Folger Book Club: Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novel about Henry VIII’s court and the decisions that led to England’s monumental break with Rome.
Booking and details
Dates Thu, Aug 3, 2023, 6:30pm (ET)
Tickets Free, Registration required
Duration 6:30pm - 8:00pm (ET)
Our August 2023 Pick
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is “a darkly brilliant reimagining of life under Henry VIII. . . . Magnificent.” (The Boston Globe).
Why did we choose this?
The Folger Shakespeare Library’s collection explores not only Shakespeare’s life and works, but also the plays’ historical context, source material, critical and performance histories, and the ways in which they inspire and are adapted by contemporary novelists.
Wolf Hall is a detailed, immersive look at Henry VIII’s court and the decisions that led to England’s break with Rome, leading to repercussions that echoed through Shakespeare’s time and which the playwright himself explored in Henry VIII.
About the Book Club
Our informal Book Club is free and open to all. Our picks range from historical fiction to adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, encompassing a wide variety of genres—all sourced from a different local, independent bookstore partner each month.
Each session begins with a guest speaker exploring that month’s pick and highlighting items from the Folger collection related to the plot and themes of the novel. After the presentation, participants will be broken into smaller groups for breakout discussions, moderated by a team of staff and volunteers.
Content transparency
Wolf Hall includes references to subjects to which some readers may be sensitive.
Such references include but are not limited to:
- rape
- sexual assault/abuse
- child abuse
- miscarriage/child mortality
- violence/torture
Guest Speaker
Jean Marie Christensen
Jean Marie Christensen is a doctoral candidate and lecturer in Art History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She specializes in the political, social, and theoretical intersections with the conventions of early modern English portraiture. Her on-going dissertation, “Bodies of the Crown: Kinship, Health, and the Construction of the Royal Body in Early Modern English Portraiture,” investigates Tudor-Stuart imagery by examining royal and aristocratic portraiture’s relationship with ideas of the family and court culture as mitigating visible disability. Her dissertation argues that the idealized royal portrait is a collaborative construction and the location where cultural expectations and anxieties about the human body are negotiated in favor of representing monarchical authority.
This month, we are thrilled to once again partner with East City Bookshop, an independently run, woman-owned, community-minded bookstore on Capitol Hill. Check them out at eastcitybookshop.com.
Order online, by phone (202.290.1636) or email orders@eastcitybookshop.com. Pickup is available at the shop, or they ship (almost) anywhere!
You can also download an audiobook version of this title from Libro.fm.
We would like to thank the following organizations for their generous support of this program
