Reviewed by: The Letters of Margaret of Anjou ed. by Helen Maurer and B. M. Cron Michele Seah Maurer, Helen, and B. M. Cron, eds, The Letters of Margaret of Anjou, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2019; hardback; pp. 317; 2 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £95.00; ISBN 9781783274246. Margaret of Anjou was the queen consort of Henry VI, the last Lancastrian king of England, who lost the throne in 1461 to his Yorkist rival who became Edward IV. Her reputation as a vengeful woman, coupled with the role she undertook during the struggle known today as the Wars of the Roses, has made her an enduringly fascinating figure to researchers and the general public alike. This book is a new edition of the surviving correspondence of Queen Margaret, and aims to provide an up-to-date study of all of her extant letters and bring them together in one place. These letters were written between 1445 and 1461, spanning the period during which Margaret was queen consort, and testify to a variety of different interests and activities undertaken either on her own behalf or on behalf of others. Scholars of this queen have long known of and utilized this cache of material in their research. The bulk of the extant letters are preserved as copies in a late-fifteenth century commonplace book that currently resides in the British Library, London. Most of Margaret’s letters from said book were first transcribed and published by Cecil Monro in 1863, and it is that source that many scholars have, until now, turned to in lieu of consulting the commonplace book itself. Monro, however, chose not to include seven of the letters from the late-medieval book, probably considering their content to be unimportant, although he made no mention of his reasons for doing so in the preface of his book. The editors of this volume, Helen Maurer and Bonita Cron, are clearly familiar with the extant letters of the queen, having used the material themselves in their own published research on Margaret of Anjou. [End Page 231] This volume is divided into two parts; the first part, ‘Great and Good Queen’, contains eight chapters, and the second, ‘Political Queen’, contains four chapters. Each of the chapters corresponds to one of the categories into which the editors have divided the letters. Using their own research and expertise on the queen and her world, the editors have added vibrant and valuable contextual narrative to each of the letters while placing them in a logical and thematic order. This procedure is not without its drawbacks. As the editors themselves acknowledge (p. 2), there are some letters that can be placed in more than one category, but one must perforce be chosen. One example will suffice to demonstrate. In letter no. 79 (p. 149), the queen wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury regarding the king’s pardon granted to a lady named Alice Marwarth (the reason is unmentioned in the letter itself). This letter is included in Chapter 7: ‘Belief and Benevolence’ but can just as easily fit into Chapter 5: ‘Protector and Peacemaker’. Moreover, the structural division into two parts and the categorization of the letters into so many chapters in Part 1 does not appear to be wholly justified. The letters placed in Part 2 are deemed to be the ‘overtly political’ (p. 3) ones. Yet it does not appear to have been entirely necessary to put two parts in place at all, since the chapters adequately convey the thematic underpinnings. Nonetheless, its structure helps to distinguish this new volume from the 1863 Monro collection and renders it superior in many respects. As other researchers of Margaret of Anjou will know, the Monro collection does not appear to have been arranged with any particular order in mind. Additionally, although Monro added some comments of his own preceding each letter, they are not very extensive ones. The editors’ efforts at historical placement of each included piece of correspondence has substantially added value to this revised edition. The other major improvement is the addition of the seven letters from the original commonplace book that were left out by Monro, as well as seventeen letters...