Hilary Mantel Books in Order: Complete Guide to Every Book

Dame Hilary Mantel (1952 to 2022) was one of the great English novelists of her time, and her Wolf Hall Trilogy, the story of Thomas Cromwell at the court of Henry VIII, is widely regarded as the finest historical fiction of the century so far. She was the first woman, and the first British writer, to win the Booker Prize twice.

But Mantel was far more than one trilogy. Over almost forty years she wrote twelve novels, two collections of stories, a celebrated memoir and two books of essays, ranging from the French Revolution to a 1980s Jeddah apartment block and the bleak suburbs of the M25. This guide covers every book, where to start, and what to read next.

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About Hilary Mantel

Early Life

Hilary Mary Mantel was born on 6 July 1952 in Glossop, Derbyshire, and grew up in the nearby mill village of Hadfield. She studied law, first at the London School of Economics and then at the University of Sheffield, where she graduated in 1973, but she never practised.

In her twenties she suffered years of severe pain that doctors failed to diagnose. It turned out to be endometriosis, and the surgery that followed left her unable to have children. Illness shaped her life and her writing, and she wrote about it with great frankness in her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (2003).

Writing Career

Mantel married the geologist Gerald McEwen in 1973. They divorced in 1981 and remarried in 1982, and his work took them to Botswana for five years and then to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia for four. She began her French Revolution novel in 1974, but no publisher wanted it, and her first published novel was Every Day Is Mother’s Day in 1985.

Through the late 1980s and 1990s she built a reputation as a sharp, darkly funny and unsettling novelist, winning prizes for Fludd and An Experiment in Love without becoming a household name. That changed with Wolf Hall in 2009. It won the Booker Prize, and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, won again in 2012. The trilogy ended with The Mirror and the Light in 2020.

She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2014. In her later years she lived in Budleigh Salterton, Devon.

Writing Style

Mantel’s prose is precise, witty and often unnerving. She is at her best inside a single, watchful mind, and the Wolf Hall novels are famously written in the present tense, with Cromwell referred to simply as “he”, so that the reader sees the Tudor court through his eyes.

Her work is full of ghosts, bodies and the uncanny, from the medium of Beyond Black to the dead who crowd Cromwell’s memory. She was also very funny: even her darkest books are full of comedy, much of it at the expense of the powerful.

Hilary Mantel’s Books in Reading Order

The Wolf Hall Trilogy (Thomas Cromwell)

Setting: Tudor England, 1500 to 1540 Number of books: 3 (complete) Main character: Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son who becomes Henry VIII’s chief minister

The trilogy follows Cromwell from a violent childhood in Putney to the height of power at court, and to his fall. It covers the break with Rome, the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, the dissolution of the monasteries and the marriage to Anne of Cleves. The books tell one continuous story and must be read in order.

Wolf Hall (2009): Cromwell rises from Cardinal Wolsey’s servant to the king’s indispensable minister, as Henry breaks with Rome to marry Anne Boleyn. Booker Prize 2009.
Bring Up the Bodies (2012): The fall of Anne Boleyn, in less than a year, as the king’s eye turns to Jane Seymour. Booker Prize 2012.
The Mirror and the Light (2020): Cromwell’s last four years, from Anne Boleyn’s execution to his own fall in 1540. Walter Scott Prize 2021.

Full summaries, adaptations and reading tips: Wolf Hall Trilogy Reading Order

Standalone Novels

Historical Novels

A Place of Greater Safety (1992)

Setting: France, from the 1760s to the Terror of 1794

Mantel’s epic of the French Revolution follows three real revolutionaries, Georges Danton, Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, from their provincial childhoods to power in Paris and the Terror. She began it in 1974, nearly twenty years before it was published, and it is the book that most clearly points the way to Wolf Hall.

The Giant, O’Brien (1998)

Setting: London, 1780s

An Irish giant comes to London to make his fortune by exhibiting himself, and the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter is determined to have his skeleton. Based on the real story of Charles Byrne, it is a short, dark fable about storytelling and science.

Contemporary and Twentieth-Century Novels

Every Day Is Mother’s Day (1985)

Mantel’s first novel is a black comedy about a reclusive mother, her disturbed daughter, and the overworked social worker who visits them. It introduces the mix of comedy, menace and the supernatural that runs through her early work.

Vacant Possession (1986)

The sequel to Every Day Is Mother’s Day, set ten years later, as Muriel Axon is released from a psychiatric hospital and sets out to settle old scores. Read Every Day Is Mother’s Day first.

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988)

Setting: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 1980s

A British woman joins her husband in Jeddah and becomes convinced that something sinister is happening in the empty flat above theirs. Drawn from Mantel’s own years in Saudi Arabia, it is a tense, claustrophobic thriller about a closed society.

Fludd (1989)

Setting: A northern English mill village, 1950s

A mysterious young curate named Fludd arrives in the grim parish of Fetherhoughton, and nothing is the same again. This comic, magical novel won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, the Cheltenham Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Prize.

A Change of Climate (1994)

A Norfolk couple who once worked as missionaries in southern Africa have spent decades living with what happened to them there. A powerful novel about faith, charity and a family secret.

An Experiment in Love (1995)

Setting: A London university hall of residence, 1970

Three girls from the north of England arrive at university in London in 1970, where friendship, class and ambition collide. Partly drawn from Mantel’s own student years, it won the Hawthornden Prize in 1996.

Beyond Black (2005)

Alison is a professional medium working the dreary towns around the M25, haunted by the very real spirits of the men who abused her as a child. Darkly funny and genuinely frightening, it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Short Stories, Memoir and Essays

Learning to Talk (2003): stories and memoir pieces about childhood in the north of England.
Giving Up the Ghost (2003): her memoir of childhood, illness and writing, and one of her finest books.
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (2014): ten stories, ending with the much-debated title story set in 1983.
Mantel Pieces (2020): essays and reviews from the London Review of Books, including her famous essay on royal bodies.

Where to Start with Hilary Mantel

Best First Book

Start here: Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall is her most famous book and the beginning of her masterpiece. It shows everything that made her special: unforgettable characters, a living historical world, and prose that is both precise and gripping. The style takes a few pages to get used to, and then most readers cannot put it down.

If You Want…

Her greatest achievement: read the whole Wolf Hall Trilogy, in order.
A single historical novel: A Place of Greater Safety, her French Revolution epic, or the short The Giant, O’Brien.
Something darkly funny and contemporary: Beyond Black.
A tense, short thriller: Eight Months on Ghazzah Street.
Mantel herself: her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost.

Books by Time Period

Tudor England (1500 to 1540): the Wolf Hall Trilogy. More novels from the period: Tudor England Historical Fiction and Best Tudor Historical Fiction.
Eighteenth-century London (1780s): The Giant, O’Brien.
The French Revolution (1760s to 1794): A Place of Greater Safety.
Twentieth-century England and abroad: Fludd (1950s), An Experiment in Love (1970), Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1980s), and her other contemporary novels.

The Wolf Hall Trilogy: A Closer Look

Before Mantel, Thomas Cromwell was usually cast as the villain of Henry VIII’s reign: the ruthless fixer who destroyed the monasteries and sent Anne Boleyn and Thomas More to their deaths. Mantel asked what those years looked like through his eyes, and found a self-made man of great ability, a loving father and husband marked by loss, and a reformer serving a dangerous king.

The trilogy’s style is part of its power. The present tense makes events whose outcome we know feel suspenseful, and the use of “he” for Cromwell keeps us inside his head. Mantel’s Thomas More, by contrast, is a cold persecutor of heretics, a portrait that many readers and some historians have challenged.

The trilogy has been adapted twice for BBC television, with Mark Rylance as Cromwell: Wolf Hall (2015), which won a Golden Globe and three BAFTAs, and Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (2024). The Royal Shakespeare Company staged the first two books in 2013 and 2014, with Ben Miles as Cromwell, and Mantel co-wrote the stage version of The Mirror and the Light with Miles in 2021.

For book-by-book summaries, the adaptations and reading tips, see our Wolf Hall Trilogy Reading Order.

Awards and Recognition

Booker Prize for Wolf Hall (2009)
National Book Critics Circle Award for Wolf Hall (2009)
Walter Scott Prize for Wolf Hall (2010)
Booker Prize for Bring Up the Bodies (2012), the first woman to win twice and the first author to win with a sequel
Costa Book of the Year for Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2014)
Walter Scott Prize for The Mirror and the Light (2021)
Hawthornden Prize for An Experiment in Love (1996)
Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, Cheltenham Prize and Southern Arts Literature Prize for Fludd (1990)
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Legacy

Hilary Mantel died on 22 September 2022, aged 70, in hospital in Exeter, from complications of a stroke she had suffered a few days earlier. The Wolf Hall Trilogy was complete, and there will be no new novels.

Two collections of her writing have appeared since her death: A Memoir of My Former Self (2023), a selection of her essays and journalism, and The Woman Who Died of Robespierre (2024).

Her influence on historical fiction is hard to overstate. She showed that a historical novel could be both a bestseller and a literary masterpiece, and her inside-the-head approach to real historical figures has shaped a generation of writers.

Similar Authors You’ll Enjoy

Dorothy Dunnett: the other great literary historical novelist of the sixteenth century. Her Lymond Chronicles, starting with The Game of Kings, are set in the same years as the end of Mantel’s trilogy, with the same intelligence and demanding, rewarding prose.
C.J. Sansom: the Shardlake mysteries cover the same years from outside the court, and Cromwell himself appears in Dissolution, a very different man from Mantel’s. See the Shardlake Series Reading Order.
Alison Weir: the historian turned novelist, whose Six Tudor Queens series tells the stories of the women in Cromwell’s world, starting with Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen.
Philippa Gregory: Tudor court drama from the women’s side, faster and more romantic than Mantel, starting with The Other Boleyn Girl.
Robert Harris: for the politics. His Cicero Trilogy, beginning with Imperium, follows another self-made man rising by his wits in a dangerous state.
Pat Barker: another great English literary novelist of history, whose Regeneration trilogy brings the same psychological depth to the First World War.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Hilary Mantel’s best book?

Most readers and critics would say Wolf Hall, or the Wolf Hall Trilogy as a whole. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies both won the Booker Prize. A Place of Greater Safety, her French Revolution novel, and Beyond Black also have devoted followings.

Which Hilary Mantel book should I read first?

Start with Wolf Hall. If you would rather try a single book first, A Place of Greater Safety is her other great historical novel, and Beyond Black is the best of her contemporary fiction.

In what order should I read Hilary Mantel’s books?

Read the Wolf Hall Trilogy in order: Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and The Mirror and the Light (2020). Her other novels are standalones and can be read in any order, except that Every Day Is Mother’s Day should come before its sequel, Vacant Possession.

How many books did Hilary Mantel write?

She published twelve novels (including the three Wolf Hall books), two short story collections, a memoir and the essay collection Mantel Pieces in her lifetime. Two more collections of her writing were published after her death.

Is Hilary Mantel historically accurate?

She researched deeply and built her novels around the documented events. Cromwell’s thoughts and private conversations are imagined, and her sympathetic Cromwell and harsh portrait of Thomas More are her own interpretations, which some historians dispute.

What time periods did Hilary Mantel write about?

Tudor England in the Wolf Hall Trilogy, the French Revolution in A Place of Greater Safety, 1780s London in The Giant, O’Brien, and twentieth-century England, Africa and Saudi Arabia in her other novels.

Has Hilary Mantel’s work been adapted for TV?

Yes. The BBC adapted Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies as Wolf Hall (2015) and The Mirror and the Light as Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (2024), both starring Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. The Royal Shakespeare Company also staged all three books.

Are Hilary Mantel’s books suitable for teenagers?

They are written for adults. The Wolf Hall books include executions, violence and dense political detail, and some of her other novels deal with abuse and cruelty. Keen older teens interested in Tudor history often enjoy Wolf Hall.

When did Hilary Mantel die?

Hilary Mantel died on 22 September 2022, aged 70, from complications of a stroke. The Wolf Hall Trilogy was complete, so there will be no further novels.

How do you pronounce Mantel?

The stress falls on the second syllable: man-TEL.

Why is the first book called Wolf Hall?

Wolf Hall is the Seymour family home in Wiltshire. The king’s planned visit there at the end of the first book, in 1535, is where his interest in Jane Seymour begins, and that sets in motion the fall of Anne Boleyn.

What should I read after Hilary Mantel?

C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake series covers the same Tudor years from outside the court, and Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles offer the same literary depth in the sixteenth century. For her own range, try A Place of Greater Safety.

Conclusion

Hilary Mantel changed what historical fiction could be. The Wolf Hall Trilogy is one of the great achievements of modern literature, and her other books, from the French Revolution to the haunted suburbs of Beyond Black, show a writer of extraordinary range, wit and nerve.

If you are new to her, start with Wolf Hall and enter the Tudor court through Thomas Cromwell’s eyes. Then try A Place of Greater Safety and Giving Up the Ghost, and you will see why so many readers count her among the very best.