Review: The Female Tudor Scholar and Writer: The life and Times of Margaret Roper by Aimee Fleming

 

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.

               Margaret Roper is perhaps best remembered by the majority of people who recognize the name as the daughter of Sir Thomas More, the daughter that understood him better than his second wife.  A most faithful daughter.  (Funny, how that phrase doesn’t get applied to Mary who was faithful to mother if not her father).  To be honest, this was how I saw her, with the intelligent but never fully acknowledged because of her gender and the time period she lived.

               Thankfully, we have works like Aimee Fleming’s to add more to Roper’s story.

               I can’t speak how this book compares  John Guy’s work on More and Margaret.  I haven’t read Guy’s book yet. Fleming’s book does reference Guy though, so if you have read Guy’s book I’m not sure if Fleming’s book aids more to it.

               Fleming does quite a bit to place Margaret Roper as a scholar and humanist.  This is somewhat difficult because of what has been lost to time.  What is also important is that Fleming shows the reaction to Roper’s output, how men outside of her father viewed her work.

               It should be noted, however, like many books dealing with famous women of some past time periods, the book has to define her in part though the men in her life.  In Roper’s case, it is her father, so much of this book recounts More’s rise and fall, though Fleming perhaps focuses a bit more on the impact to More’s wife and favored daughter.

               Yet Fleming not only details as much as Margaret Roper’s physical life as she can, but also her intellectual life.  That she does so in a readable manner  and not a dull one is  a plus as well.  The last part of the book raises the possibility and question of more Margaret Roper’s and ties in the book into larger Tudor histories.