num_pages: 404
description: The principal thing that I should wish to be impressed on my reader's mind is, that whether my hero was or was not an impostor, he was believed to be the true man by his contemporaries. The partial pages of Bacon, of Hall, and Holinshed and others of that date, are replete with proofs of this fact.This historical novel, influenced by those of Sir Walter Scott, fictionalises the exploits of Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the throne of King Henry VII who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, the second son of King Edward IV.Shelley believed that Warbeck really was Richard and had escaped from the Tower of London. She endows his character with elements of Percy Shelley, portraying him sympathetically as "an angelic essence, incapable of wound", who is led by his sensibility onto the political stage. She seems to have identified herself with Richard's wife, Lady Katherine Gordon, who survives after her husband's death by compromising with his political enemies.Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity and equality; through her, Mary Shelley offers a female alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy Richard, as well as the typical historical narrative which only relates those events.
language: English
title: The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: A Romance
titlecomplete: The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: A Romance (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Selections, 5)
characters: Hubert Burgh, John de la Poole, Earl of Lincoln, Anne of Brittany, Adam Floyer, Thomas Astwood, Master William Barley, Sir Edward Brampton, Sire de Beverem, Boabdil el Chico, Meiler Trangmar, Stephen Frion, Sir Robert Ratcliffe, Charles VIII of France, Don Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, Marquess of Cadiz, Thomas Cressenor, Charles the Rash of Burgundy, John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, Almoradi Gomelez, Lord Barry, Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, Doctor William Sutton, El Zogoybi, John Lavallan, Lord Broke, Sir John Peachy, Richard Simon, Perkin Warbeck, Sir James Tyrrel, William Worseley, Dean of St. Paul's, Elizabeth of York, Sir Thomas Thwaites, Count de Tendilla, Lady Maud Clifford, Monina de Faro, Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, Francis Lovell, 9th Baron Lovell, 6th Baron Holand, Lady Catherine Gordon, Madeline Warbeck de Faro, John Dighton, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, Edward V of England, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, Bartholomew Diaz, Sir Edward Lisle, John Tate, Lord Mayor of London, René of Anjou, Roger de Clifford, 5th Baron de Clifford, Sir Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, Sir William Daubeny, Thomas, Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, John Radcliffe, 9th Baron FitzWalter, Ferdinand II of Aragon, Jasper Tudor, 1st Duke of Bedford, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, James III, King of Scots, George Nevill, 5th Baron Bergavenny, Sir Simon Mountford, Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Desmond, Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, Mary Boyd, Gilbert Daubeny, Sir James Keating, Jane Shore, Richard Fitzroy, William Richford, Lady Margaret Brampton, Sir William Stanley, Charles the Bold, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, 2nd Earl of Surrey, James IV, King of Scots, Sir William Lessey, Sir Richard Lessey, Mynheer Jahn Warbeck, Martin Swartz, Sir Robert Clifford, Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, El Zagal, Sir John Digby, Louis XI of France, Mary of Burgundy, Sir Thomas Broughton, Hernan de Faro, Henry VII of England, Thomas Geraldine, Earl of Kildare, John Morton, Bishop of Ely, Edmund Plantagenet, Lambert Simnel, Richard III of England, Richard Foxe, Sir Christopher Urswick, Arthur, Prince of Wales, Margaret of York, Robert Langborne, Sir Patrick Hamilton of Kincavil, John O'Water, Thomas Poyns, Lady Jane Kennedy, Elizabeth Woodville
genres: Fiction, Classics, Mary Shelley, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 43
places: England
publisher: Pickering & Chatto Ltd