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Historical person

Mary Boleyn

1499–1543

Mary Boleyn was an English courtier and the sister of Anne Boleyn. She spent time at the French court before marrying Sir William Carey in 1520 and later became a mistress of Henry VIII, although the exact duration and chronology of their relationship are uncertain.

Mary had two children during her marriage to Carey, Catherine and Henry Carey; claims that Henry VIII fathered either child remain unproven. After Carey’s death she secretly married William Stafford, a match beneath her family’s expectations that led to her temporary exclusion from court.

Alison Weir’s Mary Boleyn reconstructs the poorly documented historical life of Anne Boleyn’s sister, testing the evidence for Mary’s relationships at the French and English courts and her affair with Henry VIII. Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl makes Mary a principal fictional viewpoint, contrasting her intimacy with Henry and family obligations with Anne’s more dangerous rise. Weir’s The Boleyn Secret and Anne Boleyn place Mary within the sisters’ early court world and the family ambitions surrounding Anne’s ascent. Rozsa Gaston’s The Queen’s Maid uses the consequences of Mary’s choices as part of Anne’s education in how sexuality, reputation and dynastic politics operate at court.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Mary Boleyn (3 series)

The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels in Order

by Philippa Gregory 16 books 4.4(140,052)

The Plantagenet and Tudor novels form a chronological sequence of connected but independently readable stories about women near the English throne. They move from the Lancastrian court and the Wars of the Roses through the rise of the Tudors, Henry VIII’s marriages, the mid-Tudor religious crisis and the…

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The Anne Boleyn Chronicles in Order

by Rozsa Gaston 4 books 4.4(394)

The Anne Boleyn Chronicles reconstruct Anne Boleyn’s formative continental years before her emergence at the English court. Beginning in 1513 in Margaret of Austria’s household at Mechelen, the sequence follows Anne through the courts of Louis XII, Claude of France and Francis I, where language, ceremony, patronage and…

All books in this series

Six Tudor Queens in Order

by Alison Weir 21 books 4.2(79,643)

The Six Tudor Queens sequence retells the lives of Henry VIII’s wives through six full-length novels. Twelve companion stories shift attention to relatives, servants, artists and courtiers affected by the same events, while Six Tudor Queens: Writing a New Story explains the project’s historical method. In the Shadow…

All books in this series

Standalone books

Standalone books featuring Mary Boleyn (1 book)

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Mary Boleyn (1 book)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.