic non-fiction history. I had to caution my enthusiasm for the book as a result. Also, Fox unfortunately gets a pretty big fact wrong, which always sets me on my guard when reading histories. This is a pretty big boo-boo, although I have seen worse. The problem is that when a non-fiction history author makes a mistake this big, one has to question how accurate the rest of the book, and their other works, are. Whilst it is clear that the evidence is so patchy that we cannot definitively exonerate Jane, Fox points out that there is simply no evidence to suggest her involvement, and that later historians and biographers who created the myth of Jane as scapegoat did so based on unreliable or non-existent sources — unless they had access to unknown sources that are no longer available to us in the modern age. Moreover, Fox points out that there would have been no logic in Jane desiring to bring down her own husband and impoverish herself — there would have been other options available to her and George had their marriage been unhappy, such as separation, and there is an entire lack of evidence to suggest that it was unhappy. I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Julia Barrie. Barrie was a mixed bag as a narrator. I took to her immediately: generally speaking, Barrie has a smooth and engaging voice which really brings the fluid, evocative writing to life. However, her voices whenever quoting are somewhat put on, and she persistently mispronounced certain names and words. All in all, a couple of minor negatives, but a worthy addition to my bookshelves and an important historical work. Mar 27, Cynda rated it really liked it Shelves: women , history , read , biography-or-memior. So many other reviewers have pointed out that Julia Fox has not written so much about Jane Boleyn as much as around Jane Boleyn. While they are right in their assessment, the same assessment would be made of anyone's writing of Jane Boleyn. Jane Boleyn was a woman during a time when even queens were little more than brood mares. Queens were still being placed in nunneries when kings got tired of them or when they would not bear sons. Just a century before, Queen Isabella of Arragon learned as an So many other reviewers have pointed out that Julia Fox has not written so much about Jane Boleyn as much as around Jane Boleyn. So just around the s do we even start to have letters from queens to ambassadors and their family members. Jane Boleyn was no queen. No one cared what some lady-in-waiting had to say. We are lucky that we have what we have. After George, Jane's husband, dies, Jane makes financial and land deals on her on as a widow and land-holder. So we do know what residences she had, what places she sometimes went to to get away from court. In addition to the money and land and marriage contracts, we have royal protocol. Due to to protocol, Julia Fox can make some good assumptions based upon what was happening for the queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. And in turn Fox was able to make good surmised about what Jane Boleyn was doing. The Big Thing. Because Fox has done the best historical research possible We know Jane Boleyn to be human and not a she-monster. Fox has set out to determine Jane's character and her part in the downfall of her husband and sister-in-law. When examiners started trying to find smut against Anne, Jane made a pragmatic decision to reveal Anne saying something against the king. This bit of information was stretched out to the very furthest length which led to accusations of incest between Anne and George. Treasonous act for queen to bed someone else and for someone else to bed queen. And then add incest for good measure. Now Henry can may his 3rd queen and free up some land and titles for new wife's family. Double Whammy. This clarification gives a better overall historical picture of how Anne Boleyn really fell and cleared up the name of Jane Boleyn. It never sat right with me why Jane Parker Boleyn would have to be so mean. Now I better understand. Thank you. Nov 24, Shawn Thrasher rated it did not like it. This book is full of little stinging bugs that fly out and bite the reader all the time. Little annoyances. Let's start with this one: "When she attended the Field of Cloth of Gold, Jane had wandered through the Great Hall of Henry's temporary palace at Guisnes, spellbound by what she had seen. According to the notes for Chapter 2, Fox guesses that Mistress Parker from the records present with the English court at the Field of Cloth of Gold is indeed Jane Par This book is full of little stinging bugs that fly out and bite the reader all the time. I'm good with the guessing about the identity of Mistress Parker; I think the records come close enough to proving this. And maybe Fox can even guess that Jane wandered through the Great Hall.