Margaret George Quote

I realized then how odd it must seem to them to be summoned by a woman. Roman women were at home quietly minding their business or else doing what wives were known to do in joke and song: boss, nag, forbid. As a foreign queen I was the only woman who was their equal and had the power to summon them, question them, and advise them on matters other than domestic details. I thought that a pity; there should be others.

Margaret George

I realized then how odd it must seem to them to be summoned by a woman. Roman women were at home quietly minding their business or else doing what wives were known to do in joke and song: boss, nag, forbid. As a foreign queen I was the only woman who was their equal and had the power to summon them, question them, and advise them on matters other than domestic details. I thought that a pity; there should be others.

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About Margaret George

Margaret George (born 1943) is an American historical novelist specializing in epic fictional biographies. She is known for her meticulous research and the large scale of her books. She is the author of the bestselling novels The Autobiography of Henry VIII (1986), Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles (1992), The Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997), Mary, Called Magdalene (2002), Helen of Troy (2006), Elizabeth I (2011), The Confessions of Young Nero (2017), and The Splendor Before the Dark (2018).
Several of these novels were New York Times bestsellers and the Cleopatra novel was made into an Emmy-nominated ABC-TV miniseries in 1999. Altogether the novels have been published in 21 languages. She is ranked at the forefront of historical novelists writing today.
Because of the detailed and accurate research behind her books, she has been a featured interviewee on A & E Biography (Henry VIII: Scandals of a King, 1996, and Elizabeth: The Virgin Queen, 1996) and a special on Alexandria (Cleopatra's World: Alexandria Revealed, 1999). She has also spoken at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Hampton Court the Tower of London, and twice at the Library of Congress's National Book Festival (2011, 2019).
In 2021, George authored an immersive audiovisual step inside a story tour for the Circus Maximus in Rome entitled The Charioteer on the BARDEUM mobile app.