An introduction to the books of Hilary Mantel

HILARY MANTEL was born in the little town of Glossop, in England’s Midlands, and grew up in two places that were even smaller: first Hadfield, Derbyshire, and then Romiley in Cheshire, where her mother had decamped with a lover who became Mantel’s stepfather and whose name she took. In her late 20s, Mantel was diagnosed with severe endometriosis, surgery for which put paid to any possibility of her having children. Her illness also, for a while, ended her marriage. She and her husband, Gerald McEwen, who were divorced in 1981, would remarry the following year.

Despite these rocky beginnings, or perhaps because of them, she grew into a writer of huge breadth, writing long historical novels seemingly as easily as her many essays and short stories. Mantel’s physical life may have been circumscribed, but her imagination was not. After her death on September 22nd, those who knew her spoke of her big heart, her “shimmering perceptiveness”, as a writer for the Guardian newspaper put it, and her sly take on the world around her. Best known for “Wolf Hall”, the trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, her interests ranged far beyond Henry VIII and his many wives to take in all manner of humanity, including nuns, mediums and missionaries, as well as royal fashion, exercising control and how to find words that spoke of projecting power.