Linda Porter reviews a new and timely book about the later Stuart queens. This is an important and interesting collection of essays, she says — but how many will be able to afford to read it?
Historia readers may be taken aback by a review of a book with the eye-watering price of more than £100 and I will return to the issue of pricing of academic books later in this review. I shall start by saying that this is a most important and interesting collection of essays, co-edited by Eilish Gregory, a scholar whose work I much admire, and it was partly for that reason that I took a deep breath and bought a copy of Later Stuart Queens, 1660–1735.
The later Stuarts seem to be having a moment, one that is substantially overdue but very welcome. The period covered by this book is one of the most crucial in the history of what we now call the United Kingdom but it is still viewed as unglamorous in comparison with the apparently endless attraction of the Tudors. Yet the queens covered in this book were influential in the fields of religion, politics and patronage and their cultural impact, as well as their political agency, remain largely overlooked.
It is both significant and welcome that 10 of the 13 contributors to this collection are women, several of whom are completing doctorates. They come from different parts of the world and so represent an interest in the later Stuart period that is global in its coverage.
The book begins with an examination of the reputation of Queen Henrietta Maria and goes on to look at Catherine of Braganza, as both queen consort and queen dowager, Mary Beatrice of Modena’s patronage and role in the ‘Glorious Revolution’, Mary II’s queenship and cultural influence, the changes made to Hampton Court by Mary II and her sister, Queen Anne, a reassessment of Anne herself and her religious policy and two essays on Maria Clementina Sobieska, the wife of the ‘Old Pretender’ or James III and VIII, as the son of James II and Mary Beatrice styled himself in exile.
This is a large body of original research, though frequent citing of Maureen Waller’s biased and dated account of Mary II and Queen Anne, Ungrateful Daughters, in one of the essays, did raise my eyebrows. That qualification aside, anyone looking for the latest thinking on women too often written off as depressive, overly pious, unglamorous and dull will find much to pique their interest in this carefully edited collection.
But how many people will actually read it? Not, I suspect, nearly as many as the scholars who contributed might hope. The ebook price is just £5 less than the hardback. Who can afford this?
The response that is always given when the exorbitant cost of books published by specialist academic publishers and university presses is questioned is that they are never intended for a general audience and, with a very small print run, are only really aimed at libraries.
Yet this overlooks the alarming rate of closure of libraries and the even more disturbing onslaught on history departments in universities, not just in the UK but further afield. There must be a real danger that, in the not so distant future, this type of publication will cease to exist.
The consequences for young academics, already under pressure to justify their existence through scholarly publications of this sort, will be dire. Independent scholars and writers, like myself, who want to reflect the latest thinking in books aimed at a wider market, will also suffer. Thus the tired old tropes that still bedevil the way we think about our past will continue, like some sort of ever-expanding universe.
Can there not, at least, be a rethink of the pricing model and modes of publication for these types of books? Ebooks and paperback, as opposed to hardback, print-runs, with a sensible price, are surely not impossible. I cannot see how an ebook that costs over £100 can be justified.
Perhaps others will have further suggestions. We need to engage both publishers and academics on this subject, or accept the reality that books like Later Stuart Queens may simply disappear in as little as a decade.
Later Stuart Queens, 1660–1735: Religion, Political Culture and Patronage edited by Eilish Gregory and Michael C Questier (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, hardback, 367pp, £109.99) was published on 5 January, 2024.
Dr Linda Porter spent 10 years lecturing in New York before returning to England, where she worked as a senior public relations practitioner. She then returned to writing historical non-fiction and her first book, Mary Tudor: the first queen, was published to critical acclaim in 2007. After books on Katherine Parr and Mary, Queen of Scots, Linda wrote Royal Renegades: The Children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars (2016) and Mistresses: Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II (2020).
She regularly reviews for History Today, BBC History and the Literary Review, appears on radio and TV and has spoken in many historic homes and palaces throughout England and Scotland.
Linda’s next book, The Thistle and the Rose, a biography of Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV of Scotland, is published on 20 June, 2024.
She has also written a number of features and reviews for Historia, including Catherine of Braganza, the neglected Queen, Charles II’s last mistress, and Escaping the Tudors.
There’s more about Henrietta Maria and Catherine of Braganza in these Historia features:
Henrietta Maria, a forgotten queen? by Frances Quinn
Henrietta Maria: queen, warrior, politician, woman by Leanda de Lisle
Review: Henrietta Maria by Leanda de Lisle by Annie Whitehead
Raise your Teacup for Catherine of Braganza! by Isabel Stilwell
And Andrew Taylor writes about Louise de Keroualle in Baby Face, Charles II’s French mistress
Images:
- Mary of Modena by Willem Wissing, 1687: National Galleries Scotland (CC by NC)
- Queen Henrietta Maria as St Catherine, attrib Anthony van Dyck: Philip Mould collection via Wikimedia (public domain)
- Catherine of Braganza, by or after Peter Lely, c1665: Wikimedia
