VIRGIN EARTH [Paperback]

PHILIPPA GREGORY (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2005)
• ASIN: B0021V1BE0
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,857,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Kenya in 1954, Philippa Gregory moved to England with her family and was educated in Bristol and at the National Council for the Training of Journalists course in Cardiff. She worked as a senior reporter on the Portsmouth News, and as a journalist and producer for BBC radio.

Philippa obtained a BA degree in history at the University of Sussex in Brighton and a PhD at Edinburgh University in 18th-century literature. Her first novel, Wideacre, was written as she completed her PhD and became an instant world wide bestseller. On its publication, she became a full-time writer, and now lives with her family on a small farm in the North of England.

Her knowledge of gothic 18th century novels led to Philippa writing Wideacre, which was followed by a haunting sequel, The Favoured Child, and the delightful happy ending of the trilogy: Meridon. This novel was listed in Feminist Book Fortnight and for the Romantic Novel of the Year at the same time - one of the many instances of Philippa's work appealing to very different readers.

The trilogy was followed by The Wise Woman, a dazzling, disturbing novel of dark powers and desires set against the rich tapestry of the Reformation, and by Fallen Skies, an evocative realistic story set after the First World War. Her novel A Respectable Trade took her back to the 18th century where her knowledge of the slave trade and her home town of Bristol produced a haunting novel of slave trading and its terrible human cost. This is the only modern novel to explore the tragedies of slavery in England itself, and features a group of kidnapped African people trying to find their freedom in the elegant houses of 18th century Clifton. Gregory adapted her book for a highly acclaimed BBC television production which won the prize for drama from the Commission for Racial Equality and was shortlisted for a BAFTA for the screenplay.

Next came two of Gregory's best-loved novels, Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth, based on the true-life story of father and son John Tradescant working in the upheaval of the English Civil War. In these works Gregory pioneered the genre which has become her own: fictional biography, the true story of a real person brought to life with painstaking research and passionate verve.

The flowering of this new style was undoubtedly The Other Boleyn Girl, a runaway best-seller which stormed the US market and then went worldwide telling the story of the little-known sister to Anne Boleyn. Now published in 26 countries with more than a million copies in print in the US alone, this is becoming a classic historical novel, winning the Parker Pen Novel of the Year award 2002, and the Romantic Times fictional biography award. The Other Boleyn Girl was adapted for the BBC as a single television drama and a film is now in production starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn and Eric Bana as Henry VIII.

A regular contributor to newspapers and magazines, with short stories, features and reviews, Philippa is also a frequent broadcaster and a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4's Time Team.

She lives in the North of England with her husband and two children and in addition to interests that include riding, walking, skiing and gardening (an interest born from research into the Tradescant family for her novel, Virgin Earth), she also runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia. Fifty-six wells have been built by UK donors to date.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book cannot be praised enough, December 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Virgin Earth (Hardcover)

Virgin Earth, the sequel to the simply wonderful Earthly Joys, is nothing less than amazing. It tells the story of John Tradescant, Jr, a man haunted by the fame of his famous gardener father, a man who just lost his wife to the plague, and who has left his two little children to go plant hunting in Virginia. The book goes back and forth between Virginia and England, painting vivid pictures of England during its Civil War, and also of America during its savage beginnings. The lives of King Charles, Cromwell, the natives and settlers in Virginia, as well as John himself all intertwine, making this book one of the most elegant and compelling historical novels I have ever read!

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The last new world, March 10, 2006

By 

Lilly Flora "by Lilo Drandoff" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Virgin Earth: A Novel (Earthly Joys) (Paperback)

In Virgin earth Phillippa Gregory finishes the story of the Tradescant's a family of gardeners and explorers who searched the world for rare and beautiful things and new plants that would thrive in England. The first book is Earthly Joys about John Tradescant the elder and this book is about his son.

Where John the elder was dutiful to the extreme, John the younger questions his worlds. The book opens with him on a ship to Virginia, trying to escape the grief that the death of his wife caused. In the new world he finds a young Indian girl to help him gather plants and becomes friends with and slightly infatuated though she is half his age. When he leaves Virginia he promises he will return and marry her, but when he returns home he finds that his father has died and left in their house a woman who he thought his son should marry and who would raise his children.

And so John is caught between two worlds. There is England his home, which is safe and predictable, and there is the new world, which awakened a life inside of him. But both are the point of upheaval, Virginia by the colonists who will not coexist with the natives, and England by the reformation. This conflict goes through the novel, as does another with similar themes. There is civil war in England. The king is executed and an elected government is in place. The people of England realize that the king is not divined, nor does he rule by divine right. He can be overthrown, even invited back.

This book exposes two profound human transformations in history. The change from rule of divine right to the rule of consent of the governed, and the transformation of the frontier of the earth into just another colony. The virgin earth of the title is literally the land and the mindset of the English people-and after this book it is virgin no more.

This is by far one of Philippa Gregory's best books. She does much better when writing about more normal people (as apposed to royalty) and normal, if somewhat extraordinary, lives. The book is believable and enthralling and truly expresses John's feeling that he is on the edge of the last new world (both real and political) that there will ever be.

Four point five stars.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb Author, July 6, 2006

By 

HeyJudy "heyjudy" (East Hampton, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Virgin Earth: A Novel (Earthly Joys) (Paperback)

I am a great fan of author Philippa Gregory, and she did not disappoint me in VIRGIN EARTH.

I had not realized that this novel is, in fact, a sequel; certainly, the story and the characters stand alone.

Though Gregory began her writing career in the 20th century and continues now, into the 21st, I am convinced that she somehow is living in England, c. 1600, so thoroughly is she steeped in the rhythms of that time.

Her hero here, John Tradescant, is a man of conflicted loyalties, loving England but excited by its American colony of Virginia, serving King Charles I as his gardener but not desiring to be his soldier, passionate about a Native American squaw in the Virginia colony while blessed with a wonderful wife at home in England.

Those were difficult times in which Gregory places this tale, and the great proof of her success as a storyteller is how engaged the reader becomes in her fictional characters, all the while knowing the ultimate outcome the conflict on which it hinges; to wit, Cromwell's Roundhead Revolution.

The part of the novel that deals with the earliest settlement of Virginia is fascinating. Gregory makes it clear that the United States is a country that was founded on turmoil, strife and cruelty. The suffering she describes, of both slaves and Native Americans, as well as the deathly struggles of the colonists, all are appalling--and these are issues that rarely are examined in full.

Philippa Gregory remains one of the finest authors in the English language. Her fans will be well-pleased by VIRGIN EARTH.