Mary I, Queen of England: Historiographical Essay, 2006 to Present

Abstract

In the last decade, scholarly interest in the life of Mary I, the first English queen regnant, has greatly increased. Beginning in 2006, ten scholarly books and several articles and essays about her have been published. In 2006, David Loades, then her only modern academic biographer, updated his 1989 study, although admitting that he had not “changed his mind about her in striking ways.”¹ His conceptualization followed closely the Victorian attitude, furthered by A.F. Pollard, of a tragical “woeful figure.”² With this negativism in mind, the other, mostly positive, publications will be evaluated. The result is a historiography with more realistic evaluations of her reign within the complexity of sixteenth-century gender, and religious and cultural attitudes.