Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications

"Printed book and manuscript dedications were at the juncture between the actual interests and reading abilities of Tudor royal ladies and the beliefs and hopes of those who wrote and printed them on what was suitable for royalty and how royal ladies might be persuaded in certain directions. Queen Mary I received eighteen manuscript dedications and thirty-three printed book dedications, the majority of them were religious in nature, specifically addressing a return to Catholicism. In this revisionist approach to book history and Marian studies Valerie Schutte argues that dedications, and the negotiations that accompanied them, reveal both contemporary perceptions of how statecraft, religion, and gender were and the political maneuvering attempting to influence how they ought to be. Schutte offers the first comprehensive catalogue of all book and manuscript dedications to Mary and all books that were known to have been in Mary's possession"--