Skip to Content

Katherine Parr’s Giftbooks, Henry VIII’s Marginalia, and the Display of Royal Power and Piety

Dr. Micheline White’s (College of Humanities) article, Katherine Parr’s Giftbooks, Henry VIII’s Marginalia, and the Display of Royal Power and Piety, Renaissance Quarterly, 76 (2023), 39–83, was the winner of the Sixteenth Century Society’s 2024 “Raymond B. Waddington Prize” for the best English-language article on the literature of the Early Modern period (1450-1750).

This essay examines deluxe copies of Katherine Parr’s “Psalms or Prayers” (1544) distributed as gifts as part of Henry VIII’s wartime campaign. The book promoted supplication for the king, and Parr used hand illumination to amplify its aesthetic and sacred character and to elicit political loyalty. I discuss two copies annotated by Henry, one previously unknown. I argue that the volumes shed new light on Parr’s role as queen/author, on Henry’s final illness, and on their transactional relationship: Parr’s giftbooks advanced Henry’s cause and enabled him to display exemplary piety; Henry’s marginalia activated Parr’s text and thanked her for her labor.