I am delighted to see this topic! I read Katherine many years ago, when I was in middle school, on the strength of having read Ms. Seton's novel My Theodosia about the daughter of Aaron Burr. I was completely entranced with Katherine and continued to read the novel once a year for some time afterwards; I also wrote to Ms. Seton, who very kindly responded to my enthusiam for her book and declaration of also wanting to be an historical novelist.
Anya Seton was a careful researcher (her father was naturalist and writer Ernest Thompson Seton) and she rarely substituted dramatic license in place of the facts. I understand that even today her books are much in demand and tend to fly off the shelves at used book stores.
Kimberly's mention of the plans to film Katherine fascinates me. For one thing, I happen to be a classic movie fan. Unfortunately only two of Ms. Seton's novels were actually filmed, which is a shame because I think they all have cinematic possibilities. Her strictly fictional Dragonwyk (though it did include as minor characters actual people such as Edgar Allan Poe) was filmed in the 1940s and starred Gene Tierney and Vincent Price. This version, Ms. Seton wrote to me, she was fine with. However, she did not like the film adaptation of another novel, Foxfire, which starred Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler.
As for the idea of filming Katherine with Rita Hayworth and Charlton Heston, I'm very sorry it did not happen. Unfortunately Ms. Hayworth was, by the time the book would have been translated to the screen, not at her Cover Girl best, due to the cumulative effects of a tragic life that would culminate in Alzheimer's disease. But her physical type was, I think, right for the role, and she had a real-life innocence about her (according to all who knew her, including one of her husbands, Orson Welles, and the recently departed Shelley Winters) that makes her portrayals of sophisticated temptresses all the more remarkable. As for Charlton Heston . . . wow, nailed, as far as I'm concerned! The looks, the acting chops, the presence, the attitude . . . everything. And if you ever happen to see a 1960s film called The War Lord, you'll know what I'm talking about, even tho' by then he was a bit too old to play the younger John of Gaunt.
