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Benjamin Britten
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00Benjamin Britten: New Perspectives on his Life and Work reveals the extent to which Britten scholarship is reaching outside the confines of Anglo-American criticism. The volume engages with juvenilia and other orchestral works from the 1920s and examines a broad range of influences on Britten, including the works of Shostakovich and Verdi, the poetry of Ovid, and the cinema. Among his operatic works the dramatic qualities of Owen Wingrave arediscussed through a close study of Piper's libretto and we witness the genesis of a libretto written by Australian novelist Patrick White and submitted to Britten with the hope of a future collaboration. The volume uncovers the generally hostile reception Britten's operas received in Paris until around the 1990s. Britten's status as 'outsider' in both the USA and in his own country when he returned in 1942 is discussed: the possibility is that Britten wasbecoming nervous of the gathering US involvement in the war and the real chance he may be called up to serve in the US forces is also discussed here.
Benjamin Britten and Russia
Regular price $60.00 Save $-60.00This book explores Benjamin Britten's creative relationship with Russia throughout his life by examining his engagement with Russian composers, musicians and writers in the context of twentieth-century politics. The remarkable relationship between Britten and Shostakovich is a central theme, but it also evaluates other key influences, particularly Britten's passion for Tchaikovsky, his more elusive fascination with Prokofiev, and his ambiguous attitude towards Stravinsky; and it places Britten's enduring friendships with Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya and Richter in the context of his musical output. The book also analyses Britten's responses to various Russian composers and musicians- why, for example, did he dislike Musorgsky? - and considers personal and political perceptions of Britten in the Soviet Union. Finally, it assesses the wider question of Russian influence on Britten's works and in turn whether Britten's music had any influence on the younger generation of Russian composers, such as Alfred Schnittke. This study draws on Foreign Office and British Council files at the National Archives, published and unpublished material from the former Soviet Union, including the Shostakovich Family Archive, and oral history, in addition to the Britten-related archives. Benjamin Britten and Russia will appeal not only to Britten scholars and students but also to those interested in twentieth-century culture, history and politics more widely.
CAMERON PYKE is Deputy Master (External) at Dulwich College and part-time lecturer at the Centre of Russian Music, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art
Regular price $190.00 Save $-190.00Benjamin Britten Studies brings together established authorities and new voices to offer a fresh perspective on previous scholarship models and a re-contextualization of previously held beliefs about Britten. Using the mostrecent and innovative historical, musicological, sociological, psychological, and theoretical methodologies, the authors take off the 'protective arm' around Britten and disclose an unprecedented amount of previously unpublishedand disregarded primary source materials. The collection considers difficult questions of identity such as Britten's retreat to America, his re-entry into the British musical scene, and late-life revisions of his American works; scrutinizes the fraught establishing of the English Opera Group contemporaneous with the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts; explores his break with Boosey & Hawkes and inspects international copyright concerns in the Soviet Union' investigates sensitive issues of intimacy and Britten's relationships; and combines closer analysis of Britten's musico-rhythmic, harmonic, and compositional practices with a description of the more overtlypolitical context within which he found himself. Benjamin Britten Studies ends by asking what we can actually know about the composer in a reconsideration of the materials he left behind. All of this coalesces into avolume that not only serves as a model of on-going and future Britten research but which generates a greater understanding of the overall trends within the ever-synthesizing and interdisciplinary musicological field of the twenty-first century.
VICKI P. STROEHER is Professor of Music History at Marshall University.
JUSTIN VICKERS is Assistant Professor of Voice at Illinois State University.
Contributors: Byron Adams, Nicholas Clark, Jenny Doctor, Paul Kildea, Christopher Mark, Thornton Miller, Louis Niebur, Philip Reed, Colleen Renihan, Philip Rupprecht, Kevin Salfen, Vicki P. Stroeher, Justin Vickers, Lucy Walker, Danielle Ward-Griffin, Lloyd Whitesell
Bestiary
Regular price $29.99 Save $-29.99Bestiaries are a particularly characteristic product of medieval England, and give a unique insight into the medieval mind. Richly illuminated and lavishly produced, they were luxury objects for noble families. Their three-fold purpose was to provide a natural history of birds, beasts and fishes, to draw moral examples from animal behaviour (the industrious bee, the stubborn ass), and to reveal a mystical meaning - the phoenix, for instance, as a symbol of Christ's resurrection.
This Bestiary, MS Bodley 764, was produced around the middle of the thirteenth century and is of singular beauty and interest. The lively illustrations have the freedom and naturalistic quality of the later Gothic style, and make dazzling use of colour. This book reproduces the 136 illuminations to the same size and in the same place as the original manuscript, fitting the text around them. Richard Barber's translation from the original Latin is a delight to read, capturing both the serious intent of the manuscript and its charm.
RICHARD BARBER has written many books on the history of and life in the middle ages, from his Somerset Maugham Award-winning The Knight and Chivalry, by way of biographies of Henry II and the Black Prince, to an anthology of Arthurian literature from England, France and Germany, Arthurian Legends, and an account of the historical Arthur, King Arthur: Hero and Legend.
Beyond Britten: The Composer and the Community
Regular price $39.95 Save $-39.95Colin Matthews, Jonathan Reekie and John Barber reflect on Britten's aspirations as a composer and the impact of his legacy, and Gillian Moore surveys the ideals of composers since the 1960s. Eugene Skeef and Tommy Pearson discuss the influence of the London Sinfonietta, while Katie Tearle reviews the tradition of community opera at Glyndebourne. Nigel Osborne and Judith Webster explore the role of music as therapy, and James Redwood, Amoret Abis, Sean Gregory and Douglas Mitchell look at music in the classroom and creative workshops. John Sloboda, Detta Danford and Natasha Zielazinski discuss collaboration in music-making and ways of facilitating exchanges between the composer and the audience, while Christopher Fox and Howard Skempton examine the role of modernism and the use of 'other', radical techniques to stimulate new dialogues between composer and community. Peter Wiegold and Amoret Abis interview Sir Harrison Birtwistle, John Woolrich and Phillip Cashian, and Wiegold discusses his formative experiences in encountering music-making in other cultures.
All of these approaches to the role and identity of the composer throw a different light on how we address 'the composer and the community': the varied, sometimes contradictory, motivations of composers; the role of music in 'enhancing lives'; the concept of 'outreach' and the different ways this is pursued; and, finally, the meaning of 'community'. Underpinning each are genuine questions about the relationship of arts to society. This book will appeal not only to composers, performers and practitioners of contemporary music but to anyone interested in the changes in twentieth-century music practice, music in education, and the role ofmusic and the arts in the wider community and society.
PETER WIEGOLD is a composer, conductor and the director of Club Inégales and the Institute of Composing. He is a Research Professor of Music at Brunel University, and also director of the 'Brunel Institute for Contemporary Middle-Eastern Music' (BICMEM).
GHISLAINE KENYON is an author, freelance arts education consultant and curator.
Beyond the Notes
Regular price $29.99 Save $-29.99In this widely acclaimed volume, Susan Tomes, a rare example of a leading musicianwho writes about the craft of performance, describes her experience of twenty years of rehearsal, concerts and recording.
We knew from her recordings that Susan Tomes is a superb chamber player; now we know that she's a superb writer too. Michael Church, INDEPENDENT
She is as sensitive an observer and as subtle a writer as she is one of our finest chamber musicians...This is a book that should be read by practising musicians and music-lovers alike: here's one performer who really can communicate in words as well as music. JAMES JOLLY, GRAMOPHONE
Susan Tomes's bookgives you an intensely illuminating picture of the life of a pianist...she is a brilliant writer...Just as she magnetises with her playing, so too with her words. EDWARD GREENFIELD, GUARDIAN
In this widely acclaimed volume, Susan Tomes, a rare example of a leading musician who writes about the craft of performance, describes her experience of twenty years of rehearsal, concerts and recording. Her performing life has been centred on chamber music and the need to communicate it fully to an audience hungry for meaningful musical experience. She was a founder member and the pianist of both Domus and the Florestan Trio, award-winning groups at the top of their field. Part One is a series of diaries describing their travels and performances: Domus in the 1980s with its own portable concert hall, struggling to create the conditions for informal but intense concert performances, and the Florestan Trio, currently one of the world's finest piano trios. Part Two is a collection of thought-provoking essays about teachers, making records, practising and rehearsing, audiences, earning a living, and the particular challenges of being a concert pianist. Beyond the Notes gives an unusually candid view of the complexities of a life in music.
SUSAN TOMES, alongside her packed concert schedule, is a frequent contributor, on music and other subjects, to a number of publications.
Birds, Bugs and Butterflies: Lady Betty Cobbe's 'Peacock' China
Regular price $65.00 Save $-65.002020 Winner of the American Ceramic Circle Book Award
The early years of the famous Worcester porcelain factory established by Dr Wall have always been a little mysterious, owing to the destruction of the records of thebusiness for this period. Alec Cobbe's discovery of family papers listing the purchases over a period of years of a particularly beautiful and ornate table set have enabled him to give a vivid glimpse of how the factory interacted with its customers. He is able to describe the commissioning of perhaps the largest service of first period Worcester porcelain on record by Thomas and Lady Betty Cobbe for Newbridge House Co. Dublin. It was bought in stages from 1763 as the family travelled from Dublin to Bath each year, stopping at Worcester en route, as other Irish gentry did. The Cobbe service, uniquely in the context of British porcelain, was accompanied by a full set of Irish silver and steel cutlery fitted with Worcester porcelain handles matching the service. The various pieces of porcelain and their historical context are described as well as their painted decoration, and the sources for it. The later history of the service is outlined and its gradual dispersal in the nineteenth century, culminating in a final sale of the remaining pieces lot by lot in a Christie's sale in 1920. This book celebrates Cobbe's reassembly of more than 160 pieces of the original service over a period of more than thirty years and their return to Newbridge following their exhibition in the State Apartments at Dublin Castle. Overall, the book gives an important insight into Irish social life and patronage in the mid-eighteenth century.
Alec Cobbe was born in Ireland and still resides in Newbridge House, Co. Dublin, where his ancestors have lived since it was built in the middle of the eighteenth century. He practises as an artist and designer. As a passionate collector, he added to his family's historic collections and assembled the world's largest group of composer-owned keyboard instruments.
Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00This book examines the religious authority of St Birgitta of Sweden, the charismatic moral reformer and controversial female visionary of the fourteenth century, emphasising both representations of her prophetic mission and debates about her authenticity as a medium of divine revelation. It illuminates Birgitta's view of herself as a prophet of moral reform by explaining how her Revelations depict her religious mission and place in salvation history, goingon to reconstruct interactions between Birgitta and her contemporaries, including the significance of her prophetic authority vis-a-vis the priestly authority of her male clerical associates. Finally, it analyses arguments aboutwomen's suitability for mediating the divine word in posthumous attacks and defences of her claims to prophesy.
Through a close examination of Birgitta's lengthy Revelations, canonization documents, and texts by her posthumous defenders and detractors, this study demonstrates that members of her audience perceived her to be both a vibrant source of supernatural power and a dangerous transgressor of conventional boundaries. Informed by sociological studies of prophetic authority, it contributes to our knowledge of Birgitta herself as well as to our understanding of the dynamics of women's spiritual authority.
Professor CLAIRE SAHLIN teaches at Texas Woman's University.
Bishop Aethelwold
Regular price $29.99 Save $-29.99Æthelwold's life and his political and ecclesiastical importance in the 10th-century reformation receive thorough scholarly scrutiny in this appraisal of his life and work. The studies include a comparison of Æthelwold's career with that of other European monastic reformers; a study of Æthelwold's foundation at Abingdon; and of his involvement with the political crises of the 10th century. Æthelwold's skills as a scholar are assessed through surviving Latin and Old Englist texts, and as a teacher from the writings of his pupils. The scholarly work of his foundations is highlighted by a detailed study of the text of the Benedictional of St Æthelwold; other essays look at themusic and sculpture performed and produced at Æthelwold's foundations.
Contributors: PATRICK WORMALD, ALAN THACKER, BARBARA YORKE, MICHAEL LAPIDGE, ANDREW PRESCOTT, MARY BERRY, ELIZABETH COATSWORTH
Bishop Æthelwold, his Followers, and Saints' Cults in Early Medieval England
Regular price $95.00 Save $-95.00Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and his associates were some of the most radical monastic reformers in tenth-century Europe. In two generations, they took over most of the powerful churches in the kingdom of England and implemented a number of the policies found in their ambitious monastic manifestos. They also had a major impact on the early development of the kingdom itself, taking a role in the establishment of a shire system that lasted a thousand years, negotiations with invaders, and attempts to create a standardized English language.
Æthelwold and his circle were also enthusiastic venerators of saints. This book examines a range of sources, from hagiographies to charters, from liturgy to archaeological remains, to argue that saints' cults helped these men and women secure their power, wealth, and relationships with groups outside their monasteries. The saints that Æthelwold's circle promoted most lavishly were not necessarily the ones that they studied or the ones that matched their ideological agenda. Rather, Æthelwold's monks and nuns connected themselves to a wide range of saints, including the Virgin Mary, St Swithun, Æthelthryth of Ely, Iudoc, Grimbald, Botulf, Cuthbert, and many others. Venerating these saints helped Æthelwold and his followers appeal to other groups in society, including unreformed ecclesiastics, lay nobles, and the workers on their estates. This book therefore not only has implications for the study of early English history and literature, but also for the history of western European monasticism and saints' cults more generally.
Bishops and Reform in the English Church, 1520-1559
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00The English bishops played a crucial role in the process of Reformation in the sixteenth century, from the first arrival of continental Reformed thought to the virtual extinction of the office in 1559. This work has at its core the bishops' own understanding of the episcopate, drawn from their surviving writings and other contemporary discussions; such a study is key to understanding what became of the English Church of the middle ages and what it was to become under Elizabeth. Carleton examines the interplay between bishop and king, the episcopate in the context of other orders, and the social context of the office; he studies episcopal activity in key areas such as preaching, ordaining, and opposing heresy; and he notes the influence of the models which the bishops themselves set up as ideals, most notably Christ himself as the ideal bishop. The backgrounds of the bishops are set out in the appendix.
Bizet in Italy
Regular price $65.00 Save $-65.00In 1857, Georges Bizet (1838-1875) won the prestigious Prix de Rome scholarship which allowed him to study in Italy for a few years at the expense of the French state. While Bizet's correspondence from this time suggests that he was not fond of Italian music, he was especially drawn to the landscape and Italian Renaissance art and painting. Though Bizet's thoughts later turned away from rural life and the masterpieces of the Renaissance, his letters and journals from this period document the growth of a young musician who would eventually write Carmen.
Translated into English for the first time, Bizet's letters from his stay in Italy (at the Villa Medici in Rome, with expeditions to various other parts of the country) reveal much about his character and tastes. These extraordinary documents are fully annotated, and presented alongside never-before-published translations of Bizet's journals from the same years. Linking textual guides supplied by one of the leading authorities on the composer provide unique insights into the composer's formative years that cannot be found anywhere else.
Bizet's Carmen Uncovered
Regular price $60.00 Save $-60.00What were the forces that brought Carmen to the Operatic stage? There were certainly many: for example, the liberation of Spain from the Napoleonic rule in 1813; the subsequent emigration of Spanish artists and musicians to form an active community in Paris; the mid-century mushrooming of interest in visiting Spain facilitated by the establishment of railways. The first part of this book explores the reasons behind the French mania for Spain, and the second demonstrates how the travels and writings of Prosper Mérimée, particularly in his novella Carmen, but also in his earlier writings sent back to Paris from his first visit to Spain in the 1830s, were incorporated into the opera. What were the stories he incorporated into the fateful tale of the soldier who murders his gypsy lover? And how important was the Spanish background to this tragic tale?
This book explores how the stereotypes of Andalusian-gypsy spectacle, banditry, and the fiestas of the bullfight contributed to the eventual success of Bizet's opera. How did Bizet and his librettists, Meilhac and Halévy -- and the scenographic team -- capture the spirit of Spain so strongly as to seduce opera-goers around the world? And how did it hybridise real Spanish music and French Opera with the essential 'moments' of Spanish life so important to Mérimée and his librettists? The original staging of the opera is used to examine both 'places' and characters, in particular of realities and mythologies about gypsies in the nineteenth century. It concludes with the first ways in which the opera reached the stage, both in terms of its scenography and how it was sung, played, and acted.
Copiously illustrated with materials emanating from before the first production, the book reveals some of the realities of the Spain which went into this ground-breaking opera, to this day continually re-invented with new angles, new settings, and new interpretations.
Blood Waters
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00This book paints a picture of the eighteenth-century British Caribbean as a frontier zone in which war, international rivalry, disease and slavery are paramount themes. It explores the lure of the region as a vaunted site of potential wealth and derring-do, the fragility of tropical campaigns, the nature of slave insurrection, and the efforts of indigenous peoples (here, the Miskito of the Mosquito Coast and the Black Caribs of St Vincent) to carve out some autonomy from the British and Bourbon powers. It also explores the mutiny of a slave-ship and its unsuccessful raiding ventures in order to show how the dominant European powers sought to contain piracy in an expanding plantation complex. The book emphasizes the contrarieties of struggle, the difficulties preventing subaltern groups, whether slaves, free blacks, indigenous peoples or soldiers and sailors, from forging broader alliances, and the importance of tropical disease in shaping military outcomes. It warns against romanticizing resistance in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, showing that it was instead a 'marchlands' in which violence was a way of life and where solidarities were transitory and highly volatile.
Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval Battlefield
Regular price $29.99 Save $-29.99A penetrating investigation of medieval martial display... The reader is struck by its originality, and by its sophisticated and critical interpretative engagement with historical and literary sources. Particularly notable is theauthor's subtle exploration of the function of armour: not only its practical role, but as a form of display... A refreshingly different approach to the world of the medieval combatant and his place within that `host of many colours' that was a medieval army, it adds a new dimension to our understanding of medieval warfare. ANDREW AYTON, University of Hull
The medieval battlefield was a place of spectacle and splendour. The fully-armed knight,bedecked in his vivid heraldic colours, riding out beneath his brightly-painted banner, is a stock image of war and the warrior in the middle ages. Yet too often the significance of such display has been ignored or dismissed as the empty preening of a militaristic social elite.
Drawing on a broad range of source material and using innovative historical approaches, this book completely re-evaluates the way that such men and their weapons were viewed,showing that martial display was a vital part of the way in which war was waged in the middle ages. It maintains that heraldry and livery served not only to advertise a warrior's family and social ties, but also announced his presence on the battlefield and right to wage war. It also considers the physiological and psychological effect of wearing armour, both on the wearer and those facing him in combat, arguing that the need for display in battle was deeper than any medieval cultural construct and was based in the fundamental biological drives of threat and warning.
Dr ROBERT W. JONES teaches Medieval History at Advanced Studies in England, a branch campus of Franklinand Marshall College, in Bath. He was formerly a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, and an Associate Lecturer at Cardiff University.
Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval Battlefield
Regular price $95.00 Save $-95.00`A penetrating investigation of medieval martial display... The reader is struck by its originality, and by its sophisticated and critical interpretative engagement with historical and literary sources. Particularly notable is the author's subtle exploration of the function of armour: not only its practical role, but as a form of display... A refreshingly different approach to the world of the medieval combatant and his place within that "host of many colours" that was a medieval army, it adds a new dimension to our understanding of medieval warfare.' Dr ANDREW AYTON, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Hull
The medieval battlefield was a place of spectacle and splendour. The fully-armed knight, bedecked in his vivid heraldic colours, mounted on his great charger, riding out beneath his brightly-painted banner, is a stock image of war and the warrior in the middle ages. Yet too often the significance of such display has been ignored or dismissed as the empty preening of a militaristic social elite.
Drawing on a broad range of source material and using innovative historical approaches, this book completely re-evaluates the way that such men and their weapons were viewed, showing that martial display was a vital part of the way in which war was waged in the middle ages. It maintains that heraldry and livery served not only to advertise a warrior's family and social ties, but also announced his presence on the battlefield and right to wage war. It also considers the physiological and psychological effect of wearing armour, both on the wearer and those facing him in combat, arguing that the need for display in battle was deeper than any medieval cultural construct and was based in the fundamental biological drives of threat and warning.
ROBERT W. JONES gained his PhD from Cardiff University.
Bluestockings and Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00Situated within the broader context of eighteenth-century intellectual and cultural history, this collection redefines the role of the Bluestocking circle in shaping Britain's landscapes and social ideals. Against the backdrop of Whiggish notions of "improvement"-encompassing agricultural innovation, aesthetic refinement, and moral progress-it explores how women such as Elizabeth Montagu, Mary Delany, and Elizabeth Carter navigated the intersections of polite sociability, intellectual production, and estate management. Their contributions reveal a dynamic interplay between cultural critique and practical reform, positioning them as active participants in the period's debates on land, labour, and national identity.
Drawing on insights from the Elizabeth Montagu's Correspondence Online (EMCO) project, these essays uncover the creative and social tensions embedded in iconic estates such as Montagu's Sandleford and Lord Lyttelton's Hagley Hall. They delve into the poetic and philosophical musings of James Woodhouse, the sociable artistry of Mary Delany, and the symbolic landscapes of Wrest Park. By examining correspondence, poetry, visual arts, and cartography, this volume offers an unprecedented exploration of the ways Bluestocking women engaged with and redefined the designed landscape as a site of intellectual and environmental innovation.
This interdisciplinary collection reshapes the historiography of gender, environment, and cultural progress, offering fresh insights into the enduring significance of eighteenth-century landscapes and the intellectual communities that shaped them.
Bohemian Baroque
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Traditional polemical histories of Bohemia and Moravia identify the period from the early seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century as a "period of darkness" - particularly in terms of Czech-language culture. This book challengesthat interpretation from the perspective of musical culture and demonstrates that this was actually a vibrant, productive and innovative period, both for music in the Czech language and instrumental music. By focussing on the distinctive nature of Czech-language education and devotional traditions (rehabilitated along Catholic lines after the Thirty Years War), the book reveals a new understanding of Czech musical practices and repertoires as a beguiling blend of the older, non-conformist, vernacular traditions with the new, theatrical, Italian styles and genres. Drawing on a broad range of genres including sonatas, concertos, oratorios, Passion music, masses, motets, litanies andoperas, Bohemian Baroque reveals a fascinating culture and repertoire that have long been overlooked.
In the Czech lands, seventeenth-century courtly life emerged in a much different way from many other European countries. Bohemian Baroque underscores the prominent role of rural life in shaping musical culture more broadly in Bohemia and Moravia and consequently draws attention to the works and environments of composers whose careers were primarily in the Czech lands (in contrast to the traditional focus on more famous émigré composers). The book also considers the influence of Germanic traditions on Czech musical culture; several areas of overlap reveal newly identified examples of shared repertoires-in some cases, German and Czech even appear within a single work. Taken as a whole, Bohemian Baroque posits a new paradigm in which received notions of "Czechness" in the musical culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries might be reconsidered.
Bohemian Baroque will be required reading for anyone interested in the music of the Habsburg Empire and Central Europe, cultural history, or baroque music more generally. Students and scholars of musical style and music and identity will equally find much of interest here.
Robert G. Rawson is Reader in Musicology and Performance at Canterbury Christ Church University.
Borders and the Norman World
Regular price $170.00 Save $-170.00The Normans exerted great influence across Christendom and beyond in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Figures like William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard subdued vast territories, their feats recorded for posterity by chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis and Geoffrey Malaterra. Through travel and conquest, the Normans encountered, created, and conceptualised many borders, with the areas of Europe that they ruled and most affected often being grouped together as the "Norman World".
This volume examines the nature, forms, and function of borders in and around this "Norman World", looking at Normandy, the British-Irish Isles, and Southern Italy. Three sections frame the collection. The first concerns physical features, from broad frontier expanses, to rivers and walls that were both literally and metaphorically lines of division. The second shows how borders were established, contested, and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.
Boundaries, Space and Register in Beethoven’s Piano Music
Regular price $160.00 Save $-160.00This is the first book to demonstrate the significance of registral structure and spatial narrative in Beethoven's oeuvre across his stylistic evolution. Introducing a far-reaching new analytical method and theoretical framework to a substantial corpus of piano music including sonatas, variations and bagatelles, the book extends conventional notions of register, Beethoven's handling of the highs and lows of pitch, to the broader concepts of pitch boundaries and the shaping of sonic space. Tracing theories of register from Schenker to the present-day, Miller moves beyond these approaches in his discussions of what he terms "spatial analysis". Proceeding from simple to more complex forms in a broadly chronological sequence, the author describes 'spatial narratives' of each work by means of cutting-edge computational diagrams and close-to-the text commentary.
This book shows how linear patterns at extreme boundaries correlate with structural highpoints and divisions within musical forms, for instance sonata structures, forming striking large-scale connections within, and between, individual movements. Analysed are interactions of high and low boundaries through gestures such as registral bridges, registral shifts, and the distribution of climatic peaks and wide-spans. Equally central to Miller's study is the survey of keyboard instruments of Beethoven's day, keyboard choreography, and spatial expansion and contraction, reflecting pianistic virtuosity and expression. The mediation of structural and expressive aspects culminates in the physicality and spirituality of the late works interpreted with metaphorical symbolism.
Brahms and His Poets
Regular price $54.95 Save $-54.95Johannes Brahms's much-loved solo songs continue to be enjoyed in recordings and on recital stages all over the world. This book provides a wealth of information on the poets whose words he set, many of whom are still unfamiliar.A substantial introduction explores the multiple meanings song-poetry held for Brahms and challenges the widely held opinion that he responded only to the general mood of a poem. It is followed by alphabetically organised essays on the forty-six poets whose verses he set. Each summarises the settings, Brahms's links to the poet, interconnections between the poets, and offers further context situating the poet within a wider literary, cultural and political landscape. The poets are revealed to be part of a deeply collegial cultural community of which Brahms was an active part.
Covering Brahms's 32 song opuses published during four decades of song-writing, this book offers a way of understanding what Brahms believed to be the right poetic basis for his immortal music. It is designed to be an essential reference tool for students and scholars of Johannes Brahms, as well as performers and lovers of his songs.
Brahms and His Poets
Regular price $95.00 Save $-95.00Johannes Brahms's much-loved solo songs continue to be enjoyed in recordings and on recital stages all over the world. This book provides a wealth of information on the poets whose words he set, many of whom are still unfamiliar.A substantial introduction explores the multiple meanings song-poetry held for Brahms and challenges the widely held opinion that he responded only to the general mood of a poem. It is followed by alphabetically organised essays on the forty-six poets whose verses he set. Each summarises the settings, Brahms's links to the poet, interconnections between the poets, and offers further context situating the poet within a wider literary, cultural and politicallandscape. The poets are revealed to be part of a deeply collegial cultural community of which Brahms was an active part.
Covering Brahms's 32 song opuses published during four decades of song-writing, this book offers a wayof understanding what Brahms believed to be the right poetic basis for his immortal music. It is designed to be an essential reference tool for students and scholars of Johannes Brahms, as well as performers and lovers of his songs.
NATASHA LOGES is Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music and has co-edited Brahms in the home and the concert hall: Between private and public performance and contributed to the Cambridge History of Musical Performance and is currently co-editing Johannes Brahms in Context. As a song accompanist, she has performed in various venues overseas and in the UK.
Brahms: Symphonist
Regular price $170.00 Save $-170.00In Brahms: Symphonist, the late Robert Pascall offers new revelations about Brahms symphonies resulting from a life-long pursuit of Brahms scholarship. Completed shortly before his death, Pascall's book brings together four scholarly perspectives. First, it situates the symphonies in their biographical context narrating their genesis, performance history and reception. Second, the book offers text-critical observations, by investigating the relationships between sketches, manuscript sources, publications and arrangements made by the composer or by others in his lifetime. Third, matters of performance practice are presented: how were the symphonies performed in Brahms's lifetime, what performance values did Brahms espouse, what were the practicalities of performance, and what legacy as conductor did Brahms pass on to succeeding generations? Finally, the book gives an analytical overview of each work. One of the book's highlights is a reappraisal of the materials for Brahms's unfinished Fifth Symphony, situating them in relation to the broader question of Brahms's 'retirement' from composition. Brahms: Symphonist will be required reading for students and scholars of nineteenth-century and Romantic music, Johannes Brahms aficionados, as well as those interested in the development of the nineteenth-century symphony.
Brief Lives
Regular price $36.95 Save $-36.95John Aubrey's racy portraits of the great figures of 17th-centuryEngland stand alongside Pepys's diary as a vivid evocation of the period. Aubrey was born in 1626, the son of a Wiltshire squire; at the age of 26 he inherited a family estate encumbered with debt, and finally went bankrupt in the 1670s. From then on he led a sociable, rootless existence at the houses of friends - from Oxford and the Middle Temple -pursuing the antiquarian studies which had always obsessed him. At his death in 1697 he left a mass of notes and manuscripts, among them the material for Brief Lives. He never managed to put even a single life into logical order; all we have are the raw materials, scribbled down -`tumultuously as they occurred to my thoughts'.
With this full, modern English edition, which reproduces Aubrey's words as closely as possible, Richard Barber introduces us to Aubrey and his world, tells how the Lives came into being and enables many new readers to enjoy this eccentric masterpiece.
Bristol and the Birth of the Atlantic Economy, 1500-1700
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a transformative period for global commerce, with the principal focus of England's trade shifting away from trade with Europe, primarily in woollen cloth, to a new Atlantic system, with trade in a diverse range of commodities. Based on the fantastically detailed Bristol Port Books, previously thought impenetrable, and using new computer technology to analyse the vast amount of data, this book provides the first long duration history of a major Atlantic port in this period.
It rewrites the history of Bristol's trade, overturning much established thinking, for example showing that trade flourished in the late Tudor and early Stuart period, demonstrating that Bristol was involved in the slave trade much earlier than was previously thought and charting the growth of commerce with North America and the Caribbean from nothing to three quarters of Bristol's imports in the short period from the 1630s to the 1650s. Overall, the book represents a major contribution to understanding how the Atlantic economy worked and how it developed in this crucial period.
Bristol from Below
Regular price $170.00 Save $-170.00Bristol from Below captures the substance and scale of popular politics and protest in Bristol over the course of the long eighteenth century. It charts the lives of ordinary Bristolians in the making of their city and devotes particular attention to their relationship with the mercantile elites who dominated the city's governing institutions. While not ignoring the contribution of the middling sort to the cultural and political life of the city, the book focusses upon the interaction between authority and plebeian sentiment as a way of analysing the complexities of popular interventions in politics and society. It casts new light on the social dynamics of Bristol's 'goldenage' and how it is remembered in today's city. It also addresses the general themes of class, authority, custom and law that have long engaged eighteenth-century historians. Bristol From Below will have a broad appeal to scholars and students of eighteenth-century social, economic and political history as well as to urban and regional historians and to those interested in the time when Bristol was England's 'Second City'.
STEVE POOLE is Professor of History and Heritage at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
NICHOLAS ROGERS is Distinguished Research Professor in History at York University, Toronto.
Britain and Colonial Maritime War in the Early Eighteenth Century
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00In early modern Britain, there was an argument that war at sea, especially war in Spanish America, was an ideal means of warfare, offering the prospect of rich gains at relatively little cost whilst inflicting considerable damageon enemy financial resources. This book examines that argument, tracing its origin to the glorious memory of Elizabethan maritime war, discussing its supposed economic advantages, and investigating its influence on British politics and naval policy during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13) and after. The book reveals that the alleged economic advantages of war at sea were crucial in attracting the support of politicians of different political stances. It shows how supporters of war at sea, both in the government as well as in the opposition, tried to implement pro-maritime war policy by naval operations, colonial expeditions and by legislation, and how their attempts wereoften frustrated by diplomatic considerations, the incapacity of naval administration, and by conflicting interests between different groups connected to the West Indian colonies and Spanish American trade. It demonstrates how, after the War of the Spanish Succession, arguments for active colonial maritime war continued to be central to political conflict, notably in the opposition propaganda campaigns against the Walpole ministry, culminating in the War of Jenkins's Ear against Spain in 1739. The book also includes material on the South Sea Company, showing how the foundation of this company, later the subject of the notorious 'Bubble', was a logical part of British strategy.
Shinsuke Satsuma completed his doctorate in maritime history at the University of Exeter.
Britain and the German Churches, 1945-1950
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00It is well known that at the key allied conferences during the latter part of World War II the future victorious allies were already progressing their post-war planning. Duly, an Allied Control Commission, with the task of providing administrative functions and eventually handing them over to an elected government, was formed in post-war Germany. In the Western zones, the cornerstone of coordinated administration was a policy of denazification, demilitarisation and democratization. Almost all sectors of German life would thereafter to be administered by the Allies.
German Churches and religious affairs had, however, been promised to the defeated Germany. Of course, Nazism hadn't spared the Christian churches, and so questions of denazification and the future relationship between church and state in Germany remained significant. This book examines the British approach towards post-war German religious and ecclesiastical life by highlighting the role of the British Element of the Control Commission, more specifically the Religious Affairs Branch that was separated from the Education Branch at the end of 1945. Considering British attitudes to Catholics and Protestants, as well as the remaining Jewish and Muslim communities in Germany, this book uncovers allied differences with regards to organising future religious life in Germany.
Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688-1756
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Religious ideas and power-politics were strongly connected in the early eighteenth century: William III, George I and George II all took their role as defenders of the protestant faith extremely seriously, and confessional thinking was of major significance to court whiggery. This book considers the importance of this connection. It traces the development of ideas of the protestant interest, explaining how such ideas were used to combat the perceived threats to the European states system posed by universal monarchy, and showing how the necessity of defending protestantism within Europe became a theme in British and Hanoverian foreign policy. Drawing on a wide range of printed and manuscript material in both Britain and Germany, the book emphasises the importance of a European context for eighteenth-century British history, and contributes to debates about the justification of monarchy and the nature of identity in Britain.
Dr ANDREW C. THOMPSON is Lecturer in History, Queens' College, Cambridge.
Britannia and the Bear
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Decades before the Berlin Wall went up, a Cold War had already begun raging. But for Bolshevik Russia, Great Britain - not America - was the enemy. Now, for the first time, Victor Madeira tells a story that has been hidden away for nearly a century. Drawing on over sixty Russian, British and French archival collections, Britannia and the Bear offers a compelling new narrative about how two great powers of the time did battle, both openly and in theshadows.
By exploring British and Russian mind-sets of the time this book traces the links between wartime social unrest, growing trade unionism in the police and the military, and Moscow's subsequent infiltration of Whitehall. As early as 1920, Cabinet ministers were told that Bolshevik intelligence wanted to recruit university students from prominent families destined for government, professional and intellectual circles. Yet despite these early warnings, men such as the Cambridge Five slipped the security net fifteen years after the alarm was first raised.
Britannia and the Bear tells the story of Russian espionage in Britain in these critical interwar years and reveals how British Government identified crucial lessons but failed to learn many of them. The book underscores the importance of the first Cold War in understanding the second, as well as the need for historical perspective ininterpreting the mind-sets of rival powers.
Victor Madeira has a decade's experience in international security affairs, and his work has appeared in leading publications such as Intelligence and National Securityand The Historical Journal. He completed his doctorate in Modern International History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Britannia and the Bear
Regular price $36.95 Save $-36.95Decades before the Berlin Wall went up, a Cold War had already begun raging. But for Bolshevik Russia, Great Britain - not America - was the enemy. Now, for the first time, Victor Madeira tells a story that has been hidden away for nearly a century. Drawing on over sixty Russian, British and French archival collections, Britannia and the Bear offers a compelling new narrative about how two great powers did battle, both openly and in the shadows.
By exploring British and Russian mind-sets of the time this book traces the links between wartime social unrest, growing trade unionism in the police and the military, and Moscow's subsequent infiltration of Whitehall. As earlyas 1920, Cabinet ministers were told that Bolshevik intelligence wanted to recruit university students from prominent families destined for government, professional and intellectual circles. Yet despite these early warnings, men such as the Cambridge Five slipped the security net fifteen years after the alarm was first raised.
Now in paperback, Britannia and the Bear tells the story of Russian espionage in Britain in these critical interwar years and reveals how British Government identified crucial lessons but failed to learn many of them. The book underscores the importance of the first Cold War in understanding the second, as well as the need for historical perspective in interpreting the mind-sets of rival powers.
Victor Madeira has a decade's experience in international security affairs, and his work has appeared in leading publications such as Intelligence and National Security and The Historical Journal. He completed his doctorate in Modern International History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
British Art and the East India Company
Regular price $170.00 Save $-170.00This book examines the role of the East India Company in the production and development of British art during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when a new "school" of British art was in its formative stages with the foundation of exhibiting societies and the Royal Academy in 1768. It focuses on the Company's patronage, promotion and uses of art, both in Britain and in India and the Far East, and how the Company and its trade with the East were represented visually, through maritime imagery, landscape, genre painting and print-making. It also considers how, for artists such as William Hodges and Arthur William Devis, the East India Company, and its provision of a wealthy market in British India, provided opportunities for career advancement, through alignment with Company commercial principles. In this light, the book's main concern is to address the conflicted and ambiguous nature of art produced in the service of a corporation that was the "scandal of empire" for most of its existence, and how this has shaped and distorted our understanding of the history of British art in relation to the concomitant rise of Britain as a self-consciously commercial and maritime nation, whose prosperity relied upon global expansion, increasing colonialism and the development of mercantile organisations.
British Catholic Merchants in the Commercial Age
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00British Catholic merchants in the long eighteenth century occupied an ambiguous social space. On the one hand, their religion made them marginal and suspect figures in a nation increasingly defining itself by its Protestantism against the Catholic powers of Europe. On the other, their Catholicism, particularly as national rivalries erupted into outright war, afforded them access to markets and contacts overseas which their Protestant competitors found it increasingly difficult to reach.
Drawing on extensive original research on the business papers of one prominent Catholic merchant family, the Aylwards, Pizzoni maps a complex network of merchants emanating from trading housesin London, Cadiz and St Malo and linking Britain and Ireland, continental Europe, the Levant and colonial America. She reveals the high level of cooperation between these Catholic houses and their Protestant trading partners - a cooperation which seems to have overridden even such political perils as the Jacobite rebellion - and shows the increasing role played by smuggling and privateering in keeping the wheels of legitimate commerce turning in time of war. A final chapter looks particularly at the business activities of Roman Catholic women, who mostly inherited their husbands' businesses but in many cases developed and expanded them through new activities and investments.
This is a rich picture of commercial life in a time of shifting political and religious attitudes when the pressures of mercantilism led to de facto economic integration for the successful Catholic merchant class and opened up theroad which would lead to emancipation in the next century.
British Choral Singing
Regular price $170.00 Save $-170.00Choirs are living organisms and ever changing. This book tells the story of British choral singing (not choral music) and deals with both sacred and secular choirs and institutions from the medieval era through to the Covid pandemic and its aftermath. A series of different choral traditions has emerged over the centuries. The oldest is that of the all-male cathedral choir, while the secular choral society evolved from the eighteenth century onwards. Although there are many histories of individual cathedrals and choral societies, this is the first general history of British choral traditions. While English matters predominate, those of Scotland, Wales and Ireland are also considered. Even though British choral traditions have penetrated many parts of the world, there has also been much cross-fertilization of late with the rich choral cultures of other nations in Europe and beyond. Choral singing inevitably involved matters of social class, and a much more nuanced story is told here than the current view of choirs as being a largely middle-class phenomenon might suggest.
Scholarly in method while highly readable, the book offers invaluable background to choral practitioners. When choral activity is reviving healthily after the Covid 19 pandemic, such a volume appears timely, reminding the reader of the essentially communal and social nature of the choral experience.
British Choral Singing
Regular price $45.95 Save $-45.95Choirs are living organisms and ever changing. This book tells the story of British choral singing (not choral music) and deals with both sacred and secular choirs and institutions from the medieval era through to the Covid pandemic and its aftermath. A series of different choral traditions has emerged over the centuries. The oldest is that of the all-male cathedral choir, while the secular choral society evolved from the eighteenth century onwards. Although there are many histories of individual cathedrals and choral societies, this is the first general history of British choral traditions. While English matters predominate, those of Scotland, Wales and Ireland are also considered. Even though British choral traditions have penetrated many parts of the world, there has also been much cross-fertilization of late with the rich choral cultures of other nations in Europe and beyond. Choral singing inevitably involved matters of social class, and a much more nuanced story is told here than the current view of choirs as being a largely middle-class phenomenon might suggest.
Scholarly in method while highly readable, the book offers invaluable background to choral practitioners. When choral activity is reviving healthily after the Covid 19 pandemic, such a volume appears timely, reminding the reader of the essentially communal and social nature of the choral experience.
British Christianity and the Second World War
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00This volume presents a major reappraisal of the role of Christianity in Great Britain between 1939 and 1945, examining the influence of Christianity on British society, statecraft, politics, the media, the armed forces, and on the education and socialization of the young. Its chapters address themes such as the spiritual mobilization of nation and empire; the limitations of Mass Observation's commentary on wartime religious life; Catholic responses to strategic bombing; servicemen and the dilemma of killing; the development of Christian-Jewish relations, and the predicament of British military chaplains in Germany in the summer of 1945.
By demonstrating the enduring -even renewed- importance of Christianity in British national life, British Christianity and the Second World War also sets the scene for some major post-war developments. Though the war years triggered a 'resacralization' of British society and culture, inherent racism meant that the exalted self-image of Christian Britain proved sadly deceptive for post-war immigrants from the Caribbean. Wartime confidence in the prospective role of the state in religious education soon transpired to be ill-founded, while the profound upheavals of war -and even the bromides of 'BBC Religion'- were, in the longer term, corrosive of conventional religious practice and traditional denominational loyalties.
This volume will be of interest to historians of British society and the Second World War, twentieth-century British religion, and the perennial interplay of religion and conflict.
British Expeditionary Warfare and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1793-1815
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Shortlisted for the Society for Nautical Research Anderson Medal 2016
Britain's naval victories in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars succeeded in protecting Britain from French invasion, but they could not of themselves defeat France. This required the support of allied armies and necessitated the shipping of large numbers of troops to, and successfully landing them on, French controlled territory - a major logistical operation. Wellington's expedition to Portugal and Spain led to Napoleon's defeat in the Peninsular War, but there were many other British expeditions before this which were not successful, in part because they were too logistically ambitious and/or they lacked allied support. This book examines the nature of combined operations and considers the planning and preparation of expeditions. It highlights the navy's important role in amphibious warfare and describes in detail the logistical operations which supported British expeditionary warfare in the period. It outlines the role of the Transport Board, explores how it periodically chartered a large proportion of the British merchant fleet and what theeffects of this were on merchant shipping. The book concludes that the Transport Board grew in competence; that the failure of expeditions was invariably due to circumstances well beyond its control; and that its pivotal role inthe preparation of all the major military expeditions in which hundreds of thousands of British troops served overseas was very significant and very effective. Robert K. Sutcliffe completed his doctorate at the University of Greenwich.
British Houses in Late Mughal Delhi
Regular price $95.00 Save $-95.00This book explores ambivalence in the domestic building activities of a group of East India Company officials in Delhi in the fifty years following British occupation in 1803. Arguing that houses, their location and their contentsdirectly or subliminally reveal the values and beliefs of the individuals who commissioned and lived in them, it uses houses to examine the changing ways the British manipulated power, both relating to and resisting the pre-existing spatial layout of the city. The re-use of palaces and of monumental religious structures as dwellings, as well as new houses that appeared formally classical but concealed adaptations to local ways of living, show that despitean apparent desire to maintain cultural separation, there was both complexity and contradiction in the interrelationship of the British authority and the failing Mughal polity. The book also shows how room sequencing and functiondemonstrate a lack of rigid distinction between the official and individual roles played by Company officials. Household objects have multiple meanings depending on their use and context. As the taste and choices made in these houses were primarily those of men, the book also contributes to our understanding of competing models of manhood in British India.
SYLVIA SHORTO, an independent scholar, was Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut until the end of 2017. She writes on architecture as material culture in colonial contexts, crossing scales from urban environments to individual objects contained in domesticsettings.
British Imperialism and Globalization, c. 1650-1960
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00This volume brings together leading global economic historians to honour Patrick O'Brien's contribution to the establishment of global economic history as a coherent and respected field in the academy. Inspired by O'Brien's seminal work on the British Industrial Revolution as a global phenomenon, these essays expand the role of the Industrial Revolution and British imperial leadership beyond the issue of hierarchy and The Great Divergence. The change from the protective Atlantic empire, 1650-1850, to the free trade empire of the last half of the long nineteenth century is elaborated as are the conscious efforts of the free trade empire to develop markets and market economies in Africa. British domestic politics associated with the change and the continuation to the recent politics of Brexit are fascinatingly narrated and documented, including the economic rationale for imperial expansion, in the first instance.
The narrative continues to the crises of globalization caused by the world wars and the Great Depression, which forced the free trade British Empire to change course. Further, the effects of the crises and the imperial reaction on the East African colonies and on New Zealand and Australia are examined. Given current concerns about the environmental impact of economic activities, it is noteworthy that this volume includes the environmental impact of globalization in India caused by the free trade policy of the British free trade empire.
British Intelligence and the Fenians, 1855–1880
Regular price $190.00 Save $-190.00British Intelligence and the Fenians provides the first narrative account of the sustained and systematic use of espionage and secret policing in response to Fenianism between 1855 and 1880. It shows that despite the absence of a formal separate political police force or permanent intelligence agency, the British administration in Ireland created a sophisticated intelligence network to combat the revolutionary threat posed by the Fenian Brotherhood in America and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Britain. The hub of this intelligence network was the Irish administration's "F. Department", which analysed thousands of reports about Fenianism from throughout Great Britain, North America, and continental Europe. Authorities also established a corresponding "separate and secret organization" in London. Such arrangement provided both Irish and English officials ready access to shared intelligence about Fenianism until the end of the 1870s. However, government's agents never managed to infiltrate the leadership of the Fenian organization in Ireland. Such failure left Ireland's rulers uncertain about Fenian intentions and prone to resort to extra-legal measures in response to perceived threats.
The book makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of early political policing and espionage in Britain. By examining in detail what information was collected, how it was analysed and disseminated, and the use policy makers made of it, it more generally offers an interpretation of the role of intelligence in governing Ireland.
PADRAIC C. KENNEDY is Associate Professor at the Department of History and Political Science, York College of Pennsylvania.
British Merchant Seafarer Training and Education
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Because merchant seafarers practise their occupation largely out of sight of the general population ashore, there persists a widespread ignorance of seafaring and seafarers, which has been labelled "sea blindness". Moreover, much writing on seafarers and seafarer training is dispersed in journal articles, which tend to be restricted in scope. This book presents the first overview of merchant seafarer training and education in a single volume. It outlines the development of training and education from the earliest time to the present, examines the different aspects of training and education, and covers the numerous and differing policies and training structures put in place by various shipowners. Despite national state regulation merchant shipping is not a single organisation like the Royal Navy. In addition to being a contribution to maritime studies and maritime history, the book also reveals a great deal about vocational training and education in general.
British Music after Britten
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00This collection of revised reprints of essays, reviews and analyses first published between 1995 and 2018 surveys a cross-section of contemporary classical composition in the UK. The governing perspective is the impact of the life and work of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) on British composers who, with the exception of Michael Tippett and Robert Simpson, were born between the 1930s and the 1980s. Despite obvious and considerable differences in character and style, British composers like Harrison Birtwistle and Thomas Adès, Robin Holloway and James Dillon, have continued, like Britten himself, to seek personal perspectives on the still prominent procedures and personalities of more distant baroque, classical and romantic eras. Most if not all of these composers would deny being influenced by Britten, and many have reservations about his music. Yet, in light of the fact that British musical life and the institutions that support it have not changed radically since Britten's own time - the pace of technological change notwithstanding - to speak of 'British music after Britten' inevitably involves something more than mere chronology. As by common consent the leading British composer of the twentieth-century's middle decades, Britten continues to create significant contexts for the work of those who survived and succeeded him.
British Music and Literary Context
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Despite several recent monographs, editions and recordings devoted to the reassessment of British music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, some negative perceptions still remain - particularly a sense that Britishcomposers in this period somehow lacked literary credentials. British Music and Literary Context counters this perception by showing that these composers displayed a real confidence and assurance in refiguring literary texts in their music. The book explores how a literary context might offer modern audiences and listeners a 'way in' to appreciate specific works that have traditionally been viewed as problematic. Each chapter of this interdisciplinary study juxtaposes a British composer with a particular literary counterpart or genre.
Chapter one focuses upon the artistic collaboration between Hubert Parry and Robert Bridges; chapter two explores how Charles Villiers Stanford consistently returned to Tennyson's texts throughout his compositional career; chapters three and four suggest how an orchestral drama by Granville Bantock might represent a close reading of a poem by Robert Browning, andhow structure and imagery in a novel by Edward Bulwer Lytton might inform a reading of Edward Elgar's Piano Quintet op.84. The final chapter offers parallels between narrative strategies in Victorian travel literature (including works by Charles Dickens and George Gissing) and the nature of musical events in Elgar's concert overture In the South op.50.
Issues highlighted in the book include the vexed relationship between words and music, the refiguring of literary narratives as musical structures, and the ways in which musical settings or representations of literary texts might be seen as critical 'readings' of those texts. Anyone interested in nineteenth century British music, literature and Victorian studies will enjoy this thought-provoking and perceptive book.
Michael Allis is Senior Lecturer in the School of Music, University of Leeds
British Music, Musicians and Institutions, c. 1630-1800
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00British music in the era from the death of Henry Purcell to the so-called 'Musical Renaissance' of the late nineteenth century was once considered barren. This view has been overturned in recent years through a better-informed historical perspective, able to recognise that all kinds of British musical institutions continued to flourish, and not only in London. The publication, performance and recording of music by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British composers, supplemented by critical source-studies and scholarly editions, shows forms of music that developed in parallel with those of Britain's near neighbours. Indigenous musicians mingled with migrant musicians from elsewhere, yet there remained strands of British musical culture that had no continental equivalent. Music, vocal and instrumental, sacred and secular, flourished continuously throughout the Stuart and Hanoverian monarchies. Composers such as Eccles, Boyce, Greene, Croft, Arne and Hayes were not wholly overshadowed by European imports such as Handel and J. C. Bach. The present volume builds on this developing picture of the importance of British music, musicians and institutions during the period. Leading musicologists investigate themes such as composition, performance (amateur and professional), and music-printing, within the wider context of social, religious and secular institutions.
British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought, 1850-1950
Regular price $170.00 Save $-170.00British music between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century reflected changes and developments in society, education, philosophy, aesthetics, politics and the upheaval of wars, often signifying a distinctively British national history. All of these changes informed the published work of contemporary music critics. This collection provides an in-depth look at musical criticism during this period. It focusses on major figures such as Grove,Parry, Shaw, Dent, Newman, Heseltine, Vaughan Williams, Dyson, Lambert and Keller, yet does not neglect less influential but nevertheless significant critics. Sometimes a seminal work forms the subject of investigation; in otherchapters, a writer's particular stance is highlighted. Further contributions closely analyse the now famous polemics by Shaw, Heseltine and Lambert. The book covers a range of themes from the historical, scientific and philosophical to matters of repertoire, taste, interdisciplinary influence, musical democratisation and analysis. It will be of interest to scholars and students of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British music and music in Britain as well as to music enthusiasts attracted to standard works of popular music criticism.
JEREMY DIBBLE is Professor of Music at Durham University.
JULIAN HORTON is Professor of Music at Durham University.
Contributors: KAREN ARRANDALE, SEAMAS DE BARRA, PHILIP ROSS BULLOCK, JONATHAN CLINCH, SARAH COLLINS, JEREMY DIBBLE, JULIAN HORTON, PETER HORTON, CHRISTOPHER MARK, AIDAN J. THOMSON, PAUL WATT, HARRY WHITE, BENNETT ZON, PATRICKZUK
British Naval Captains of the Seven Years' War
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00We have always known who were the captains of the Seven Years' War, in the sense of having lists of their names. A few of them, who later became famous, we knew personally at least a little, but until now most of them have neverbeen more than names. The genius of this book is to bring them to life as individuals; to show their hopes and fears, their faults and virtues, and to fill in the details of their working lives. Far from the grand narrative of battles and campaigns, this book illuminates the everyday world and everyday thoughts of a generation of 18th-century naval officers.' N.A.M. RODGER, All Souls College, Oxford
This book provides a detailed insight into the operations of the British Navy during the Seven Years' War by examining the experiences of the cohort of men promoted to the rank of captain in 1757. Byrne McLeod outlines their early careers, discusses how they were selected for promotion and examines the opportunities for making reputations and fortunes through action first against the French and then also the Spanish. She also demonstrates the iron control wielded by the Admiralty over its captains and shows that, although connections and interest assisted greatly with promotion, allegations of 'corruption' were misplaced. The navy in this period was highly effective: an extremely complex and efficient bureaucracy where meritwas most definitely rewarded.
Based on extensive original research, this book explores the everyday minutiae of the captains' duties and responsibilities. The captains were well aware that every detail of their commands contributed to their effectiveness as fighting machines. From never-ending convoy protection to large-scale, world-wide amphibious operations, these men served in what has rightly been called the first global war. Maritime and eighteenth-century historians will find this book particularly rewarding.
A.B. McLeod obtained her doctorate in naval history from the University of Exeter following careers as a teacher and in the City.
British Naval Power in the East, 1794-1805
Regular price $95.00 Save $-95.00When war broke out with France in 1793, there immediately arose the threat of a renewed French challenge to British supremacy in India. This security problem was compounded in 1795 when the French overran the Netherlands and the extremely valuable Dutch trade routes and Dutch colonies, including the Cape of Good Hope and what is now Indonesia, fell under French control. The task of securing British interests in the East was a formidable one: the distanceswere huge, communication with London could take years, there were problems marshalling resources, and fine diplomatic skills were needed to keep independent rulers on the British side and to ensure full co-operation from the EastIndia Company. The person charged with overseeing this formidable task was Admiral Peter Rainier (1741-1808), commander of the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean and the East from 1794 to 1805.
This book discusses the enormous difficulties Rainier faced. It outlines his career, explaining how he carried out his role with exceptional skill; how he succeeded in securing British interests in the East - whilst avoiding the need to fight a major battle; how he enhanced Britain's commanding position at sea; and how, additionally, in co-operation with the Governor-General, Richard Wellesley, he further advanced Britain's position in India itself.
Peter Ward completed a PhD in naval history at the University of Exeter after a career in international personnel management, working for Californian high technology companies in the United States, Hong Kong and Europe.
British Naval Prize Law in the Seven Years' War
Regular price $85.00 Save $-85.00Naval historians are well aware that prize money was a huge incentive for British naval officers and sailors during the eighteenth century and much has been written about prize taking and the associated fighting. What is much less known about are the processes which then followed, the legal process which confirmed that the prize was lawful, or otherwise, the valuation and sale of the prize, the allocation and distribution of the prize money.
Based on extensive original research and including detailed case studies this book takes the reader through the full process from capture to payment. It outlines prize law, explores the role of prize agents, and discusses how the courts worked when considering prize cases. It covers appeals, examines how some naval officers gained great wealth through prize taking with others being much less successful, and highlights how particular individuals influenced the process. Throughout the reader follows the stories of individual captains and their struggles and triumphs in the prize law process.
British Privateering Voyages of the Early Eighteenth Century
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00The three great privateering expeditions into the South Sea, which set out, respectively, in 1703, led by William Dampier; in 1708, led by Woodes Rogers; and in 1719, led by George Shelvocke, were costly and ambitious long distance voyages, carrying great risk for their investors but promising great reward. This book tells the story of the voyages and their impact. It argues that, far from being anachronistic activities more in keeping with an earlier age,as some scholars have asserted, the voyages were significant events and had a huge impact - on politicians, influencing future maritime and naval strategy; on investors, swelling enthusiasm for the South Sea Company which ended in the disastrous Bubble; and in literature, where the narratives of the voyages became an important source for some of the greatest literature of the period, including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The book provides a great deal of original detail about the voyages, including the difficulties of undertaking such lengthy expeditions, unrest among the crews, and financial details of investmentsand returns - and losses.
Tim Beattie completed his doctorate at the University of Exeter.
British Royal and State Funerals
Regular price $190.00 Save $-190.00British royal and state funerals are among the most elaborate and solemn occasions in European history. This book is the first in-depth study of the ceremonial and the music performed at these events over the past 400 years, fromthe funeral of Elizabeth I in 1603. Covering funerals of both royalty and non-royalty, including Nelson, Wellington and Churchill, this study goes up to the funerals of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2002 and the ceremonial funeral of Baroness Thatcher in 2013. While some of these funerals have received a good deal of attention - especially the 1997 funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales - these extraordinary events have largely not been discussed in their longer historical context.
The book examines the liturgical changes in the Anglican funeral rite since the Reformation and also the change from the so-called 'public' to 'private' funerals. It includes many new findings onthe development of the ceremonial and its intricate peculiarities, as well as new insights into the music and its performance. British Royal and State Funerals shows that, despite a strong emphasis on continuity in the choice of music, the ceremonial itself has shown an astonishing flexibility over the last four centuries. Overall, the book also contributes to the debate on the monarchy's changing public image over time by paying particular attention to topics such as tradition and propaganda. Drawing on substantial research in principal libraries and archives, including those of Westminster Abbey, the College of Arms, Lambeth Palace and the British Library, this book is an exhaustive resource for musicologists, musicians and historians alike, providing an unprecedented insight into this most sombre of royal and state occasions.
MATTHIAS RANGE is author of Music and Ceremonial at British Coronations (2012). He is a post-doctoral researcher for the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music and its partner AHRC-funded Tudor Partbooks project at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford.
British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00The study of sociability in the long eighteenth century has long been dominated by the example of France. In this innovative collection, we see how a distinctively British model of sociability developed in the period from the Restoration of Charles II to the early nineteenth century through a complex process of appropriation, emulation and resistance to what was happening in France and other parts of Europe.
The contributors use a wide range of sources - from city plans to letter-writing manuals, from the writings of Edmund Burke to poems and essays about the social practices of the tea table, and a variety of methodological approaches to explore philosophical, political and social aspects of the emergence of British sociability in this period. They create a rounded picture of sociability as it happened in public, private and domestic settings - in Masonic lodges and radical clubs, in painting academies and private houses - and compare specific examples and settings with equivalents in France, bringing out for instance the distinctively homo-social and predominantly masculine form of British sociability, the role of sociabilitywithin a wider national identity still finding its way after the upheaval of civil war and revolution in the seventeenth century, and the almost unique capacity of the British model of sociability to benefit from its own apparent tensions and contradictions.
British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century
Regular price $36.95 Save $-36.95The study of sociability in the long eighteenth century has long been dominated by the example of France. In this innovative collection, we see how a distinctively British model of sociability developed in the period from the Restoration of Charles II to the early nineteenth century through a complex process of appropriation, emulation and resistance to what was happening in France and other parts of Europe.
The contributors use a wide range of sources - from city plans to letter-writing manuals, from the writings of Edmund Burke to poems and essays about the social practices of the tea table, and a variety of methodological approaches to explore philosophical, political and social aspects of the emergence of British sociability in this period. They create a rounded picture of sociability as it happened in public, private and domestic settings - in Masonic lodges and radical clubs, in painting academies and private houses - and compare specific examples and settings with equivalents in France, bringing out for instance the distinctively homo-social and predominantly masculine form of British sociability, the role of sociabilitywithin a wider national identity still finding its way after the upheaval of civil war and revolution in the seventeenth century, and the almost unique capacity of the British model of sociability to benefit from its own apparent tensions and contradictions.
British Spies and Irish Rebels
Regular price $39.95 Save $-39.95One of the Irish Times' Books of the Year, 2008
The struggle between British intelligence agencies and Irish revolutionaries has lasted for centuries - and still goes on. But it was at its most intense during the first half of the twentieth century. Ireland experienced a bloody rebellion, bitter partition and a stuttering march towards independence. Britain grappled with imperial decline and world war, while government agencies were worrying about being stabbed in the back by their Irish neighbour. Using recently opened archives, this book reveals for the first time how intelligence and intelligence agencies shaped Anglo-Irish relations during this formative period.
The book casts light on characters long kept in the shadows - IRA gunrunners, Bolshevik agitators, Nazi saboteurs, British double agents. It shows what happened when Irish revolutionaries stopped fighting, formed governments and started sharing information with London - while doing everything possible to hide this from the Irish public. It also fills in a missing chapter in the history of the British intelligence community, tracing its evolution from amateurishbeginnings, through a painful adolescence, to the sophisticated apparatus that is largely still with us.
The book probes some deeper questions about intelligence and the complex Anglo-Irish relationship. What has the most influence on government policy? The work of professional intelligence agencies? Or the misconceptions and preconceptions that politicians and civil servants bring to their jobs? Why are secrets so seductive - and sometimes so misleading?
Packed with anecdotes and unexpected paradoxes, this book provides new insights into the history of the British intelligence community and helps explain the twists and turns of Anglo-Irish relations during a time of momentous change. The lessons it draws still echo today, as Britain contends with the threat posed by violent militants, whether from Ireland or further afield.
PAUL MCMAHON received his bachelor's degree from University College Dublin, before studying for an MPhil and a PhD at Cambridge University. He has worked as a management consultant and policy advisor focussing on climate change and food security.
British Traders in the East Indies, 1770-1820
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00This book provides an in-depth analysis of the British private traders who engaged in the intra-Asian trade, known to contemporaries as the "country trade", between 1770 and 1820, providing much detail on who the traders were, howthey conducted their operations, and how they interacted with indigenous societies in a complex and very volatile region. It examines their relations with East India Company, and their moves beyond the Company's orbit to open upindependently new spheres of British commercial, political, and imperial influence. It discusses their social and political interaction with Malays, their good understanding of local societies, their use of the Malay language, their adoption of local practices and procedures, and their gathering of many forms of useful knowledge, all of which underpinned the growth in commercial activity and made the traders indispensable to East India Company officials. It explores their often fractious rivalry with the Dutch, and analyses the decline of the country trade following the establishment of Singapore in 1819. Throughout, the book provides many case studies of individual traders. W.G. Miller was Southeast Asian Studies Librarian at the Australian National University from 1974 to 1997 and a Visiting Fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University from 2004 to 2018.
British Travellers and the Encounter with Britain, 1450-1700
Regular price $240.00 Save $-240.00This book recovers the encounter with a "multicultural" Britain by British travellers in the Tudor and Stuart periods. When William Camden, writing in the sixteenth century, set out to write the history of Britannia, he deliberately took to the roads to discover it first-hand, and those diverse cultures guided and informed his journeys. Here, John Cramsie offers original perspectives on Camden's multicultural Britain through the study of British travellersand their narratives. We meet characters such as the Tudor traveller John Leland, who intended to tell the peoples of England and Wales about themselves; chronicle how they came to settle the towns, villages, valleys, and mountaintops they called home; record the marks they left in the landscape; and celebrate the noble histories and cultures they created. Dozens - eventually hundreds - of Britons shared the same passion to meet their island neighbours and relate their experiences. The individuals studied in this book include actual as well as armchair travellers and those who blurred the boundaries between them. Their letters, diaries, journals, and histories range from the epic,poignant, and matter of fact to the exotic, preposterous, and hateful; the sources include actual and imaginative narratives and those which combined both elements. Travellers painted Britain with, in Leland's words, native colours that were rich, vibrant, and, above all, complex. Their remarkable journeys are the story of how Britons over two centuries met, interacted, and attempted (or not) to understand one another. Written with an eye to debates aboutimmigration and ethnicity in today's Britain, the book emphasizes the long history of making and remaking the island's cultural mosaic. The encounter with Britain's native colours has been a burden of history and opportunity formillennia, not simply for our own times.
JOHN CRAMSIE is Associate Professor, Department of History, Union College, NY.
British-Ottoman Relations, 1661-1807
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00The British Embassy in Istanbul was unique among other diplomatic missions in the long eighteenth century in being financed by a private commercial monopoly, the Levant Company. In this detailed study, Michael Talbot shows how theintimate relation between commercial interest and diplomatic practice played out across the period, from the arrival of an ambassador from the restored British crown in 1661 to the sudden evacuation of his successor and the outbreak of the first Ottoman War in 1807. Using a rich variety of sources in English, Ottoman Turkish and Italian, some of them never before examined, including legal documents, financial ledgers and first-hand accounts from participants, he reconstructs the detail of diplomatic practice in rituals of gift-giving and hospitality within the Ottoman court; examines the at times very different meanings that they held for the British and Ottoman participants; andtraces the ways in which the declining fortunes of the Levant company directly affected the ability of the embassy to perform effectively within Ottoman conventions, at a time when rising levels of British violence in and around the Ottoman realm marked the journey towards British imperialism in the region.
MICHAEL TALBOT is Lecturer in History at the University of Greenwich.
Britons in Anglo-Saxon England
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00The number of native Britons, and their role, in Anglo-Saxon England has been hotly debated for generations; the English were seen as Germanic in the nineteenth century, but the twentieth saw a reinvention of the German "past". Today, the scholarly community is as deeply divided as ever on the issue: place-name specialists have consistently preferred minimalist interpretations, privileging migration from Germany, while other disciplinary groups have been less united in their views, with many archaeologists and historians viewing the British presence, potentially at least, as numerically significant or even dominant.
The papers collected here seek to shed new light on this complex issue, by bringing together contributions from different disciplinary specialists and exploring the interfaces between various categories of knowledge about the past. They assemble both a substantial body of evidence concerning the presence of Britons and offer a variety of approaches to the central issues of the scale of that presence and its significance across the seven centuries of Anglo-Saxon England.
NICK HIGHAM is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the University of Manchester.
Contributors: RICHARD COATES, MARTIN GRIMMER, HEINRICH HARKE, NICK HIGHAM, CATHERINE HILLS, LLOYD LAING, C.P. LEWIS, GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER, O.J. PADEL, DUNCANPROBERT, PETER SCHRIJVER, DAVID THORNTON, HILDEGARD L.C. TRISTRAM, DAMIAN TYLER, HOWARD WILLIAMS, ALEX WOOLF
Britten and Auden in the Thirties: The Year 1936
Regular price $29.99 Save $-29.99Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden were key figures of the 1930s, and here Donald Mitchell traces their lives during one crucial year, 1936. They worked hard to establish themselves, first through the GPO film unit, in a collaboration which flowered and spilled over into the theatre, and then radio - a new medium that the liveliest creative minds of the time were exploring and exploiting.
Britten and Auden also joined forces in works destined for the recital room and concert hall, among them Our Hunting Fathers, the political symbolism of which Donald Mitchell examines in depth, and On the Island, settings of early Auden that comprised Britten's first important set of songs to English texts. Much use is made of Britten's private diaries, which he kept on a daily basis, and a revealing portrait emerges of the two men's relationship, of their work together in many different fields, and of the reflection within that work of political ideas current at the time.
DONALD MITCHELL was Britten's close friend and publisher from 1964 until the end of the composer's life, and his authorised biographer. The T S Eliot Memorial Lectures delivered in 1979
Britten and the Far East
Regular price $36.95 Save $-36.95Benjamin Britten's interest in the musical traditions of the Far East had a far-reaching influence on his compositional style; this book is the first to investigate the highly original cross-cultural synthesis he was able to achieve through the use of material borrowed from Balinese, Japanese and Indian music. Britten's visit to Indonesia and Japan in 1955-6 is reconstructed from archival sources, and shown to have had a profound impact on his subsequent work: the techniques of Balinese gamelan music were used in the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957), and then became an essential feature of Britten's compositional style, at their most potent in Death in Venice(1973). The No drama and Gagaku court music of Japan were the inspiration for the trilogy of church parables Britten composed in the 1960s. The precise nature of these influences is discussed; Britten's sporadic borrowings from Indian music are also fully analysed. There is a survey of critical responses to Britten's cross-cultural experiments.
Dr MERVYN COOKE lectures in music at the University of Nottingham.
Britten's Gloriana: Essays and Sources
Regular price $29.99 Save $-29.99This volume is based on a selection of papers presented during a study course devoted to Gloriana held at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in 1991.
Glorianahas been a source of controversy since its première as part of the Coronation celebrations in 1953. It was planned as a national opera of broad appeal by its authors, Benjamin Britten and William Plomer, but, despite wide coverage in the media, the opera failed toestablish itself in the repertoire until a new production in 1966 revealed it to be a powerful and stageworthy work. In recent years it has attracted an increasing amount of scholarly attention.
This volume offers essays byROBERT HEWISON, PHILIP REED, ANTONIA MALLOY, DONALD MITCHELL and PETER EVANS which explore the opera's cultural background, the early stages of its creative evolution, the first critical responses, and various aspects of the workitself: these are supplemented by a list of source materials for the opera and the works derived from it, and an extensive bibliography.
Britten, Opera and Film
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00Benjamin Britten's 1954 opera The Turn of the Screw, based on Henry James's ghost story, has been described by many critics and commentators as cinematic. Along with Peter Grimes, The Turn of the Screw is one of the most frequently televised or filmed of Britten's operas. Some of these productions have used location footage and/or studio work, and others are based on theatrical settings. This book explores the notion of cinematic opera in the context of The Turn of the Screw and filmed opera in general, and questions what inherent cinematic qualities exist in the work which make it particularly conducive for screen interpretation, an aspect of Britten's compositional style which has rarely been examined in detail before.
Contrary to the prevailing narrative around Britten's disdain for cinema and television, the composer engaged with film as both a cinemagoer and film music composer early in his career and these experiences informed his compositional and dramatic choices. Archival research reveals clues to the composer's adaptation process. By tracing the progress from Henry James's original novella to operatic stage and screen production, via the development of Myfanwy Piper's libretto and Britten's score, the journey of adaptation is discussed in detail. A key part of the book looks at the subsequent interpretation of the opera on screen. Case studies evaluate eight directors' interpretations of the opera ranging from 1959 up to the 2020s. Included is a special study of Peter Morley's 1959 ITV version, which had previously been thought lost. This reveals the roots of Britten's subsequent engagement with screen media, culminating in his television opera Owen Wingrave. The book also briefly explores the influence of cinema on stage productions of the opera which have not been filmed.
Britten’s Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00By questioning when a group of songs ought to be understood not merely as a collection, but as a cycle, Sly shows that Britten's personal selection and arrangement is indispensable to understanding these cycles' extra-musical communication.
The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Winter Words (poems by Hardy) and Songs and Proverbs of William Blake - composed in 1945, 1953 and 1965 respectively - each represent a philosophical exploration. The terrains set out by the three poets are distinct, but also engage one another in important and unexpected ways. Their cyclic architectures are expressed not only in their poetic arrangement, but in their musical settings. Key relationships and motive remain central for Britten. Keys convey a network of interconnections, create groupings of songs, and establish levels of tonal affinity or distance. Motive - often intervals that can fit into any melodic, harmonic or rhythmic context - is used to create aural affinities between or among individual songs.
This book also offers a broader narrative revealing Britten's evolving philosophical convictions in post-war Britain. While it may not be the case that Britten intended any broader philosophical comment, the works together outline the cold and brittle state that emerges from loss and aligns with their composer's increasingly stark outlook on humanity.
Burial, Landscape and Identity in Early Medieval Wessex
Regular price $125.00 Save $-125.00Burial evidence provides the richest record we possess for the centuries following the retreat of Roman authority. The locations and manner in which communities chose to bury their dead, within the constraints of the environmentaland social milieu, reveal much about this transformational era.
This book offers a pioneering exploration of the ways in which the cultural and physical environment influenced funerary traditions during the period c. AD 450-850, in the region which came to form the leading Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. This was a diverse landscape rich in ancient remains, in the form of imposing earthworks, enigmatic megaliths and vestiges of Roman occupation. Employing archaeological evidence, complemented by toponymic and documentary sources and elucidated through landscape analysis, the author argues that particular man-made and natural features were consciously selected as foci for funerary events and ritual practice, becoming integral to manifestations of identity and power in early medieval society.
Kate Mees is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University.
Burnham Norton Friary after the Dissolution
Regular price $29.99 Save $-29.99Burnham Norton Friary, one of the first Carmelite houses founded in England (1242-47), was dissolved in 1538. Its remains comprise the restored gatehouse, west gable of the church rebuilt as a barn, Friary Cottage and an open space which was once the precinct.
The post-Dissolution history of monastic sites has generally not been well studied. At Norton, nothing was known of its owners between 1561 and 1914, what relationships, if any, they had, or how they used the site. The fate of the Friary buildings was poorly understood and details of the gatehouse restoration unknown. In this pioneering study, Sally Francis uses both modern archival research and a survey of local houses to recover the history and something of the architecture of the friary. Between 1538 and 1848 the church became a barn and the rest of the site was used as a farmstead. In 1848, its owner restored the gatehouse (1848/9), saving it from dereliction, but cleared away the farm buildings to turn the site into an 'Antiquarian relic.'
Studying the post-Dissolution history of the site has been a valuable exercise. It not only allows that phase of the site to be understood, it also illuminates aspects of the site's earlier history, which, given the loss of the Friary's own archives, could not otherwise be studied.
Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Bury St Edmunds is noteworthy in so many ways: in preserving the cult and memory of the last East Anglian king, in the richness of its archives, and not least in its role as a mediator of medical texts and studies. All these aspects, and more, are amply illustrated in this collection, by specialists in their fields. The balance of the whole work, and the care taken to place the individual topics in context, has resulted in a satisfying whole, which placesAbbot Baldwin and his abbey squarely in the forefront of eleventh-century politics and society. Professor Ann Williams.
The abbey of Bury St Edmunds, by 1100, was an international centre of learning, outstanding for its culting of St Edmund, England's patron saint, who was known through France and Italy as a miracle worker principally, but also as a survivor, who had resisted the Vikings and the invading king Swein and gained strength after 1066. Here we journey into the concerns of his community as it negotiated survival in the Anglo-Norman empire, examining, on the one hand, the roles of leading monks, such as the French physician-abbot Baldwin, and, on the other, the part played by ordinary women of the vill. The abbey of Bury provides an exceptionally rich archive, including annals, historical texts, wills, charters, and medical recipes. The chapters in this volume, written by leading experts, present differing perspectives on Bury's responses to conquest; reflecting the interests of the monks, they cover literature, music, medicine, palaeography, and the history of the region in its European context.
DrTom Licence is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre of East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia.
Contributors: Debbie Banham, David Bates, Eric Fernie, Sarah Foot, Michael Gullick,Tom Licence, Henry Parkes, Véronique Thouroude, Elizabeth van Houts, Thomas Waldman, Teresa Webber
By-elections in British Politics, 1832-1914
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Between the 1832 Great Reform Act and the outbreak of World War One in 1914, over 2,600 by-elections took place in Britain. They were triggered by the death, retirement or resignation of sitting MPs or by the appointment of cabinet ministers and were a regular feature of Victorian and Edwardian politics. They furnished political parties and their leaders with a crucial tool for gauging and mobilising public opinion. Yet despite the prominence of by-election contests in the historical records of this period, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. As this book shows, these elections deserve to be taken as seriously today as people took them at the time. They providedimportant linkages between local and national politics, between the four parts of the United Kingdom and Westminster, and between foreign and domestic affairs. They are vital to understanding the evolving electioneering machineries, the varying language of electoral contests, the traction that particular issues had with a growing and frequently volatile electorate, and the fluctuating fortunes of the political parties.
This book, consisting of original work by leading political historians, provides the first synoptic study of this important subject. It will be required reading for historians and students of modern British political history, as well as specialists in electoralhistory and politics.
T. G. Otte is Professor of Diplomatic History at the University of East Anglia. He is the author and/or editor of some thirteen books. Among the most recent is The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865-1914; Paul Readman is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of Land and Nation in England: Patriotism, National Identity and the Politics of Land 1880-1914.
Contributors: Luke Blaxill, Angus Hawkins, Geoffrey Hicks, Phillips Payson O'Brien, T.G. Otte, Ian Packer, Gordon Pentland, Paul Readman, Kathryn Rix, Matthew Roberts, Philip Salmon, Anthony Taylor
Calais: An English Town in France, 1347-1558
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00The capture of Calais by Edward III was an exploit which, coming shortly after his victory at Crecy, carried his fame as a warrior to the furthest corners of Europe. The melodramatic incident at the end of the siege with the leading citizens pleading for their lives brought the king even more public notice. Equally well known is the sad remark of Mary Queen of England in 1558 that, following its loss to the French, the name of Calais would be graven on herheart.
This book fills in the gap between these two milestones. It allows the reader to understand not only the military and political importance of the town for the English but also its key role in the English economy. Utilising the richness of the personal sources surviving, from the mid fifteenth century to the last years of English rule, it also provides a more intimate picture of the vibrant life of the town with its crowds of courtiers, soldiers and merchants all enjoying and profiting from the opportunities offered by 'an English town in France'.
Dr SUSAN ROSE is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University.
Calendar of Assize Records: Kent Indictments
Regular price $185.00 Save $-185.00Seventeenth-century Kent indictments have survived in larger numbers then have those of any other county, and they therefore provide a particularly full picture of the adminstration of criminal justice, the organisation of the assizes, the role of the judges and officials, and the whole process of criminal trial. This volume contains a full calendar of all the material relating to Kent from 1625 to 1688 which exists among the assize indictment files for the Home Circuit. The calendar also includes judges' commissions; writs and precepts; lists of local officials; coroners' inquests; and appeals of felony.
This volume is the last in a series of four, all edited by Professor J.S. Cockburn, with earlier titles covering Kent from 1625-1675; they are available upon enquiry from HMSO. Professor J.S. COCKBURN teaches in the History Department at the University of Maryland.
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and other Analogous Documents preserved in The National Archives XXXV: 1 Edward V to Richard III (1483-1485)
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Inquisitions post mortem are the single most important source for the history of medieval English landed society and are indispensable to social, economic, and political historians of the later middle ages; they were compiled with the help of jurors from the area, as a county-by-county record of a deceased individual's land-holdings and associated rights, where the individual held land directly of the crown. It is this explicit connection with land and locality - in economic, social, political, and topographical terms - that makes these documents of such comprehensive interest.
This volume calendars the inquisitions and related documents from the short reigns of Edward V and Richard III, from the protectorate to the battle of Bosworth (1483-1485). It looks at 101 individuals across 181 inquisitions and includes valuable information and detailed returns on the estates of the greater aristocracy, among them Henry Bourchier, earl of Essex and William Lord Hastings [d. 1483], alongside lesser landholders, jurors' names and full manorial extents. The volume incorporates not only inquisitions post mortem but also assignments of dower and a proof of age from across the counties of England and the Marches of Wales. It is especially rich in inquisitions relating to the lands of the royal justices and widowed dowagers and documents how many landholders had conveyed lands to trustees, thus escaping royal wardship and prompting remedial legislation by Richard's parliament. Standard information includes medieval descriptions of towns and villages and the charting of land and its descent at all social levels. The volume also provides comprehensive indexes of jurors, persons, places, and subjects.
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and other Analogous Documents preserved in the Public Record Office XXIV: 11-15 Henry VI (1432-1437)
Regular price $275.00 Save $-275.00Fourth editor, Kate Parkin
Inquisitions post mortem are the single most important source for the history of medieval English landed society, and are indispensable to social, economic, and political historians of the later middle ages; compiled with the help of jurors from the area, they are a county-by-county record of a deceased individual's land-holdings and associated rights, where the individual held land directly of the crown. It is this explicit connection with land and locality - in economic, social, political, and topographical terms - that makes these documents of such comprehensive interest.
This volume covers the period between 1432 and 1437. It containsvaluable information and detailed returns on the estates of the greater aristocracy such as Joan, Lady Abergavenny, John, earl of Arundel, Joan, duchess of York, John, duke of Norfolk, John, duke of Bedford, and Henry IV's formerwife, Joan of Navarre, queen of England, as well as those of lesser landholders and the middling gentry of England and the marches of Wales. Standard information includes medieval descriptions of towns and villages and full manorial extents and the volume also provides comprehensive indexes of jurors, persons, places, and subjects.
ACADEMIC DIRECTOR AND GENERAL EDITOR: Professor Christine Carpenter, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.
EDITORS
Dr M.L. Holford was a research associate at the Universities of Durham and Cambridge from 2003 to 2008.
Dr S.A. Mileson is college lecturer, St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Dr C.V. Noble was a researchassociate at the University of Cambridge from 1999 to 2008.
Dr Kate Parkin was a research associate at the University of Cambridge from 1999 to 2005.
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and other Analogous Documents preserved in the Public Record Office XXV: 16-20 Henry VI (1437-1442)
Regular price $275.00 Save $-275.00Inquisitions post mortem are the single most important source for the history of medieval English landed society, and are indispensable to social, economic, and political historians of the later middle ages; they were compiled with the help of jurors from the area, as a county-by-county record of a deceased individual's land-holdings and associated rights, where the individual held land directly of the crown. It is this explicit connection with land and locality - in economic, social, political, and topographical terms - that makes these documents of such comprehensive interest.
This volume incorporates not only inquisitions post mortem but also assignments of dower and proofs of age from across the counties of England and the Marches of Wales. Covering the period between 1437 and 1442, it is especially rich in inquisitions relating to the lands of the earls of Warwick, and the Arundels and Fitzalans. Rich rewards also await the more casual inquirer. Quite apart from buried treasure [gold and silver were unearthed at St Paul's Cray, Kent], standard information includes medieval descriptions of towns and villages and the charting of land and its descent at all social levels. The volume also provides comprehensive indexes of persons, places, and subjects.
ACADEMIC DIRECTOR AND GENERAL EDITOR: Christine Carpenter
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and other Analogous Documents preserved in the Public Record Office XXVI: 21-25 Henry VI (1442-1447)
Regular price $275.00 Save $-275.00Inquisitions post mortem are the single most important source for the history of medieval English landed society, and are indispensable to social, economic, and political historians of the later middle ages; they were compiled with the help of jurors from the area, as a county-by-county record of a deceased individual's land-holdings and associated rights, where the individual held land directly of the crown. It is this explicit connection with land and locality - in economic, social, political, and topographical terms - that makes these documents of such comprehensive interest.
This fifth volume in the new series, which calendars the inquisitions and related documents from Henry VI's reign more fully than ever before, deals with the years between 1442 and 1447. It includes valuable information and detailed returns on the estates of the greater aristocracy - e.g. John Beaufort, duke of Somerset (d. 1444), and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (d. 1447), alongside lesser landholders, jurors' names and full manorial extents. It also provides comprehensive indexes of persons, places, and subjects.
ACADEMIC DIRECTOR AND GENERAL EDITOR: Christine Carpenter
Calendar of Inquisitions Post-Mortem and other Analogous Documents preserved in the Public Record Office XXII: 1-5 Henry VI (1422-27)
Regular price $275.00 Save $-275.00Academic Director and General Editor: Christine Carpenter
This volume follows its predecessor numerically, but it initiates a new series to complete the calendars of medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem. The growth of interest in the late-medieval nobility and gentry and their estates, and the significance of IPMs for such research, makes it especially important that the gap for the years 1422-85 should be filled. The volume includes a wide-ranginggeneral introduction to the series by Dr Christine Carpenter, which considers the history and production of IPMs and their use as sources. Innovations include the addition of all jurors names, which it is hoped will encourage further interest in the prosperous villagers who characteristically sat on these juries, and details reflective of administrative processes. The volume covers the first five years of Henry VI's reign, a period of minority and of continuing war in France. Notable tenants include Edmund earl of March, Ralph earl of Westmorland and the de la Pole heiresses.
Calendar of Inquisitions Post-Mortem and other Analogous Documents preserved in the Public Record Office XXIII: 6-10 Henry VI (1427-1432)
Regular price $275.00 Save $-275.00CLAIRE NOBLE is a Research Associate, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.
Academic Director and General Editor: CHRISTINE CARPENTER
Cameralism in Practice
Regular price $36.95 Save $-36.95This book discusses the impact of cameralism on the practices of governance, early modern state-building and economy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. It argues that the cameralist conception of state and economy - aform of 'science' of government dedicated to reforming society while promoting economic development, and often associated mainly with Prussia - had significant impact far beyond Germany and Austria. In fact, its influence spread into Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Portugal, Northern Italy and other parts of Europe. In this volume, an international set of experts discusses administrative practices and policies in relation to population, forestry, proto-industry,trade, mining affairs, education, police regulation, and insurance. The book will appeal to early modernists, economic historians and historians of economic thought.
MARTEN SEPPEL is Associate Professor of Early ModernHistory at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge. KEITH TRIBE has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and taught at the University of Keele (UK) from 1976 to 2002, retiring as Reader in Economics. He is now working as a highly regarded professional translator and independent scholar. Forthcoming work includes a new translation of Max Weber, Economy and Society Part One (Harvard University Press, 2018). His publications include Strategies of Economic Order (CUP, 1995/2007); The Economy of the Word. Language, History, and Economics (OUP, 2015); and (edited with Pat Hudson) The Contradictions of Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Agenda, 2016).
Contributors: ROGER BARTLETT, ALEXANDRE MENDES CUNHA, HANS FRAMBACH, GUILLAUME GARNER, LARS MAGNUSSON, INGRID MARKUSSEN, FRANK OBERHOLZNER, GÖRAN RYDÉN, MARTEN SEPPEL, KEITH TRIBE, PAUL WARDE
Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00Anglo-Saxon authorities often punished lawbreakers with harsh corporal penalties, such as execution, mutilation and imprisonment. Despite their severity, however, these penalties were not arbitrary exercises of power. Rather, theywere informed by nuanced philosophies of punishment which sought to resolve conflict, keep the peace and enforce Christian morality.
The ten essays in this volume engage legal, literary, historical, and archaeological evidence to investigate the role of punishment in Anglo-Saxon society. Three dominant themes emerge in the collection. First is the shift from a culture of retributive feud to a system of top-down punishment, in which penalties were imposed by an authority figure responsible for keeping the peace. Second is the use of spectacular punishment to enhance royal standing, as Anglo-Saxon kings sought to centralize and legitimize their power. Third is the intersectionof secular punishment and penitential practice, as Christian authorities tempered penalties for material crime with concern for the souls of the condemned. Together, these studies demonstrate that in Anglo-Saxon England, capital and corporal punishments were considered necessary, legitimate, and righteous methods of social control.
Jay Paul Gates is Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in The City University of New York; Nicole Marafioti is Assistant Professor of History and co-director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Contributors: Valerie Allen, Jo Buckberry, Daniela Fruscione, Jay Paul Gates, Stefan Jurasinski, Nicole Marafioti, Daniel O'Gorman, Lisi Oliver, Andrew Rabin, Daniel Thomas.
Capitalism: Histories
Regular price $36.95 Save $-36.95This book re-examines the historical emergence and evolution of capitalism. Why did a radically new way of organizing economic life emerge in regions of the early modern world? Why did it eventually encompass the globe, tying the peoples of the world together in a common economic fate? These questions have been at the heart of historical and social-scientific inquiry since the nineteenth century. They are explored and answered anew by the scholars gathered together in this geographically and theoretically capacious volume. The chapters explore the emergence and development of capitalism in Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia, North America, and the Atlantic world, and they engage with many of the major intellectual approaches for understanding capitalism, from the New Institutional Economics to world-systems theory.
The authors share a common commitment, but not a common approach, to understanding the historical development of capitalism. They believe that the emergence and evolution of capitalism must be understood by examining the concrete conditions of socioeconomic life in a particular country, empire, or region, and that such empirically and archivally driven historical analysis must be combined with theoretical discussion of the concepts and categories used to make sense of capitalism and its dynamics.
This work offers different accounts of capitalist development across and within major regions of the world. It is a histories of, rather than a history of, capitalism. As such, it introduces readers to new historical research on capitalist development in different regional and national contexts and to several significant intellectual approaches for understanding what Max Weber called "the most fateful force of our modern life."
Careers and Crises in the Age of Charles I
Regular price $95.00 Save $-95.00This book examines the lives and circumstances of a variety of English men and women in the decades before the English Civil War, and follows some of them to the Restoration. It introduces a selection of Charles I's people, some of them previously undocumented, and explores their aspirations and discontents, their engagement with their kindred, their colleagues and central authority. These were members of the clerical, professional and commercial classes or from the minor gentry and aristocratic fringe - the backbone of the political nation - engaged, in various ways, with military, governmental, ecclesiastical or commercial affairs.
Most feature little in previous historical studies, but key moments in their lives are reconstructed here from scattered references or rare collections. They are shown negotiating the shoals of ambition and opportunity, kinship and patronage, religious anxiety and personal distress, in an age they recognized as 'troubled'. Preoccupied by their own careers and comforts, and driven by personal anxieties and ambitions, Charles I's subjects coped with the pressures of public occurrences and the business of church and state. In that regard they shared some stresses with our own age, though theirs eventuated in civil war and revolution.
Carl Nielsen and the Idea of Modernism
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) is one of the most playful, life-affirming and awkward voices in twentieth-century music. His work resists easy stylistic categorisation or containment, yet its melodic richness and harmonic vitality are immediately appealing and engaging. Nielsen's symphonies, concertos and operas are an increasingly prominent feature of the international repertoire, and his songs remain perennially popular at home in Denmark. But his work has only rarely attracted sustained critical attention within the scholarly community; he remains arguably the most underrated composer of his international generation.
This book offers a critical re-evaluation of Carl Nielsen's music and his rich literary and artistic contexts. Drawing extensively on contemporary writing and criticism, as well as the research of the newly completed Carl Nielsen Edition, the book presents a series of case studies centred on key works in Carl Nielsen's output, particularly his comic opera Maskarade, the Third Symphony (Sinfonia Espansiva), and his final symphony, the Sinfonia Semplice. Topics covered include his relationship with symbolism and fin-de-siècle decadence, vitalism, counterpoint, and the Danish landscape. Running throughout the book is a critical engagement with the idea of musical modernism - a term which, for Nielsen, was fraught withanxiety and yet provided a constant creative stimulus.
DANIEL M. GRIMLEY holds a University Lectureship in Music at Oxford, and is the Tutorial Fellow in Music at Merton College and Lecturer in Music, Landscape at University College. His previous books include Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity (Boydell, 2006) and the Cambridge Companion to Sibelius (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library
Regular price $275.00 Save $-275.00The English legal manuscripts in Cambridge University Library form one of the most important collections in the world. The principal treasures derive from the renowned library, containing over 230 volumes, collected by John Moore(d.1714), Bishop of Ely, presented to the University by King George I in 1715. It includes some of the old manuscripts collected by Francis Tate (d.1616), and the working manuscript library of Mr Justice Nicholas (d.1667). The collection also contains medieval statute-books, year-books, medieval and early modern readings and moots in the inns of court, and law reports from the Tudor period down to the reign of Charles II, together with examples of every other major type of manuscript law book in use in England prior to the eighteenth century.
As well as being an essential finding-aid, this new catalogue includes a description of the contents of each manuscript, bibliographicalnotes on the text (listing hundreds of related manuscripts in other libraries), and full codicological descriptions of the medieval manuscripts by Dr Jayne Ringrose. No similar catalogue of English legal manuscripts has ever beenpublished before.
Professor J.H. BAKER is Professor of English Legal History at Cambridge University.
Catalogue of Manuscripts written or owned in England up to 1200 containing Music
Regular price $200.00 Save $-200.00This descriptive catalogue, comprising descriptions of some 364 sources held by 75 institutions and individuals, enumerates the remains of the written musical traditions for the early medieval period of an entire country. Each record is complemented by paleographical and codicological analyses, and the whole by a bibliography, by comprehensive indices of incipits and subjects, and by eight full-page plates. It thus illuminates a facet of medieval England which has never been studied in full and about which we know very little compared to our knowledge of pictorial art and letters. It will be indispensable not only for students of music and liturgy, but for medievalists in general.
This book is published in association with the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society.
K.D. HARTZELL is Professor of Music Emeritus, University at Albany, Albany, New York.
Catch and Glee Culture in Eighteenth-Century England
Regular price $95.00 Save $-95.00The rise of the catch and glee in Georgian England represents a rare example of indigenous forms establishing themselves within a wide musical and social context. This study examines a phenomenon that has to date been largely overlooked by historians. Taking the 17th-century background as a starting point, it moves on to a detailed account of the clubs formed to propagate the two genres, placing them within the ambiance of the thriving club life of Londonand the provinces. The success of the London Catch Club and its emulators in encouraging the creation of a large and popular repertoire that would come to assume nationalistic significance is reflected by the incursion of the catch and glee into mainstream concert life and the theatre. The volume concludes with a discussion of the glee in relation to the aesthetics of the period and a brief survey of its subsequent reputation among musicians and historians.
Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England
Regular price $36.95 Save $-36.95Almost all the great medieval shrines disappeared at the Reformation, yet for several centuries they were the outward and visible sign of the spiritual benefits believed to flow from proximity to the saint's body, and an importantwitness to the spiritual life of the middle ages. They were the focal point of prayer and pilgrimage, but also a critical economic factor in the life of the church.
This first study devoted to cathedral shrines draws on surviving cathedral records to describe their nature and development in England from around 1066 to 1540. The development of the shrine itself, the monument enclosing the saint's body, is followed, and the connections between the chapel around the shrine and changes in church architecture considered. Accounts of the cathedral clergy who built and managed the shrines, the pilgrims who visited them, and the fluctuating fortunes of the cathedrals which housed themcomplete the book.
BEN NILSON is College Professor at Okanagan University College, Canada.
Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Cathedrals dominated the ecclesiastical (and physical) landscape of the British Isles and Normandy in the middle ages; yet, in comparison with the history of monasteries, theirs has received significantly less attention. This volume helps to redress the balance by examining major themes in their development between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. These include the composition, life, corporate identity and memory of cathedral communities; the relationships, sometimes supportive, sometimes conflicting, that they had with kings (e.g. King John), aristocracies, and neighbouring urban and religious communities; the importance of cathedrals as centres of lordship and patronage; their role in promoting and utilizing saints' cults (e.g. that of St Thomas Becket); episcopal relations; and the involvement of cathedrals in religious and political conflicts, and in the settlement of disputes. A critical introduction locates medieval cathedrals in space and time, and against a backdrop of wider ecclesiastical change in the period.
Contributors: Paul Dalton, Charles Insley, Louise J. Wilkinson, Ann Williams, C.P. Lewis, RichardAllen, John Reuben Davies, Thomas Roche, Stephen Marritt, Michael Staunton, Sheila Sweetinburgh, Paul Webster, Nicholas Vincent
Catholic Faith and Practice in England, 1779-1992
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00Religious historians writing about Roman Catholicism after the Reformation have concentrated on institutional change, or the impact of certain groups or individuals. At the same time, those writing about Evangelical revivalism have tended to see this as an exclusively Protestant phenomenon. This book, by focusing on devotional practice and grass roots communities over a long period, demonstrates that renewal and revivalism were also present in the Roman Catholic Church, arguing that they are essential for faith to remain vibrant. The book examines how in the diocese of Middlesbrough (which comprises the old North and East Ridings of Yorkshire including Hull and York) Catholic faithand practice developed from a position where old Catholic gentry families were central through to the establishment of the Catholic hierarchy and large-scale immigration in the nineteenth century, when the church took on a distinctly Irish character. It re-evaluates the so-called "golden age" of the 1950s and considers the impact of the Second Vatican Council. Overall, the book shows how English Catholic faith and practice were influenced by social, cultural and geographical factors, how Roman Catholicism can indeed be seen as part of the Evangelical spectrum of religious experience, and, above all, how ordinary Catholics lived their faith.
Margaret Turnham completed herdoctorate at the University of Nottingham.
Catholic Survival in Protestant Ireland, 1660-1711
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Traditional accounts of early modern Ireland have traced the seemingly inevitable decline of the Catholic landed interest following the Cromwellian and Williamite wars of the seventeenth century, portraying the Irish Catholic community as leaderless and politically moribund in the decades after the surrender of Limerick in 1691. This book demonstrates, however, that the picture was considerably more complex. By taking advantage of the upheavals in Irish landownership of the 1650s, many Catholics not only survived, but thrived. Having emerged as leaders of the Irish Catholic interest during the 1680s, these landowners refused to go into exile following the surrender of the Jacobites. They do not fit neatly into the archetype of the dispossessed and discontented Irish Catholic, offering instead an alternative perspective on Irish Jacobitism. Using the career of Colonel John Browne of Westport House as a focalpoint, this book casts new light on a wide range of subjects, including Catholic opposition to the repeal of the Restoration land settlement, the Irish Jacobite civil and military administration, estate management in late seventeenth-century Ireland, and the creation of lobbying networks in Dublin and London by Irish Catholics. The book also provides a detailed examination of the Williamite peace settlement in Ireland, and highlights the deeply interconnected nature of Irish society in the late seventeenth century. EOIN KINSELLA completed his doctorate at University College Dublin
Catholicism, Identity and Politics in the Age of Enlightenment
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00This book explores the changing aspirations, attitudes and identities of English Catholics in the late eighteenth century, a period which marked a critical moment of transition in their spiritual, political and intellectual culture. It is based on the experiences of the English Catholic baronet, Grand Tourist and politician Sir Thomas Gascoigne (1745-1810). Gascoigne was born on the Continent into a devout Catholic family based in Yorkshire; however, following an unusual Continental upbringing and extensive series of Grand Tours to the courts of Catholic Europe, he would abjure his faith for a seat in Parliament. Throughout his life, he was an important advocate of agricultural reform, a considerable coal owner interested in mining engineering, as well as a keen developer of spa culture. By examining the experiences of Gascoigne and his milieu, this book explores English Catholic attitudes towards continental Catholicism, the influence of the European Enlightenment upon their education and outlook, and how this affected their Christianity, their estates and their conception of national identity. It demonstrates how increased toleration entailed a gradual rejection amongst English Catholics of a pious separatism for a more ecumenical and, ultimately, Enlightened approach to religion. Although this risked the loss of English Catholics to Anglicanism, many - like Gascoigne - remained crypto-Catholic in sympathy. They adapted their faith to the Enlightenment and regarded it as a matter of personal conviction and private choice.
ALEXANDER LOCK is Curator of Modern Historical Manuscripts at the British Library.
Catholics during the English Revolution, 1642-1660
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00This is the first book to examine thoroughly the ways in which Catholics adapted to political and social change during the turbulent years of the English Revolution. The book examines several important aspects of the Catholic experience in this period. It explores the penal laws by which the estates of Catholics were sequestrated, discussing the extent to which politicians designed the new laws to target Catholics specifically, rather than Royalists more generally, and outlining how the sequestration legislation operated in practice. It considers how Catholic gentry utilised their networks with influential Protestants with wider political connections when applying to have their sequestrations discharged. More broadly the book reveals how Catholics demonstrated their loyalty and assimilated into society despite being viewed as the natural enemies of the English Republic and Protectorate. The book also compares Catholic experiences to those of other religious minorities and sets the situation in England in the wider European international context of Catholic-Protestant rivalry and warfare, which made Catholics a particularly vulnerable religious minority in Puritan England.
Celebrity Culture and the Myth of Oceania in Britain
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00At the end of the eighteenth century metropolitan Britain was entranced by stories emanating from the furthest edge of its nascent empire. In the experience of eighteenth-century Britain, Oceania was both a real place, evidencedby the journals of adventurers like Joseph Banks, the voyage books of Captain James Cook and the growing collection of artefacts and curiosities in the British Museum, and a realm of fantasy reflected in theatre, fashion and the new phenomenon of mass print.
In this innovative study Ruth Scobie shows how these multiple images of Oceania were filtered to a wider British public through the gradual emergence of a new idea of fame - commodified, commercial, scandalous - which bore in some respects a striking resemblance to modern celebrity culture and which made figures such as Banks and Cook, Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers on Pitcairn Island into public icons. Bringing together literary texts, works of popular culture, visual art and theatrical performance, Scobie argues that the idea of Oceania functioned variously as reflection, ideal and parody both in very local debates over the problemsof contemporary fame and in wider considerations of national identity, race and empire.
RUTH SCOBIE is a Stipendiary Lecturer at Mansfield College, University of Oxford.
Celestial Music?
Regular price $75.00 Save $-75.00The late Wilfrid Mellers, who occupies a special place among music critics, described himself as a non-believer; but his preference for music that "displays a sense of the numinous" (in his words) will strike a chord with many wholisten to religious music nowadays, and who share his view that music that confronts first and last things is likely to offer more than music that evades them. The essays form five groups, which together offer a survey of religious music from around the first millennium to the beginning of the second, in the context of the difficult issues of what religious music is, and, for good measure, what is religion?
The parts are: The Ages of Christian Faith; The Re-birth of a Re-birth: From Renaissance to High Baroque; From Enlightenment to Doubt; From "the Death of God" to "the Unanswered Question"; and The Ancient Law and the Modern Mind. Musical discussion, with copious examples, is conducted throughout the book in a context that is also religious - and indeed philosophical, social, and political, with the open-endedness that such an approach demands in the presentation of ideas aboutmusic's most fundamental nature and purposes.
COMPOSERS: Hildegard of Bingen; Perotin; Machaut; Dunstable, Dufay; William Corniyshes father and son; Tallis; Byrd; Monteverdi; Schutz; J.S. Bach; Couperin; Handel; Haydn;Mozart; Beethoven; Schubert; Bruckner; Berlioz, Faure; Verdi, Brahms; Elgar, Delius; Holst, Vaughan Williams, Howells; Britten; Janacek; Messiaen, Poulenc; Rachmaninov; Stravinsky; Part, Tavener, Gorecki, Macmillan, Finnissy; Copland.
Céli Dé in Ireland
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00The Céli Dé [`clients of God'], sometimes referred to as the Culdees, comprise the group of monks who first appeared in Ireland in the eighth century in association with St Máel Ruain of Tallaght. Although influential and important in the development of the monastic tradition in Ireland, they have been neglected in general histories. This book offers an investigation into the movement. Proceeding from an examination of ascetic practice and theory in earlymedieval Ireland, followed by a fresh look at the evidence most often cited in support of the prevailing theory of céli Dé identity, the author challenges the orthodox opinion that they were an order or movement intent uponmonastic reform at a time of declining religious discipline. At the heart of the book is a manuscript-centred critical evaluation of the large corpus of putative céli Dé texts, offered as a means for establishing a more comprehensive assessment of who and what céli Dé were. Dr Follett argues that they are properly understood as the self-identified members of the personal retinue of God, in whose service they distinguished themselves from other monks and monastic communities in their personal devotion, pastoral care, Sunday observance, and other matters. A catalogue of céli Dé texts with manuscript references is provided in an appendix.
WESTLEY FOLLETT is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Celtic Curses
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00The first comprehensive study of early Celtic cursing, this work analyses both medieval and ancient expressions of Celtic imprecation: from the binding tablets of ancient Britain and Gaul to the saintly maledictions of the early medieval period, and other traces of Celtic stipulation and binding only speculated on in earlier scholarship. It provides the first full overview and analyses of the ancient Celtic use of binding curses (as attested in Old Celticand Latin inscriptions) and examines their mooted influence in later medieval expressions. Ancient finds (among them long Gaulish curse texts, Celtic Latin Curse tablets found from the Alpine regions to Britain, and fragments of Old Brittonic tablets excavated from Roman Bath) are subjected to rigorous new interpretations, and medieval reflections of the earlier tradition are also considered.
BERNARD MEES gained his PhD from the University of Melbourne.
Changing Approaches to Local History: Warwickshire History and its Historians
Regular price $95.00 Save $-95.00Published to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the Dugdale Society, which publishes Warwickshire's records, this book brings together a range of scholars - early career researchers, tenured academics, independent scholars and an archivist - all with records of excellence in research and writing, who cover a range of political, social, economic, cultural, architectural and religious subjects from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries. Besides providing original and well-researched interpretations of Warwickshire's past, the book goes further to discuss and analyse the ways in which writing of local history has changed over the last hundred years, paying particular attention to meanings and explanations that have emerged in recent times, from which future developments can be expected. As such the book will appeal not just to those interested in the local history of Warwickshire, but also to everyone concerned with local history in general, and how it should be studied and written.
Changing Pedagogies for Children in Eighteenth-Century England
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00Through a detailed examination of contemporary methodologies, curricula, and practices this book brings together topics often treated separately: the education of boys and girls of the middling and the upper classes. Further, this study widens the scope of our definition of education to include the often-under-valued field of "accomplishments". Indeed, Cohen shows that accomplishments were a formal part of male and female education, with carefully theorised pedagogies, challenging the enduring perception that these subjects were superficial.
Subject specific chapters on Latin and geography pedagogies examine the relations between these subjects and the competitions which shaped and produced them. While Latin pedagogy dominated eighteenth-century education, geography, as a modern subject, had to develop a new normative pedagogy. Cohen shows that girls were not excluded from learning a science like geography, and that the contemporary perception of the inferiority of their education as opposed to that of boys was constructed as part of the classic vs. modern debate. Further, chapters on debates surrounding public and private education, the Grand Tour, and conversation show that pedagogy is the thread linking education, gender, social class and politics.
This book will be essential reading for historians of education, childhood and gender.
Changing Perceptions of Nature
Regular price $170.00 Save $-170.00The concepts of nature, culture and heritage are deeply entwined; their threads run together in some of our finest museums, in accounts of exploration and discovery, in the work of artists, poets and writers, and in areas that arecherished and protected because of their landscapes and wildlife. The conservation ethic - placing a value on the natural environment - lies at the heart of the notion of "natural heritage", but we need to question how those values originated, were consolidated and ultimately moulded and changed over time. In a contemporary context the connections between nature and culture have sometimes become lost, fragmented, dislocated or misunderstood; where did "natural heritage" begin and how do we engage with the idea of "nature" today? The essays collected here re-evaluate the role of culture in developing the concept of natural heritage, reflecting on the shifts in its interpretation over the last 300 years.
Contributors: Martin Holdgate, Marie Addyman, E. Charles Nelson, Darrell Smith, Andrew Ramsey, Viktor Kouloumpis, Richard Milner, Gina Douglas, Penny Bradshaw, Arthur MacGregor, Chiara Nepi, Hannah Paddon, Stephen Hewitt, Gordon McGregor Reid, Ghillean T Prance, Peter Davis, Christopher Donaldson, Lucy McRobert, Sophie Darlington, Keith Scholey, Paul A. Roncken, Angus Lunn, Juliet Clutton-Brock, Tim Sands, Robert A. Lambert, James Champion, Erwin van Maanen, Heather Prince, Chris Loynes, Julie Taylor, Sarah Elmeligi, Samantha Finn, Owen Nevin, Jared Bowers, Kate Hennessy, Natasha Lyons, Mike Jeffries.
Charity Movements in Eighteenth-Century Ireland
Regular price $120.00 Save $-120.00The philanthropic impulse to engage in charitable work and to encourage economic "improvement" was sharpened in eighteenth-century Ireland as Irish Protestants became increasingly aware of the threat that social problems, such aspoverty, disease and criminality, posed to their rule. One response to this threat was the establishment of a number of voluntary societies which sought to address the different problems plaguing Ireland. This book examines a number of these voluntary societies, including those concerned with promoting education, supporting hospitals, and improving agriculture and manufacturing. It shows how these movements differed from earlier efforts in organisation, method and aims and demonstrates the connection between religiously motivated charities, Enlightenment-inspired scientific societies and the Irish government. It pays particular attention to the role of women, both as supporters of,and objects of, charity. It argues that, together, these movements aspired to purge Ireland of what they saw as destabilising factors that weakened the Anglo-Irish state. Improvers reflected Enlightenment-era optimism about the perfectibility of society and saw themselves as serving the interests and aspirations of the nation.
Karen Sonnelitter is Assistant Professor of History at Siena College, Loudonville, New York. She completed her doctorate at Purdue University.
Charles Bridgeman (c.1685-1738)
Regular price $130.00 Save $-130.00Charles Bridgeman was a popular and highly successful landscape architect in the first part of the eighteenth century. He was Royal Gardener to George I and George II, designing the gardens at Kensington Palace for them and working for many of the ruling Whig elite, including Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. His landscapes were audacious and monumental, but he is barely known outside the world of academic garden history; most of his gardens have disappeared, changed out of all recognition to chime with later tastes shaped by Lancelot Brown's vision of a more "natural" landscape, or buried under housing developments and golf courses; and there is little archaeological or written evidence of his work.
This book aims to redress this injustice and rescue his legacy. It draws on the only significant body of evidence which survived him: an extensive but wildly heterogenous corpus of garden plans. Close examination of them reveals an artistic vision heavily influenced by the late seventeenth-century geometric garden but deeply rooted in the "genius of the place", and working methods that include a proto-business model which prefigures the gentleman improvers who followed him. The volume brings him from obscurity to demonstrate his skill as an artist, a manipulator of space on a grand scale and a consummate practitioner, a deserved member of the canon of famous and revered English landscape gardeners.
Charles Bridgeman (c.1685-1738)
Regular price $36.95 Save $-36.95Charles Bridgeman was a popular and highly successful landscape architect in the first part of the eighteenth century. He was Royal Gardener to George I and George II, designing the gardens at Kensington Palace for them and working for many of the ruling Whig elite, including Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. His landscapes were audacious and monumental, but he is barely known outside the world of academic garden history; most of his gardens have disappeared, changed out of all recognition to chime with later tastes shaped by Lancelot Brown's vision of a more "natural" landscape, or buried under housing developments and golf courses; and there is little archaeological or written evidence of his work.
This book aims to redress this injustice and rescue his legacy. It draws on the only significant body of evidence which survived him: an extensive but wildly heterogenous corpus of garden plans. Close examination of them reveals an artistic vision heavily influenced by the late seventeenth-century geometric garden but deeply rooted in the "genius of the place", and working methods that include a proto-business model which prefigures the gentleman improvers who followed him. The volume brings him from obscurity to demonstrate his skill as an artist, a manipulator of space on a grand scale and a consummate practitioner, a deserved member of the canon of famous and revered English landscape gardeners.
Charles Mackerras
Regular price $39.95 Save $-39.95By the time of his death in 2010 at the age of 84, Sir Charles Mackerras had achieved widespread recognition, recorded extensively and developed into a conductor of major international significance. In addition to areas in which he already had forged a distinctive profile (Janácek, Mozart, Handel, Sullivan) he revisited - and rethought - much of the standard repertoire. The last thirty years were particularly momentous in the coming to fruition of so manycherished projects: not only the Janácek operas but the Gilbert and Sullivan series, the Mozart operas, the two Beethoven cycles, other projects with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Schumann and Brahms at Edinburgh; the outstanding late Mozart) and at the Royal Opera House and the Met. Unspoilt by fame, and undeterred by personal tragedies and increasing physical frailty, he remained productive and inventive: for him music-making, whether with world-classsingers and orchestras or with students, was a kind of joyous oxygen that kept him going right to the end.
A detailed account of his life is complemented by contributions from performers and scholars who worked closely with Mackerras, as well as interviews with his family. The book is richly illustrated with photographs and documents, and includes a comprehensive discography along with listings of many of his concert and opera performances. While SirCharles's whole life is considered, emphasis is given to his final quarter century, a period in which so many important projects were realized. This book celebrates and epitomizes an exceptional life.
NIGEL SIMEONE is awriter and teacher. He has published extensively on Messiaen and Janácek and recently edited The Leonard Bernstein Letters.
JOHN TYRRELL is Honorary Professor of Music at Cardiff University. He has published bookson Janácek and Czech opera and, with Sir Charles Mackerras, edited two Janácek operas. CONTRIBUTORS: Janet Baker, Alfred Brendel, Ales Brezina, Alex Briger, Rosenna East, Anne Evans, Nicholas Hytner, Simon Keenlyside, David Lloyd-Jones, David Mackie, Chi-chi Nwanoku, Antonio Pappano, Nigel Simeone, John Stein, Heinz Stolba, Patrick Summers, John Tyrrell, Malcolm Walker, David Whelton, Jirí Zahrádka.
Charles Robert Cockerell in the Mediterranean
Regular price $75.00 Save $-75.00Charles R. Cockerell (1788-1863) was one of the most significant nineteenth-century British architects and a major player in the cultural shift from the Georgian eighteenth to the Victorian nineteenth century. Cockerell's travelsin the eastern Mediterranean between 1810 and 1817 were the formative experience of his life. His forty letters from this period, held in the archives of the Royal Institute of British Architects and published here for the first time, give crucial day-to-day insights into his actions, thoughts and feelings in relation to the intricate histories of the re-discovery and sales of the Aegina and Bassae marbles and, equally importantly, illuminate his hugely significant work on temple architecture and sculpture in mainland Greece, the great cities of Asia Minor, and the significant temples of Sicily.
Drawing on these letters, and on some 150 unpublished letters sent by his friends while they were all in Greece and now held in the British Museum, this book elucidates what Cockerell did and why by analyzing his methods of work and their significance. It discusses Cockerell's aesthetic and conceptual development during his time abroad, particularly his influential part in the changing vision of Greek sculpture and architecture, from Winkelmann's static ideal to one rooted in dramatic tension and contextual contingency. The book unravels the emergence of Cockerell's crucial historical perspective and shows how he arrived at a new view of the ancient Greek past as made up of real lived lives, rather than just existing as a back drop to the present. By offeringa complete edition of the RIBA letters, this book fills a significant gap in our understanding of the thought and work of one of the formative spirits of nineteenth century visual historical culture.
SUSAN PEARCE is Professor Emeritus of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.
THERESA ORMROD has extensive experience in archival research, manuscript transcription and editing.