MANTEL, Hilary.

£3,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Wolf Hall. Ultra limited issue, letter "E" of 26 copies signed and lettered by the author on the title page. To celebrate the novel winning the Man Booker prize, the 11th impression sheets of the first edition were used to produce 3 signed limited issues, comprising 26 lettered copies, 100 numbered copies, and a further 1,000 numbered copies in black quarter cloth.First printed earlier the same year, Wolf Hall launched the author's acclaimed historical fiction trilogy on the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII. It came first place in the Guardian's 2019 list of the best books of the century so far. The work both made Mantel's reputation and rehabilitated that of its historical protagonist, by presenting Cromwell "as a brilliant and revolutionary strategist... Enraptured critics said [Mantel] had presented the historical novel as high literature, portraying her subjects not as cardboard characters from centuries past but as real people of contradictions and psychological complexity, relatable in any age" (Marshall & Alter).

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