Was Wolf Hall originally written in the first person?

Question

When reading Hilary Mantel's novel *Wolf Hall*, I noticed that the protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, is referred to as often as possible simply as "he"/"him" rather than by his name. This includes in contexts where "he" would more naturally be read as referring to someone else: many times when reading such sentences, I would 'stumble', misreading who the pronoun was referring to, and have to go back and reread the sentence with the correct interpretation. For example:- > He sees three elderly Lowlanders struggling with their bundles and moves to help them. The packages are soft and bulky, samples of woolen cloth. A port officer gives them trouble about their documents, shouting into their faces. He lounges behind the clerk, pretending to be a Lowland oaf, and tells the merchants by holding up his fingers what he thinks a fair bribe. “Please,” says one of them, in effortful English to the clerk, “will you take care of these English coins for me? I find them surplus.” Suddenly the clerk is all smiles. The Lowlanders are all smiles; they would have paid much more. When they board they say, “The boy is with us.” > _{-- [Chapter 1](http://www.tor.com/2013/06/10/wolf-hall-excerpt/)} At first glance, I read this as the port officer lounging behind the clerk, or maybe someone else lounging ... I was completely confused about who was doing what. Only when I reached the end of the paragraph, "The boy is with us", did I realise that Tom must have helped the Lowlanders in some way, and then I went back and worked out that it was *him* lounging behind the clerk/port officer and signalling to the merchants.- There were many other (probably better) examples throughout the book, but I've given my copy away to charity and Chapter 1 is the only excerpt I can find on the internet.(This was part of what made me condemn *Wolf Hall*, despite its Man Booker Prize, as simply a poorly written book: if the reader keeps stumbling and having to go back and reread sentences because their intended meaning is different from their most natural meaning, that's usually a hallmark of bad writing.)It struck me that this excessive use of pronouns would have made much more sense if the book was written with **first-person narration**. If Cromwell had been a first-person protagonist, there would never have been any confusion about whether the pronoun referred to him or someone else - it would have been "I"/"me" and not "he"/"him". Thus, I came to the conclusion that the book was originally written in the first person and then hastily and somewhat shoddily edited into third-person narration, changing too many of the "I"s into "he"s instead of "Cromwell"s.**Is there any more evidence to support this conclusion?** Acceptable evidence might be either more textual clues suggesting that early drafts of the book were written in the first person, or possibly a statement from the author (if the author says it *wasn't* originally first-person narration, I'd take that with a pinch of salt, but if she says it *was*, I'd be inclined to believe her).

Answer 1

My guess is the problem here is not one of mixed voice. Instead, it is a recurring grammar mistake due to pronoun overuse and lack of pronoun reference. This occurs whenever it's unclear who or what the pronoun refers back to. A good rule of thumb is that you should never use more than three pronouns in a row, but even then it depends on the situation. Another way to avoid the problem is the physical distance on the page between the subject's name and the pronoun. If it's more that a sentence or two away you most likely need to state the name again. Sometimes the writer is trying to avoid repeating long or complicated names by using pronouns instead. In this case he or she might choose some simpler, yet clear, replacements, such as the star, the queen, Mr. T., the boss, the protagonist, etc.

The worst misuse of pronouns is when it, that, or this is used to refer to a concept that has not been clearly defined.