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Author

Antonia Fraser

7 fiction · 14 non-fiction

Antonia Fraser is a British historian, biographer and novelist whose work has brought royal, political and social history to a wide general readership. Her major historical books include Mary Queen of Scots, King Charles II, Cromwell: Our Chief of Men, The Wives of Henry VIII, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, The Gunpowder Plot, The Weaker Vessel and The King and the Catholics. Fraser is particularly associated with biographies of powerful or politically constrained women, but her studies also examine monarchy, religion, marriage and the operation of authority from the Tudor period to the nineteenth century.

Fraser’s fiction is chiefly represented by the Jemima Shore detective novels rather than conventional historical novels, so she belongs most strongly in the Historical Book Shelf as a historian and biographer. Her historical writing has received honours including the Wolfson History Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Crime Writers’ Association Non-Fiction Silver Dagger; she received the Medlicott Medal in 2000 and was appointed DBE for services to literature in 2011. Her books are particularly valuable to readers interested in queenship, seventeenth-century women, royal marriage, Catholic emancipation and the relationship between private lives and political power.

Periods and events

Battle of Actium31 BCE Boudican Revolt60–61 CE Captivity of Mary, Queen of Scots in England1568–1587 CE Commonwealth and Protectorate1649–1660 CE Edwardian Reformation1547–1553 CE Elizabethan Age1558–1603 CE English Civil War1642–1651 CE Execution of Charles I1649 CE French Wars of Religion1562–1598 CE Glorious Revolution1688–1689 CE Gunpowder Plot1605 CE Henrician Reformation1530–1547 CE Lady Jane Grey Succession Crisis1553-07-06–1554-02-12 Ptolemaic Egypt305–30 BCE Reign of Louis XIV1643–1715 CE Reign of Terror1793–1794 CE Restoration1660–1685 CE Restoration London1660–1685 CE Roman Egypt and Alexandria30 BCE–395 CE Rough Wooing1543–1551 CE War of Actium32–30 BCE

Historical fiction

Standalone historical fiction by Antonia Fraser (7 books)

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Non-fiction

Non-fiction by Antonia Fraser (14 books)

Reference works, biographies and other non-fiction are kept separate from the historical fiction above.

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