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selenak..."scholarly" meaning non-fiction and thus excluding "The Daughter of Time", Josephine Tey's novel. mildred_of_midgard asked me this, knowing I'm somewhat well disposed towards the last Plantagenet myself. Well, it's decades old, but I still think Paul Murray Kendall's biography of Richard is a good entry point. He lists and footnotes his sources well while also providing a readable narrative text, and where he inevitably speculates, he says that he does, instead of doing so, then in subsequent chapters treating the previous speculation as fact, which is an annoying habit biographers of many a historical person fall into. This said, it's been decades since I've read Kendall's book myself, so who knows maybe today I would feel differently? Who knows. (BTW, you might have come across Kendall before, Mildred, since he also wrote a biography of Richard's contemporary Louis XI.)
Now, as mentioned my own deep dive into the Yorkist Kings is rather dated, so I checked how the Richard III Society is doing these days, and lo, their website is very well organized and offers a lot to people interested. It reminds me of our Frederician Salon. Contrary to the caricature going on that the big argument for Ricardians is "he was nice and did nothing wrong" , the website offers a good introduction of what they're about, a bunch of interesting scholarly articles - like this one about the early pro-Richard historians, which includes some Georgian familiars like Horace Walpole, or this one about Richard's military career. (mildred_of_midgard is way more interested in military aspects of any given field of history than I am, gentle readers.) Best of all, they've actually uploaded complete translations of several key documents, like the Titulus Regius, i.e. the Act of Parliament in which Richard's takeover and the removal of young Edward the no longer V and his brother was given its official justification and which Henry VII ordered to be destroyed (only three copies survived, which is good, because the arguments used in the Titulus Regius aren't exactly the same as Tudor era historians claim they were. Long live the internet, say I, because back in the early 1990s when I had my big Ricardian phase I only ever read quotes from the Titulus Regius and any other document in biographies, and we sure as hell didn't have the chance to read a translation of the complete thing ourselves.
(Sidenote: The third Matthew Shardlake novel, Sovereign, has its lawyer detective hero find a copy of the Titulus Regius in York along with some other, though fictional documents, which perhaps helped awakening interest beyond Ricardian circles.)
The Website also offers a bunch of articles previously published in its journal, including one on what German merchant Niclas von Popplau actually wrote about his encounter with Richard III, and that was very interesting for me not because the guy is German but because the books I read only quoted the same three or four lines, the physical description of Richard, but not the rest (which includes among other things Popplau having heard the rumor about the princes being dead but speculating they're still alive though hidden and imprisoned somewhere), or that Popplau had a reccommendation letter from sister Margaret (of Burgundy) for Richard.
Inconclusion: as far as books go, start with the Kendall, and if you already know a bit about who is who (by which I don't just been the dramatis personnae in Richard's life time but who contemporary sources like Mancini or the Croyland Chronicle are, or even if you don't, check out the articles and documents at the website.
The other days
mildred_of_midgard asked me this, knowing I'm somewhat well disposed towards the last Plantagenet myself. Well, it's decades old, but I still think Paul Murray Kendall's biography of Richard is a good entry point. He lists and footnotes his sources well while also providing a readable narrative text, and where he inevitably speculates, he says that he does, instead of doing so, then in subsequent chapters treating the previous speculation as fact, which is an annoying habit biographers of many a historical person fall into. This said, it's been decades since I've read Kendall's book myself, so who knows maybe today I would feel differently? Who knows. (BTW, you might have come across Kendall before, Mildred, since he also wrote a biography of Richard's contemporary Louis XI.) Now, as mentioned my own deep dive into the Yorkist Kings is rather dated, so I checked how the Richard III Society is doing these days, and lo, their website is very well organized and offers a lot to people interested. It reminds me of our Frederician Salon. Contrary to the caricature going on that the big argument for Ricardians is "he was nice and did nothing wrong" , the website offers a good introduction of what they're about, a bunch of interesting scholarly articles - like this one about the early pro-Richard historians, which includes some Georgian familiars like Horace Walpole, or this one about Richard's military career. (
mildred_of_midgard is way more interested in military aspects of any given field of history than I am, gentle readers.) Best of all, they've actually uploaded complete translations of several key documents, like the Titulus Regius, i.e. the Act of Parliament in which Richard's takeover and the removal of young Edward the no longer V and his brother was given its official justification and which Henry VII ordered to be destroyed (only three copies survived, which is good, because the arguments used in the Titulus Regius aren't exactly the same as Tudor era historians claim they were. Long live the internet, say I, because back in the early 1990s when I had my big Ricardian phase I only ever read quotes from the Titulus Regius and any other document in biographies, and we sure as hell didn't have the chance to read a translation of the complete thing ourselves. (Sidenote: The third Matthew Shardlake novel, Sovereign, has its lawyer detective hero find a copy of the Titulus Regius in York along with some other, though fictional documents, which perhaps helped awakening interest beyond Ricardian circles.)
The Website also offers a bunch of articles previously published in its journal, including one on what German merchant Niclas von Popplau actually wrote about his encounter with Richard III, and that was very interesting for me not because the guy is German but because the books I read only quoted the same three or four lines, the physical description of Richard, but not the rest (which includes among other things Popplau having heard the rumor about the princes being dead but speculating they're still alive though hidden and imprisoned somewhere), or that Popplau had a reccommendation letter from sister Margaret (of Burgundy) for Richard.
Inconclusion: as far as books go, start with the Kendall, and if you already know a bit about who is who (by which I don't just been the dramatis personnae in Richard's life time but who contemporary sources like Mancini or the Croyland Chronicle are, or even if you don't, check out the articles and documents at the website.
The other days
no subject
Date: 2024-01-08 06:38 pm (UTC)It's good to know that solid historical research is still going on! :D
It's been a long time since I dug into Ricardian history, but I will add a couple of comments (that may or may not be useful):
Charles Ross' 1981 biography is considered the standard by historians (or at least was when I was still in the field way back when), but as I recall you'll get more about political structures and military campaigns than the kind of insight that the non-professional reader is looking for. PMK is probably more readable while still being less suspect than anything by Alison Weir, for example.
Michael Hicks studied under Ross and is a decent writer, but I gave up on his Richard III: The Self-Made King (2019). His discussion of the Ricardian historiography was very good, but the meat of the book (as far as I got into it) was a litany of "Richard probably did these sorts of things and knew this person" and so on. I wasn't getting anything I didn't already know and it really wasn't engaging for me. But I would recommend it over Ross as a good starting point for the "serious" casual fan.
FWIW, I remember liking Hicks' books on George, Duke of Clarence (the Yorkist brother supposedly drowned in a butt of malmsey wine) and Warwick a lot. False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence (1980) and Warwick the Kingmaker (1988) respectively. But sometimes books stick in my head for the wrong reasons, so YMMV.
Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law (2000) edited by PW Hammond is a nice collection of essays, including Michael Jones on Richard and Lady Margaret Beaufort, Anne Sutton on Richard III and notions of "the good prince" (chivalry and piety, that is, not whether Richard III was a "good" man), and Colin Richmond on the events that led to Bosworth Field. Richmond was one of my favorites in the field because of his sense of whimsy -- he writes history RPF. He's also the only professional historian I know who wrote on both late medieval England and the Holocaust.
If you are interested in the world of Richard III, I recommend the art history work of Pamela Tudor-Craig, the books by longtime editor of The Ricardian Anne Sutton, and the underrated Rosemary Horrox. Horrox's Richard III: A Study in Service is an excellent exploration of the ways in which 15th-century nobles navigated patronage and service, and how Richard III failed in part because he relied too heavily on supporters in the north of England. I haven't read her 2022 Richard III entry in the Penguin Monarchs Series, but now that you've mentioned Ricardian scholarship I will probably attempt to track down a copy. Finally, if you want to read more about Henry Tudor for context, try The Making of the Tudor Dynasty by Ralph Griffiths and Roger Thomas. If I recall, Griffiths wrote the introduction to the Yale reprint of Charles Ross' Richard biography. FWIW, avoid Griffiths' The Reign of Henry VI (1981) if you are looking for a biography; that ain't it. It's an incredibly detailed analysis of government function in the years that span Henry VI's reign, but if you want a biography of Henry VI stick to that by B.P. Wolffe published in the same year.
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Date: 2024-01-09 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2024-01-09 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-09 04:43 am (UTC)Heh, iirc this was indeed the big argument in Daughter of Time... but I'm glad that the Ricardians aren't like that! (Which I thought they were!)
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Date: 2024-01-09 12:33 pm (UTC)...And then there's Philippa Langley.
She's the one who found Richard's remains in that car park, and omg, I wish it had been anyone else, because she is an embarrassment to Ricardians (and frankly, human beings) everywhere. In fact, the reason Richard III was on my mind when Selena asked for January meme questions was partly because of the Anhalt!Sophie AU in salon, and partly because my wife had just informed me that Philippa Langley has recently come out with a book explaining what *really* happened to the Princes in the Tower (basically the Perkin Warbeck hypothesis). I went, "Based on my non-specialist reading*, she's probably right, but it almost makes me want to be an anti-Ricardian just to not be on the same side as her." And my wife (who saw the Richard III discovery documentary; I read the book; both made us cringe in second-hand embarrassment and share a rant) agreed.
I have a lot to do today, so I'm not going to get into the details, but, uh, there's a book and a documentary if you enjoy second-hand embarrassment. :P
* I have read a few bios (I'm not just dependent on Daughter of Time!), some pro-Ricardian, some anti-Ricardian, but 1) long ago, and 2) bios don't count as specialist. I definitely wasn't doing any rigorous analysis of claims.
ETA: And yes, I also felt Josephine Tey went too far, both in the pro-Ricardian and anti-Henry VII claims, but since she was writing fiction, I'm willing to cut her some more slack. ;)
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Date: 2024-01-12 01:14 am (UTC)Ohhhh, I wouldn't have recognized her name, but isn't she the one who had a meltdown because it turned out from the skeleton that Richard did in fact have a hunch, or was that someone else?
I mean, it may be fiction, but I still don't think I can get behind Tey's "obviously he LOOKS like a good person in his portrait which was completely true to life, therefore he didn't do any bad things!" argument :P
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Date: 2024-01-12 01:20 am (UTC)I flop down on to the spoil heap behind me. Farnaby puts his arm around me and asks if I’m all right. I feel as if I’ve been hit by a train. The others want me to be excited because it looks as though we may have found Richard but all I can hear is the pounding in my ears and the awful word ‘hunchback’ in my brain.
...
I saw faces, mouths moving, and then I heard the word hunchback again. It was all too much: I had to escape that dreadful room.
...
But there was still that awful word, ‘hunchback’, that I thought had been discarded. Why had the specialist used it – and to describe scoliosis?
IIRC, he didn't actually have a "hunch", he had one shoulder slightly higher than the other, and "hunchback" isn't a technical term or a politically correct term anyway...but WOW is she just having a tantrum.
There's tons of things like this in the book, it was one thing after another.
I mean, it may be fiction, but I still don't think I can get behind Tey's "obviously he LOOKS like a good person in his portrait which was completely true to life, therefore he didn't do any bad things!" argument :P
Yeah, I kind of have to start skipping pages whenever this argument comes up. :P
Also, I have a related rant, but I will hold off on that (though I'll probably write it up someday and you'll have to read it, in DW or your email :P).
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Date: 2024-01-13 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-09 12:38 pm (UTC)I have! I read the Louis XI bio in French translation, and I liked it enough that I downloaded the Kindle sample of the Richard III bio, but I have not yet bought or read the Richard III bio. (I probably would have if I could have used it for language practice, but alas. I could not find a French translation--understandably!)
I checked how the Richard III Society is doing these days, and lo, their website is very well organized and offers a lot to people interested. It reminds me of our Frederician Salon.
Oh, nice! I had checked out their website a few years ago, but that was before salon, and I never got around to doing a deep dive. Yep, checking my Amazon purchase history, it was 2018 when I read Philippa Langley's book plus a bio of Richard III, and bought but did not reread The Sunne in Splendour (read it--and a lot of other Penman--in high school; *really* struggling with fiction in the last decade or so).
Thank you for this! Between you and
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Date: 2024-01-09 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
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