A fascinating look into the life of a remarkable woman! Vanessa Wilkie's writing was approachable and informative, all at once. This book read like fiction, and flowed through the various chapters of Alice Spencer's life and society. I would recommend this to any history lover!

Alice Spencer, the daughter of an upstart sheep farmer, became one of the most powerful women in England during the 15-1600s. Through arranged marriages - including her own - and several lawsuits against family members, she helped to establish a powerful dynasty that endures to this day. She was also involved in a highly-publicized trial regarding marital rape and sodomy. Bestowed with multiple titles, she preferred to be called the Dowager Countess of Derby.
Instead of using her influence to change the cultural norms of the time, she embraced the realities and used the system to her advantage. She exercised control over her loved ones as she loved them. I wish she had chosen a different path, like her descendant Princess Diana.
The author has done extensive research, which I admire, and has included dozens of sources. Anyone who's interested in this time period will enjoy this aspect of the book.
Because we don't have access to many personal journals of the book's main characters, the author assumes emotions, thoughts and feelings in many places. This practice was somewhat distracting to me as I read because the assumptions didn't always align with Alice's actions.
I wasn't familiar with Alice before reading this book. I'm glad for the insights into the woman and the time period. Unfortunately, the book also hits home that some things - like misogyny, wealthy folks living to excess while making poor folks suffer and gaining riches on the backs of poor folks, class differentials, and currying favor or paying bribes in exchange for political and personal favors - haven't changed in four centuries. Maybe it's time for more women of influence to rise up and change the system.

Well-written, but I was less interested in the subject than I thought I'd be. The blurb definitely hooked me more than some of the content!

I apologize. I was not able to read much of this book. I work solely from my iPad and I had to buy a new one. When that occurred I found that I had lost many books to review amongst other things. It was a nightmare.

LOVED IT! This book has a bit of the same feel as a Margaret George historical biography, which is fantastic. It's so very obvious that Vanessa Wilkie did an immense amount of research and approached the life and love and desires and concerns of her subject with a great deal of detail. I love when books raise a little known historical figure to the spotlight in a way that readers can easily digest, and this book does just that.

A very interesting well presented book perfect for anyone interested in Tudor history and Alice Spencer. I have really been hooked on historical books lately so this was perfect. Would recommend!

I have been on a nonfiction kick recently and this one stood out for many reasons. I loved the honesty and emotion. I felt like I was in the moment with the author and I felt like the articulation of the circumstances were easy to understand which I appreciated with such a complex issue.

This is a must-read for all who love Tudor history. Alice Spencer's story is fascinating. It's especially timely now, as a modern member of the Spencer dynasty is in line to become King.

A Woman of Influence explores the life of Alice Spencer, the youngest daughter of an Elizabethan knight who rose through the ranks to become a countess and the wife of King James I and VI’s Lord Chancellor. Alice Spencer, through her two marriages and the marriages of her three daughters into the English aristocracy, brought great power and prestige to her family while also increasing her own social and material importance in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in England. Alice Spencer, Dowager Countess of Derby, led an extraordinary life, and Vanessa Wilkie highlights Alice Spencer’s legal and social rights as a noblewoman and her use of her material wealth and the British legal system as proof of her extraordinary life and the power she acquired. Wilkie has clearly spent years on this work and on her research uncovering Alice Spencer’s personal history, and her devotion to and familiarity with the topic bleeds through every page of the text. Her prose and organization in the book are well done, and Wilkie even expands on her coverage of Alice Spencer to discuss her three daughters, their marriages, and their usage of their own political and social power. Wilkie’s coverage of Alice Spencer is a fascinating, compelling, and informative read.

A fascinating look into a powerful Renaissance family : the book outlines in scholarly detail the use of marriage as a strategy for upward mobility.

Any thoughts about gentle aristocratic women spending all their time on needlework and gossip are shattered by this family saga of ambition and greed. Family security and legacy are paramount as the Spencer family evolves from rich rural sheep-breeders to one of the most powerful English families.

The book offers more detail than I needed to “ get the picture” at some points, but it was fascinating as a snapshot of a ruthless, powerful woman who set her sights on a goal and never veered off-course.

This book outlines the life of Alice Spencer’s whose life spans across the Tudor house reign into the Stuart house reign. I have always been interested in the Tudors and when I saw this book outlining the life of someone who lived during that time, I was very intrigued. This book allows the reader to learn more about the culture and societal expectations of the upper class families living in England during this time. Alice Spencer was a woman who dedicated her life to securing her family name in society.

To be honest, the first half of this book felt very slow for me. There were a lot of names and it was hard for me to remember the significance of each person. While I enjoyed learning about Alice Spencer’s actions to secure her three daughter’s marriages, I found the writing to be dry. Near the end of the book, the author describes a scandal involving one of Alice’s daughters. This part of the book gave reader’s a glimpse into the court proceedings and laws of the time. I found this part of the book very engaging. Overall, I feel like this book was really well researched and it is a good book to read for anyone who is interested in the time period.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is the interesting story of Alice Spencer and how her marriage and the power she gained from it created a lasting legacy. This legacy continues to live on and is most known through her recently well-known descendant, Diana Spencer. It tells of court intrigue, political maneuvering and marriages that created opportunities for families to be elevated in rank, as was the case for Alice, her sisters and her daughters.

I had never heard about this woman before and I am so sorry I hadn't Beck this book gave me an insight into a very interesting and engaging woman! If you like the Guest period of history definitely give this book a read!!!

If anyone is near LA, Vanessa will be speaking about this book at Vroman's next week.

For an American, I know very little (and care to know very little tbh) about American history. I eat up English history like nobody's business. I would not like to unpack what that says about me.

Most people are familiar with the Tudor period. I, myself, am more fond of the Plantagenets during the Wars of the Roses, but the former period seems more popular to write about.

Alice was born a Spencer, the very same family everyone's beloved Princess Diana is from. At this time, the nobility turned their noses up at the Spencers, having made their money from sheep farming. Money is money. Old money is hilarious. New money eventually becomes old money.

Anyway, Alice and her sisters made several advantageous marriages. So did their children. By intertwining their family with the nobility that so made fun of them, they eventually became a force to behold.

This could've easily been boring. In my opinion, it wasn't.

This is a great book. It flows really well and is easy to read. .Alice Spencer was indeed a woman who influenced generations beyond hers. I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend to anyone interested in learning more about British history.

I buy enough books that I am constrained to keep my books in collections. I frequently have to decide between biographies and history, and so it was with "A Woman of Influence." (For those who care, history won in this case.) Although this book focuses on Alice Spencer, a good deal of it concerns her daughters and other people prominent in Tudor England.

This was a most interesting book. Alice Spencer was an ancestor of the present-day Earls of Spencer, the family from which Princess Diana came. I thought I knew a fair bit about Tudor England, but I had never heard of Alice, nor the court case.

Wilke does not pull her punches in her descriptions of people's characters which is the mark of a good biographer/historian, but she also doesn't make the common mistake of judging historical figures by today's standards. I really enjoyed "A Woman of Influence" and highly recommend it to anyone interested in history.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

A fascinating read about the life of Alice Spencer, the daughter of a sheep farmer, who marries into the aristocracy and through her actions and influence her family and her descendants rise to the heights of English society during the Tudor period and beyond. Not much survives indicating Alice's inner life, but much can be traced through her activities, court records and the arts that memorialize her. It also shows, that though women were restricted by custom and law from many avenues of personal agency and power some women were able to use what paths were open to them and use their influence to advance their own agendas. Peril, scandal and success filled Alice Spencer's life and makes an interesting read.

I was particularly interested in the unique trial of an Earl accused of the rape (through being an accomplice) and sodomy of his wife. Not only did it show the institutionalized unequal standing women had in society, the blaming of the victim even when her claims were vindicated by a verdict against her attacker, but the importance of social position, a title, and the role one was expected to play in society. To upset that role was seen as a crime against the order of society, not just a personal action.

This was well researched and easy to follow. You might not always like Alice Spencer but she was a person who made the most out of her life and sought to promote and protect her family as a whole and indeed was a woman of influence.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

A Woman of Influence is an amazing biography on an amazing woman! Alice Spencer, who knew? I cannot believe that I have never heard of this remarkable woman and her influence on Elizabethan England.
I love history, and especially the history of women. It is great that more and more books are being written about them and that there are historians that are delving into the archives and finding out more about them.
Alice Spencer is a fascinating, ahead of her time woman, and this biography is so well-written, so interesting, and with so much new information that I was hooked!
This would make a great audiobook, for those who like that medium as well. Can they make a series about Alice's life like they did for the Tudors? She and this biography are amazing.
I highly recommend this book to people who enjoy history, biography, women's history, Tudor history and English history.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
I love both the Tudor period and learning the origins of some of the prominent families in English/British history, like the Spencers. And this was a very readable, well-researched biography of Alice Spencer, who came from the Spencer family before they’d achieve their prominence in succeeding generations, but would nonetheless make her way in the world. I was intrigued to find out about her connections to the Tudors through marriage, a virtue of her father making smart business decisions and being able to provide his daughters large dowries. Anne truly became influential in the Tudor and Stuart courts, and it’s fascinating to see the kinds of intrigue and drama she and her family got wrapped up in.
This is definitely a must-read for anyone who enjoys Tudor/Stuart history, especially going beyond the lives of the monarchs.

This is history at its finest: full of well-researched detail, complex characters explored, and an enticing narrative laid out in full. Wilkie gives us an excellent rendering of the complexities of Early Modern life as business mergers and political maneuverings, showing how one could rise through the classes, becoming influential while establishing a dynasty. She also does an excellent job of giving a lively narrative of Alice's journey, someone I had only heard of peripherally when reading of this era. Wilkie hints as she goes through the chapters, of events to come. This is an incredibly full life, and the reader will not be disappointed. Wilkie has a sure hand at presenting her material in such a way, as there is no confusion in dates and connections, as one might find in other histories. Her clarity of narrative is splendid.

I would put Wilkie with Alison Weir as a favourite author of mine for detail, and as superlative in narrative style. Yes, I would highly recommend this for readers of historical biography.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.