Russo's monograph “attempts to account for the myriad literary representations of Anne Boleyn that have appeared across the centuries in order to trace the way that she has become a symbol for a variety of conflicting ideas about women and power” (5–6). Russo focuses on anglophone representations in which Anne is a major character, and, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, where representations proliferate, on only “key texts and patterns” (6). A chronological list of Anne Boleyn fictions in those centuries is offered in an appendix. Russo's overview encompasses the historical, in sections on Thomas Wyatt, Hugh Latymer, and John Foxe; the delightful, particularly in the tenth chapter on transgenre fictions addressing time-traveling and supernatural Annes; and the deeply distasteful, as in M. P. Shiel's depiction of Anne's reign as a step in England's “social degradation” (124) or Olen Butler's Hell, where the only reason “to meet Anne in the afterlife [is] the opportunity to have sex with her” (259).

Russo's volume is clearly and accessibly written—a sensible choice for a work likely to have at least some appeal to the fans Russo identifies, outside of wide-ranging academic applications. The largely chronological twelve-chapter structure both offers something of a break from usual manuscript templates and makes the work more accessible. The chapter organization makes the text especially user-friendly for graduate students or for scholars focused on a particular century. Russo moves easily between generic and thematic organizations, adapting the structure of chapters to accommodate the exigencies of the works produced in each period.

Engagements with the influential works of Susan Bordo and Retha M. Warnicke throughout offer some of the clearest contextualization of the larger claims of the volume. Some sections foreground thematic and analytical work more clearly than others, but this challenge is to be expected for any first overview of a field. In fact, as representations multiply and become more diverse, Russo's consideration of their thematic overlaps becomes stronger. Alongside the central claims about our uses of Anne to figure our own positions, both contemporarily and historically, Russo also returns, throughout, to an argument that many depictions of Anne are asexual, offering an interesting lens for engaging certain depictions of ambitious women.

Throughout, Russo's identifications of firsts are useful without becoming overly prolific or reaching. She seems to reserve the designation for situations about which she is quite certain, including such instances as the first depiction of Henry Percy as Anne's true love (in D'Aulnoy's 1680 novel) and the first full-length biography of Anne (by Elizabeth Benger in 1821). She also neatly delineates between first instances of a theme or mythos and the most influential depictions, highlighting the particular influence of, as examples, George Wyatt's or Agnes Strickland's histories as traceable in recurrences of the apocrypha appearing in each account.

The one true limitation of the text is the elision of race, a topic quite relevant to the text's considerations of nostalgia, medievalism, and antiquarianism. Lines that address, for example, “the perceived need for Britain to promote a sense of British identity and values on the international stage” (270) suggest the important role that the concept of whiteness likely plays in Anne fictions. This missed opportunity is particularly noticeable in light of the extended consideration of Gone with the Wind 's influence on Anne fictions and of the insistent trend, in Anne fictions generally, of contrasting “the dark, intelligent, crafty Anne with the blonde, ‘simple’ and guileless Mary” (280).

That limitation does introduce a problem set against what is, in most other aspects, a core strength of the work: Russo's otherwise clearly feminist engagement. If Russo's own work shows that it is not unusual for a consideration of Anne Boleyn to be feminist in its approach and framework, such a framework is, nonetheless, key to any scholarly consideration's success, and Russo's is nicely pervasive. She links shifts in depictions of Anne to and within shifts in understandings of women's agency and autonomy. The later chapters map considerations of Anne fictions onto the waves of feminist theory in recent decades particularly clearly. The core arguments successfully highlight the evolving relationships between how we think about Anne and how we think about women.