Anne Boleyn in Twenty-First-Century Historical Fiction

Abstract

The twenty-first-century understanding of Anne’s story has been dominated by two narratives that represent Anne Boleyn from a postfeminist perspective: Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall series. With the advent of digital platforms and the rise in self-publishing, however, the standard narrative about Anne that arose in the twentieth century fractured and a range of interpretations of Anne’s story re-emerged. The relationship of Anne and Henry was reimagined as a love story, for instance, and Anne became a popular subject for Christian fiction. The twenty-first century has also seen the rise of an enthusiastic online Anne Boleyn fandom, which has, in turn, shaped representations of Anne in historical fiction as a third-wave feminist icon.