The Lands of a Medieval Devon Nunnery: the Extents of Canonsleigh Abbey
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Translates the medieval land records of Canonsleigh Abbey in East Devon, offering a window into agriculture and daily life in medieval England.
This book publishes the fourteenth-century survey of the lands of a medieval nunnery. The records describe the landscape, crops, tenants, and labour services performed by ordinary men and women that supported the abbey, across its lands in Devon, Essex (including the town of Manningtree) and Suffolk. With a substantial introduction by the editor, it offers a window into the abbey's finances, agriculture, and daily life in the late Middle Ages, showing how the abbey withstood a period of agricultural and climatic crisis.
The book makes these vivid Latin records accessible to readers interested in the history of medieval peasants, farming, and religious houses, as well as the local history and landscape of Devon and of the abbey's Essex and Suffolk manors.
Nicholas J. Higham
The Landscape Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England
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The Anglo-Saxon period was crucial to the development of the English landscape, but is rarely studied. The essays here provide radical new interpretations of its development.
Traditional opinion has perceived the Anglo-Saxons as creating an entirely new landscape from scratch in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, cutting down woodland, and bringing with them the practice of open field agriculture, and establishing villages. Whilst recent scholarship has proved this simplistic picture wanting, it has also raised many questions about the nature of landscape development at the time, the changing nature of systems of land management, and strategies for settlement. The papers here seek to shed new light on these complex issues. Taking a variety of different approaches, and with topics ranging from the impact of coppicing to medieval field systems, from the representation of the landscape in manuscripts to cereal production and the type of bread the population preferred, they offer striking new approaches to the central issues of landscape change across the seven centuries of Anglo-Saxon England, a period surely foundational to the rural landscape of today.
NICHOLAS J. HIGHAM is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the University of Manchester; MARTIN J. RYAN lectures in Medieval History at the University of Manchester.
Contributors: Nicholas J. Higham, Christopher Grocock, Stephen Rippon, Stuart Brookes, Carenza Lewis, Susan Oosthuizen, Tom Williamson, Catherine Karkov, David Hill, Debby Banham, Richard Hoggett, Peter Murphy.
Emily Sloan
The Landscape Studies of Hayman Rooke (1723-1806)
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The work of an unjustly neglected antiquarian brought to life, showing his contribution to the field.
After his military career, Major Hayman Rooke undertook detailed studies of landscape, ancient trees, natural history, meteorology, and ancient and Roman Britain. He was linked into a broad network of friends and correspondents, including landowners such as Earl Bathurst and the Duke of Portland, and their agents (among them Humphry Repton); he was also connected to numerous learned societies. Information from these sources, coupled with his wide-ranging reading and first-hand observations, gave him a unique perspective on the landscape. This book examines Rooke's work, showing how landscapes were interpreted and understood in the eighteenth century; more broadly, it offers new insights into the antiquarian movement of the time. It is richly illustrated, making use of many of Rooke's own sketches and drawings.
EMILY SLOAN gained her doctoral thesis from the University of Nottingham.
John M. Todd
The Lanercost Cartulary (Cumbria County Record Office MS DZ/1)
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Also printed as Volume XI in the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society's Record Series.An introduction provides the historical background to the priory (which was founded c. 1169 by Robert I de Vaux),its patrons and the economy of Gilsland. Detailed information on the making, content, history and transcripts of the cartulary is also provided, as are sections on the marginal coats of arms and drawings and the Barony of Gilsland. The cartulary is in fifteen parts.
Giorgio Ausenda
The Langobards before the Frankish Conquest
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Essays examining the Langobards, with important conclusions for early medieval Italy.
The Langobards or Lombards were the last Germanic group to invade the Roman Mediterranean, crossing the Alps into Italy in 568-9. They were nonetheless one of the longest-lasting, for their state survived Charlemagne's conquest in774, and was the core of the medieval kingdom of Italy. The incompleteness of their conquest of Italy was also one of the root causes of Italian division for over 1300 years after their arrival. But they present a challenge to the historian, for most of the evidence for them dates to the last half-century of their independence, up to 774, a period in which Langobard Italy was a coherent and apparently tightly-governed state by early medieval standards. How they reached this from the incoherent and disorganised situation visible in late sixth-century Italy is still a matter of debate. The historians and archaeologists who contribute to this volume discuss Langobard archaeologyand material culture both before and after their invasion, Langobard language, political organisation, the church, social structures, family structures, and urban economy. It is thus an important and up to date starting point forfuture research on early medieval Italy.
Contributors: G. AUSENDA, S. BARNISH, S. BRATHER, T.S. BROWN, N. CHRISTIE, M. COSTAMBEYS, P. DELOGU, D. GREEN, W. HAUBRICHS, J. HENNING, B. WARD-PERKINS, C. WICKHAM.
Simon Horobin
The Language of the Chaucer Tradition
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A study of the language of Chaucerian manuscripts, printed editions and Chaucer's 15th century followers. Winner of the 2005 Beatrice White Prize for outstanding scholarly work in the field of English literature before 1590
The manuscript copies of Chaucer's works preserve valuable information concerning Chaucer's linguistic practices and the ways in which scribes responded to these. This book draws on recent developments in Middle English dialectology, textual criticism and the application of computers to manuscript studies to assess the evidence Chaucerian manuscripts provide for reconstructing Chaucer's own language and his linguistic environment. This book considershow scribes, editors and Chaucerian poets transmitted and updated Chaucer's language and the implications of this for our understanding of Chaucerian book production and reception, and the processes of linguistic change in the fifteenth century. Winner of the 2005 Beatrice White Prize for outstanding scholarly work in the field of English literature before 1590 SIMON HOROBIN lectures on English language at the University of Glasgow.
Robert Spruytenburg
The LaSalle Quartet
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The definitive study of the LaSalle Quartet, for forty years the premier exponent of 'the new music' for string quartet.
The LaSalle Quartet (1946-1987) was the premier exponent of 'the new music' for string quartet. Founded in 1946 at the Julliard School in New York, it became famous for its performances of works by the Second Viennese School and its commissioning of many new pieces by contemporary post-war composers. As a result, the quartets by Lutoslawski, Ligeti and Nono have since entered the standard repertory, sitting comfortably next to those by Schoenberg, Berg andWebern. The LaSalle Quartet's brilliant advocacy of the quartets by Alexander Zemlinsky resulted in best-selling recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. In an informative and critical dialogue between new and old, the LaSalleQuartet was also an incisive interpreter of the classical quartet repertory; many of its recordings are still in print. Its record as a teaching quartet is equally impressive, numbering among its students at the University of Cincinnati the Alban Berg, Brahms, Prazak, Artis, Buchberger, Ponche and Vogler Quartets. The LaSalle Quartet's founder and first violinist, Walter Levin, is himself a highly influential teacher whose students have included the conductor James Levine and the violinist Christian Tetzlaff, as well as many third-generation string quartets. This book, based on extensive interviews with Walter Levin conducted by Robert Spruytenburg over five years, is in equal measure autobiography, history of the Quartet, reminiscences of the contemporary composers who figured so prominently in its career, and penetrating commentary on the LaSalle Quartet's wide-ranging repertory. All these aspectsare artfully woven into a uniquely valuable, informative and entertaining document of musical life in the twentieth century.
ROBERT SPRUYTENBURG lives in Basel. He was introduced to Walter Levin in 1988 and took part inhis chamber music courses. Since 2003, Spruytenburg has been working on the LaSalle Quartet's archives located at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. He is a frequent contributor to classical music programmes for Swiss radio.
Tim Cooper
The Last Generation of English Catholic Clergy
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Traces the careers and fortunes of the last priests ordained before the Reformation.
A central paradox of the English reformation is that the call to the Catholic priesthood was never more eagerly answered than on the very eve of religious upheaval. In this important new study, based on the records of the third largest diocese in the country, covering six counties of the midlands and north-west, Dr Cooper traces the careers of the pastoral clergy from their preparatory education, through ordination and job-hunting, to the writing of theirwills, often in ripe old age and having served a single parish through the entirety of the main period of reform. In this highly `clericalised' society, in which ten new priests were ordained each year for every arising vacancy, it was those priests without livings who were the main point of contact between the church and its people. This `clerical proletariat', and, indeed, the majority of parochial incumbents, emerge as conscientious servants of their native communities, distinguishable from their neighbours by virtue of their sacramental function rather than their social backgrounds and general concerns. Throughout, the book argues that the parish clergy, whose services were ingreater demand than ever before, were remarkably well integrated into the communities they served and that popular anticlericalism as an explanatory factor of the English reformation is difficult to sustain. Dr TIM COOPER has taught history at the universities of Sheffield, Manchester and Hull.
Samuel Frederick
The Last Laugh
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A penetrating new reading of Murnau's classic silent film that shows its transitional status, both historically and stylistically, while emphasizing its innovative camerawork and the ethical stakes of its story.
An undisputed masterpiece of silent cinema, F. W. Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) stars the larger-than-life Emil Jannings as a proud hotel porter who is demoted to lowly washroom attendant. One worker's misfortune becomes a tragic turning point in a social drama as much about the struggling Weimar Republic, which had just overcome several years of social, political, and economic instability, as about its working-class citizens. At once clinging to the symbols of the old order while helplessly thrust into an unforgiving modern world, Jannings's fallen porter embodies the contradictions of this transitional moment for the young democracy. Samuel Frederick shows us that Murnau's film is similarly transitional: born at the crossroads between the Expressionist style of the early 1920s and the emerging aesthetics of New Objectivity, it is both soberly realistic and oneirically distorted. With only one intertitle, The Last Laugh's flow of images is complemented by cinematographer Karl Freund's innovative mobile camera, which, "unchained" from the tripod, swims effortlessly through the film's different urban spaces. Here, inanimate objects become charged with potency and architecture is animated, conveying both allure and danger. Frederick's incisive analysis of the film foregrounds the visual dynamism of its technological and aesthetic experimentation while also pursuing the ethical implications of its central figure's downfall.
Tiiu Laane, Louise von François, J.M. Percival [Mary Joanna Safford]
The Last von Reckenburg
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Reprint of English translation of important 19th-century German novel with strong feminist overtones.
In Die letzte Reckenburgerin (1871), Louise von François, one of the major female German-language writers of the nineteenth century, describes the fate of two women, the aristocrat Eberhardine von Reckenburg and the middle-class Dorothee Müller, set against the events of the French Revolution. This complex work is both an absorbing picture of the period, and a subtle psychological study with a strong feminist slant: François depicts Dorothee as a victim of a patriarchal society that robs her of any chance of self-development. The book thus has considerable significance in the light of recent feminist literary criticism. Professor Laane's detailed introduction gives an account of the the critical reception of the book in the United States - it was translated into English in 1887 by Mary Joanna Safford (under the pseudonym J.M. Percival) after achieving great popularity in Germany - and suggests ways of understanding this long neglected novel.
Fiona S. Dunlop
The Late Medieval Interlude
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Sensitive study of the 15/16 century interlude, focussing on one of its major concerns, the depiction of male aristocracy and the development to maturity.
The commercial theatre of the late sixteenth century is often credited with introducing its audiences to new modes of thought about the self, society and the nation, making them conscious that the self is performed, as an actor performs a role. Yet the earlier interlude drama, originally performed in households and other institutions of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, indicates that the late medieval period was fully aware of the theatricalityof identity. This book argues that ideas of performance inform the concepts of aristocratic masculinity developed in the plays Nature, Fulgens and Lucres, The Worlde and the Chylde, The Interlude of Youth and Calisto and Melebea. It examines how the depiction of young male aristocrats in these texts is shaped by ideas of male youth constituted in the middle ages, and shows them as failing or succeeding to perform anadult noble masculinity in the aristocratic body and in aristocratic household. The book also suggests ways in which the plays offer discreet praise and censure of the manner in which their noble patrons performed as aristocrats.Throughout, it brings out the subtle qualities of the interludes, which, the author shows, have been unjustly neglected.
Dr FIONA S. DUNLOP is Research Associate of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York
Roger Parkinson
The Late Victorian Navy
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A reappraisal of the late Victorian Navy, the so-called `Dark Ages', showing how the period was crucial to the emergence of new technology defined by steel and electricity.
In purely naval terms, the period from 1889 to 1906 is often referred to (and indeed passed over) as the `pre-Dreadnought era', merely a prelude to the lead-up to the First World War, and thus of relatively little importance; it has therefore received little consideration from historians, a gap which this book remedies by reviewing the late Victorian Navy from a radically new perspective. It starts with the Great Near East crisis of 1878 and shows how itsaftermath in the Carnarvon Commission and its evidence produced a profound shift in strategic thinking, culminating in the Naval Defence Act of 1889; this evidence, from the ship owners, provides the definitive explanation of whythe Victorian Navy gave up on convoy as the primary means of trade protection in wartime, a fundamental question at the time. The book also overturns many assumptions about the era, especially the perception that the navy was weak, and clearly shows that the 1870s and early 1880s brought in crucial technological developments that made the Dreadnought possible.
Michael Hicks
The Later Medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem
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Essays exploring the potential of the Inquisitions post mortem to shed important new light on the medieval world.
The Inquisitions post mortem (IPMs) are a truly wonderful source for many different aspects of late medieval countryside and rural life. They have recently been made digitally accessible and interrogatable by the Mappingthe Medieval Countryside project, and the first fruits of these developments are presented here. The chapters examine IPMs in connection with the landscape and topography of England, in particular markets and fairs and mills;and consider the utility of proofs of age for everyday life on such topics as the Church, retaining, and the wine trade.
MICHAEL HICKS is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Winchester.
Contributors: Katie A. Clarke, William S. Deller, Paul Dryburgh, Christopher Dyer, Janette Garrett, Michael Hicks, Matthew Holford, Gordon McKelvie, Stephen Mileson, Simon Payling, Matthew Tompkins, Jennifer Ward.
Eivor Andersen Oftestad
The Lateran Church in Rome and the Ark of the Covenant: Housing the Holy Relics of Jerusalem
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An examination of the tradition that the Ark of the Covenant was held in a Roman church, and how it developed.
Why did the twelfth-century canons at the Lateran church (San Giovanni in Laterano) in Rome claim the presence of the Ark of the Covenant inside their high altar? This book argues that the claim responded to new challenges in theaftermath of the First Crusade in 1099. The Christian possession of Jerusalem questioned the legitimation of the papal cathedral in Rome as the summit of sacerdotal representation. To meet this challenge, what may be described astranslatio templi (the transfer of the temple) was used to strengthen the status of the Lateran. The Ark of the Covenant was central as part of the treasure from the Jerusalem temple, allegedly transported to Rome, and according to contemporary accounts depicted on the arch of Titus. The author explores the history of the Lateran Ark of the Covenant through a reading of the description of the Lateran Church (Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae), composed around 1100. She follows the transmission of the text both in the Lateran Archive and in a monastic settings in northern France and Belgium, comparing the claim to the Ark with similar claims in texts from Jerusalem. The book also includes a new edition of the Descriptio and an English translation.
EIVOR ANDERSEN OFTESTAD holds a PhD in Church History.
David Burke
The Lawn Road Flats
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The story of a modernist building with a significant place in the history of Soviet espionage in Britain, where communist spies rubbed shoulders with British artists, sculptors and writers
The Isokon building, Lawn Road Flats, in Belsize Park on Hampstead's lower slopes, is a remarkable building. The first modernist building in Britain to use reinforced concrete in domestic architecture, its construction demanded new building techniques. But the building was as remarkable for those who took up residence there as for the application of revolutionary building techniques. There were 32 Flats in all, and they became a haunt of some of the most prominent Soviet agents working against Britain in the 1930s and 40s, among them Arnold Deutsch, the controller of the group of Cambridge spies who came to be known as the "Magnificent Five" after the Western movie The Magnificent Seven; the photographer Edith Tudor-Hart; and Melita Norwood, the longest-serving Soviet spy in British espionage history. However, it wasn't only spies who were attracted to the Lawn Road Flats, the Bauhaus exiles Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer; the pre-historian V. Gordon Childe; and the poet (and Bletchley Park intelligence officer) Charles Brasch all made their way there. A number of British artists, sculptors andwriters were also drawn to the Flats, among them the sculptor and painter Henry Moore; the novelist Nicholas Monsarrat; and the crime writer Agatha Christie, who wrote her only spy novel N or M? in the Flats. The Isokon buildingboasted its own restaurant and dining club, where many of the Flats' most famous residents rubbed shoulders with some of the most dangerous communist spies ever to operate in Britain. Agatha Christie often said that she invented her characters from what she observed going on around her. With the Kuczynskis - probably the most successful family of spies in the history of espionage - in residence, she would have had plenty of material.
DAVID BURKEis a historian of intelligence and international relations and author of The Spy Who Came In From the Co-op: Melita Norwood and the Ending of Cold War Espionage (The Boydell Press, 2009).
David Burke
The Lawn Road Flats
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The story of a modernist building with a significant place in the history of Soviet espionage in Britain, where communist spies rubbed shoulders with British artists, sculptors and writers
The Isokon building, also know as Lawn Road Flats, in London was the haunt of some of the most prominent Soviet agents working against Britain in the 1930s and 40s, among them Arnold Deutsch, the controller of the group of Cambridge spies who came to be known as the "Magnificent Five" after the Western movie The Magnificent Seven; the photographer Edith Tudor-Hart; and Melita Norwood, the longest-serving Soviet spy in British espionage history (andinspiration for Judi Dench's character in Red Joan). However, it wasn't only spies who were attracted to the Lawn Road Flats. The crime writer Agatha Christie wrote her only spy novel N or M? in the Flats, and anumber of other artists, architects and writers were also drawn there, among them the Bauhaus exiles Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer; the sculptors and painters Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth; the novelist Nicholas Monsarrat; the writer and founder of The Good Food Guide Raymond Postgate; and the poet (and Bletchley Park intelligence officer) Charles Brasch. The Isokon building boasted its own restaurant and dining club, wheremany of the Flats' most famous residents rubbed shoulders with some of the most dangerous communist spies ever to operate in Britain. Agatha Christie often said that she invented her characters from what she observed going on around her. With the Kuczynskis - probably the most successful family of spies in the history of espionage - in residence, she would have had plenty of material.
This book tells the story of a remarkable Modernist building and its even more extraordinary cast of characters.
DAVID BURKE is a historian of intelligence and international relations and author of The Spy Who Came In From the Co-op: Melita Norwood and the Ending of Cold War Espionage and Russia and the British Left: From the 1848 Revolutions to the General Strike.
Stephen J. Joyce
The Legacy of Gildas
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Provocative new investigation into the shadowy figure of Gildas, his influence and representation.
Gildas is an essential witness to the Christian culture of the British Isles in the opaque period after the decline and fall of the western Roman empire. His criticisms in De excidio Britanniae of the Britons in the context of spiritual and secular corruption and partition with pagan powers are a crucial source for understanding the transition to the medieval nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. But the ways in which this enigmatic ecclesiastical figure has been received over the centuries have shaped an ambivalent reputation. On the one hand, he is seen as a significant contributor to ecclesiastical reform; on the other, as a dour and unreliable chronicler lamenting an inevitable spiritual and political decline. This book seeks to refine and recuperate the image of Gildas. It does so by examining his self-image as presented in select surviving works, and subsequent representations as developed by the reception of these works - the legacy of Gildas - by church luminaries such as Columbanus, Gregory the Great, and Bede; in exploring how Gildas influenced perceptions of authority in the British Isles and on the continent, it puts this legacy into a wider context. Overall, the volume argues that as one of the earliest authorities to define and defend Christian kingship Gildas deserves to be seen as a significant contributor to the political and ecclesiastical development of the early medieval West.
Phillipa Hardman, Marianne Ailes
The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England
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The first full-length examination of the medieval Charlemagne tradition in the literature and culture of medieval England, from the Chanson de Roland to Caxton.
The Matter of France, the legendary history of Charlemagne, had a central but now largely unrecognised place in the multilingual culture of medieval England. From the early claim in the Chanson de Roland that Charlemagne held England as his personal domain, to the later proliferation of Middle English romances of Charlemagne, the materials are woven into the insular political and cultural imagination. However, unlike the wide range of continental French romances, the insular tradition concentrates on stories of a few heroic characters: Roland, Fierabras, Otinel. Why did writers and audiences in England turn again and again to these narratives, rewriting and reinterpreting them for more than two hundred years? This book is the first full-length study of the tradition. It investigates the currency and impact of the Matter of France with equal attention to English and French-language texts, setting each individual manuscript or early printed text in its contemporary cultural and political context. The narratives are revealed to be extraordinarily adaptable, using the iconic opposition between Carolingian and Saracen heroes to reflect concerns with national politics, religious identity, the future of Christendom, chivalry and ethics, and monarchy and treason.
Phillipa Hardman, Marianne Ailes
The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England
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The first full-length examination of the medieval Charlemagne tradition in the literature and culture of medieval England, from the Chanson de Roland to Caxton.
The Matter of France, the legendary history of Charlemagne, had a central but now largely unrecognised place in the multilingual culture of medieval England. From the early claim in the Chanson de Roland that Charlemagne held England as his personal domain, to the later proliferation of Middle English romances of Charlemagne, the materials are woven into the insular political and cultural imagination. However, unlike the wide range of continental French romances, the insular tradition concentrates on stories of a few heroic characters: Roland, Fierabras, Otinel. Why did writers and audiences in England turn again and again to these narratives, rewriting and reinterpreting them for more than two hundred years? This book offers the first full-length, in-depth study of the tradition as manifested in literature and culture. It investigates the currency and impact of the Matter of France with equal attention to English and French-language texts, setting each individual manuscript or early printed text in its contemporary cultural and political context. The narratives are revealed to be extraordinarily adaptable, using the iconic opposition between Carolingian and Saracen heroes to reflect concerns with national politics, religious identity, the future of Christendom, chivalry and ethics, and monarchy and treason.
PHILLIPA HARDMAN is Readerin Medieval English Literature (retired) at the University of Reading; MARIANNE AILES is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Bristol.
Karl Bell
The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack
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An intriguing study of a unique and unsettling cultural phenomenon in Victorian England.
WINNER of the 2013 Katharine Briggs Award
This book uses the nineteenth-century legend of Spring-Heeled Jack to analyse and challenge current notions of Victorian popular cultures. Starting as oral rumours, this supposedly supernatural entity moved from rural folklore to metropolitan press sensation, co-existing in literary and theatrical forms before finally degenerating into a nursery lore bogeyman to frighten children. A mercurial and unfixedcultural phenomenon, Spring-Heeled Jack found purchase in both older folkloric traditions and emerging forms of entertainment. Through this intriguing study of a unique and unsettling figure, Karl Bell complicates our appreciation of the differences, interactions and similarities between various types of popular culture between 1837 and 1904. The book draws upon a rich variety of primary source material including folklorist accounts, street ballads,several series of "penny dreadful" stories (and illustrations), journals, magazines, newspapers, comics, court accounts, autobiographies and published reminiscences. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack is impressively researched social history and provides a fascinating insight into Victorian cultures. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century English social and cultural history, folklore or literature.
Karl Bell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth.
Karl Bell
The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack
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An intriguing study of a unique and unsettling cultural phenomenon in Victorian England.
WINNER of the 2013 Katharine Briggs Award
NEW LOWER PRICE This book uses the nineteenth-century legend of Spring-Heeled Jack to analyse and challenge current notions of Victorian popular cultures. Starting as oral rumours, this supposedly supernatural entity moved from rural folklore to metropolitan press sensation, co-existing in literary and theatrical forms before finally degenerating into a nursery lore bogeyman to frighten children. A mercurial and unfixed cultural phenomenon, Spring-Heeled Jack found purchase in both older folkloric traditions and emerging forms of entertainment. Through this intriguing study of a unique and unsettling figure, Karl Bell complicates our appreciation of the differences, interactions and similarities between various types of popular culture between 1837 and 1904. The book draws upon a rich variety of primary source material including folklorist accounts, street ballads, several series of "penny dreadful" stories (and illustrations), journals, magazines, newspapers, comics, court accounts, autobiographies and published reminiscences. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack is impressively researched social history and provides a fascinating insight into Victorian cultures. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century English social and cultural history, folklore or literature.
Karl Bell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth.
Nigel Bryant
The Legend of the Grail
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Constructed from the many and often contradictory Grail legends, here is a single, consistent and accessible narrative for the general reader - now available in paperback.
The Grail legends have been appropriated by novelists as diverse as Umberto Eco and Dan Brown yet very few have read for themselves the original stories from which they came. All the mystery and drama of the Arthurian world are embodied in the extraordinary tales of Perceval, Gawain, Lancelot and Galahad in pursuit of the Holy Grail.
The original romances, full of bewildering contradictions and composed by a number of different writers, dazzle with the sheer wealth of their conflicting imagination. In Nigel Bryant's hands, this enthralling material becomes truly accessible. He has constructed a single, consistent version of the Grail story in modern English which reasserts its relevance as one of the great and enduring works of literature.
NIGEL BRYANT's previous Arthurian books include The High Book of the Grail (Perlesvaus), Chretien de Troyes' Perceval and its Continuations, and Robert de Boron's Merlin and the Grail.
Andrew M. Beresford
The Legends of the Holy Harlots
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An introduction to the legends of Saints Thaïs and Pelagia, together with critical editions of the five Castilian redactions.
The legends of the holy harlots, Thaïs and Pelagia, are two of the most controversial accounts of female sanctity to have circulated in Spain during the Middle Ages. In this book, which reviews the origin and development of theircults, the author reconsiders the relationships that have traditionally been thought to exist between them and three of the other so-called prostitute saints: Mary Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, and Mary the niece of Abraham. This is accompanied by an evaluation of the five Castilian versions of the two legends and their Latin sources, followed by a reading of their thematic and structural significance, with particular emphasis paid to the ways in which the twowomen renounce their sins and embark on the slow and agonizing path of redemption. The book is completed by critical editions of the five Castilian versions.
ANDREW M. BERESFORD lectures in Spanish at the University of Durham.
E.S. Dewick
The Leofric Collectar
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
E.S. Dewick
The Leofric Collectar vol. II
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Nicholas Orchard
The Leofric Missal
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New edition of, and commentary on, one of the most important liturgical books to have come down to us from the late Anglo-Saxon church.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 579, the so-called 'Leofric Missal', is for the most part not really a missal, but a late-ninth or early-tenth-century combined sacramentary, pontifical and ritual with cues for the sung parts of various masses by the original, possibly French or Lotharingian, scribe. Subsequently, over the course of a hundred and thirty or so years, the sacramentary-pontifical-ritual was considerably augmented, first most probably for thesuccessors of Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury (890-923), the man for whom it was probably originally compiled, then later at Exeter for Bishop Leofric (1050-72).
Nicholas Orchard
The Leofric Missal
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June Palmer
The Letter Book of Thomas Hill 1660-1661
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The Letter Book of Thomas Hill forms one of the most significant survivals of English merchant papers for the seventeenth century. It provides fascinating insights into the world of English merchants at the time of the Restorationof Charles II. It shows not just the importance of family relationships to commerce within the South West of England, but also how these relationships were crucial to conducting trade with continental Europe and across the Atlantic. Thomas Hill's acquaintances included not only other merchants but also well-known men such as Samuel Pepys.
Kathleen B. Neal
The Letters of Edward I
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Detailed examination of the letters of Edward I reveals them to be powerful and sophisticated political tools.
Highly commended for the Royal Studies Journal Book Prize, 2022
As formulaic in appearance as they are abundant in the archives, it is easy to underestimate the power of the letters generated by medieval governments, but these acts of communication were more than mere containers of information. Operating at the intersection of the spoken and the written, the performed and the observed, they produced a discourse that maximized royal authority and promoted solidarity between sender and recipient. This book situates letters within medieval theories of composition and habits of reception, to argue that even mundane letters of governance were rhetorical texts. It focuses on the example of Edward I of England, whose rhetorical prowess was noted, often critically, by contemporaries. It shows how the king's correspondence varied in tone, vocabulary and structure across his reign and between recipients, revealing an unexpected dynamism of political discourse. Moving between historical context and close readings of individual letters, this volume identifies letter-writing as an art through which the king and his government attempted to negotiate and mould relationships with political communities and diplomatic interlocutors alike.
Brenda M. Pask
The Letters of George Davenport, 1651-1677
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Letters written by a clergyman during the late seventeenth century illuminate the religious turmoil of the period.
This book provides an edition of the letters of George Davenport, an Anglican clergyman in the north of England whose adult career covered the period of the Interregnum and the Restoration. Many of the letters are to his former Cambridge tutor, William Sancroft, beginning from 1651 after Sancroft had been expelled from Cambridge, and continuing after the Restoration when Davenport replaced Sancroft as chaplain to John Cosin, bishop of Durham, later becoming Rector of Houghton-le Spring, Durham. They were written to keep Sancroft supplied with information about Durham, where he was a prebendary with license to be non-resident, needing to collect revenues from his living and then torebuild his prebendal house. The earlier letters reveal something about the life of an illegally (since episcopally) ordained young Anglican who, unlike many, did not go into exile but stayed largely in London supported by friends. Davenport eventually became a most conscientious resident parish priest and the letters throw considerable light on the Restoration settlement in the Durham diocese, from the `beautifying' of Houghton church to the catechisingof the people and the collection of tithes from a sometimes tardy flock. Davenport also helped Cosin to Catalogue his famous library and himself gave many manuscripts to it, of which a list is included here as an appendix. The letters are presented here with full introduction and elucidatory notes.
Scott D. Ayler
The Letters of Henry Martyn, East India Company Chaplain
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One of the most significant British foreign missionaries of the nineteenth century, Henry Martyn (1781-1812) is a central figure in the history of the East India Company.
Henry Martyn (1781-1812) was one of the most significant British foreign missionaries of the nineteenth century. An Anglican Evangelical, active in India and Persia, he translated the New Testament into Urdu and Persian, pioneeredengagement between Protestant Christianity and Islam, and inspired a generation of British and American evangelical missionary efforts. He is a central figure for the history of the East India Company and its relationship to themissionary movement. This book provides a fully annotated transcription of all Martyn's surviving 327 letters, together with a very substantial introduction covering Martyn's biography, missiology and churchmanship, circle of correspondents, philological contribution, and experience in India and Persia. The letters themselves are rich in detail about East India Company governance in India and the importance of the religious issue at the highest levels. Thebook will be of great interest to historians of India and the East India Company, historians of Anglo-Persian relations and of Evangelical Anglicanism and the broader Protestant missionary movement, and those interested in the emergence and shape of modern Christian-Islamic discourse.
SCOTT D. AYLER spent 24 years as an English-language instructor in the Middle East and South Asia, most recently at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. He completed his doctorate in History at the University of Wales, Lampeter.
Edited and translated by Constant J. Mews and Seppo Heikkinen
The Letters of Hugh Metel
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Hugh Metel's letters, addressed to some of the most famous individuals of his age are the work of a stylish writer exploring the common concerns of this group.
This volume offers a critical edition and translation of the fifty-five letters of Hugh Metel (c. 1080-c. 1150), an Augustinian canon, which cover a wide range of issues, relating to scripture, theology and canon law. He was also a prolific writer of verse, and he was keen to show how he could combine his interest in the liberal arts with his knowledge of scripture and the Church Fathers. His circle of correspondents included some of the most famous individuals of his age, including Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard, Heloise and many bishops in his region. The few scholars who mention Hugh Metel have often described his rhetorical style, permeated by literary allusions, especially to Horace, scripture and the Fathers, as 'bombastic'. Nonetheless, Hugh does have a powerful command of Latin and took pleasure in crafting letters to his circle of friends and to those with whom he wanted to share common concerns.
George F. Steckley
The Letters of John Paige, London Merchant, 1648-1658
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Helen Maurer, B.M. Cron
The Letters of Margaret of Anjou
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2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award Winner
New study and edition of the remarkable letter collection of Margaret of Anjou, bringing all her correspondence together in one volume for the first time.
Margaret of Anjou remains a figure of controversy. As wife to the weak King Henry VI, she was on the losing side in the first phase of the Wars of the Roses. Yorkist propaganda vilifying Margaret was consolidated by Shakespeare: his portrait of a warlike and vengeful queen - "a tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" - became the widely-accepted view, which up until recently had been little questioned.
However, Margaret's letters, collected here in full for the first time, have their own story to tell - and present a rather different picture. In her words and the words of her contemporaries, both friend and foe, they reveal a woman who lived according to the noble standards of her time. She enjoyed the hunt, she practised her faith, and she tried to help or protect those who called upon her for assistance, as was expected of a queen and "good lady". Henry's mental breakdown, the birth of their son and growing tensions among the lords of the land forced her to step outside the life she would have expected to live. This study of Margaret's letters establishes the scope of a late medieval queen's concerns, while providing a unique account of this extraordinary woman.
HELEN MAURER and B.M. CRON are both independent scholars; their work has focussed on Margaret of Anjou for many years.
Helen Maurer, B.M. Cron
The Letters of Margaret of Anjou
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2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award Winner
New study and edition of the remarkable letter collection of Margaret of Anjou, bringing all her correspondence together in one volume for the first time.
Margaret of Anjou remains a figure of controversy. As wife to the weak King Henry VI, she was on the losing side in the first phase of the Wars of the Roses. Yorkist propaganda vilifying Margaret was consolidated by Shakespeare: his portrait of a warlike and vengeful queen - "a tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" - became the widely-accepted view, which up until recently had been little questioned.
However, Margaret's letters, collected here in full for the first time, have their own story to tell - and present a rather different picture. In her words and the words of her contemporaries, both friend and foe, they reveal a woman who lived according to the noble standards of her time. She enjoyed the hunt, she practised her faith, and she tried to help or protect those who called upon her for assistance, as was expected of a queen and "good lady". Henry's mental breakdown, the birth of their son and growing tensions among the lords of the land forced her to step outside the life she would have expected to live. This study of Margaret's letters establishes the scope of a late medieval queen's concerns, while providing a unique account of this extraordinary woman.
HELEN MAURER and B.M. CRON are both independent scholars; their work has focussed on Margaret of Anjou for many years.
Guy de la Bedoyere
The Letters of Samuel Pepys
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New selection of Pepys' letters throws light on his life and early career, and includes 30 never previously published.
The correspondence included here represents the first selection of Pepys's letters drawn from all possible sources to be published since 1933. Since the Diary does not cover this period, the letters enable the reader to follow Pepys' early career on the staff of the Earl of Sandwich, his rise to greatness as Secretary of the Admiralty, and his retirement after the Glorious Revolution. Along the way Pepys fought battles with opponents of his naval reforms and enemies who tried to implicate him in the Popish Plot, while taking care of his various relatives and keeping up with an array of friends and acquaintances who included many of the great and famous of late-seventeenth-century England. The letters have been chosen to reflect all these aspects of Pepys's varied and fascinating life, and include 30 never before published. They are accompanied by a running commentary, biographies of persons mentioned, aglossary, a chronology, and an introduction that explains how the letters have survived and analyses how they were written.
GUY DE LA BÉDOYERE is an historian and archaeologist with numerous books to his credit. His specialist field is Roman Britain but he has published three books for Boydell on the 'other' seventeenth-century diarist, John Evelyn [1620-1706], including the widely-acclaimed Particular Friends: The Correspondence of SamuelPepys and John Evelyn which features all the letters exchanged by the two men over a period of 38 years.
John Klassen
The Letters of the Rozmberk Sisters
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Women in 15c Bohemia express themselves on marriage, companionship, daily castle life, and family relations.
The letters of the Rozmberk sisters, Perchta and Anézka, give a vivid insight into how medieval women viewed themselves. Perchta's letters inform her father that his choice of a husband for her has caused her desperate sadness andsorrow in which death seems a better alternative. Despite her unhappiness and her almost total dependence on others, however, Perchta undertook to take control of her own fate and to improve the circumstances of her life. Her letters were the means whereby she informed her father and brothers of her misery and persuaded them to take action, and in the process they tell us about her expectations of respect and companionship in marriage. The letters of bothsisters show them to be women with a vigorous sense of their own dignity and offer insights into the hopes and disappointments, joys and vexations of fifteenth-century women. The letters also introduce theenvironment and the activities of daily castle life, and offer an intimate picture of family life in the fifteenth century.JOHN M. KLASSEN is Professor of History at Trinity Western University, Canada. He was assisted in the translations by EVA DOLEZALOVA, Historical Institue, Prague, and LYNN SZABO, Trinity Western University.
G.M. Ditchfield
The Letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808)
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Letters of an important clergyman that provide a well-informed and lively commentary upon the religion, politics and society of the time.
The letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808) illuminate the career and opinions of one of the most prominent and controversial clergymen of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His petitions for liberalism within the Church of England in 1772-3, his subsequent resignation from the church and his foundation of a separate Unitarian chapel in London in 1774 all provoked profound debate in the political as well as the ecclesiastical world. His chapel became a focal point for the theologically and politically disaffected and during the 1770s and early 1780s attracted the interest of many critics of British policy towards the American colonies. Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley and Richard Price were among Lindsey's many acquaintances. The second and final volume of this edition covers the period from the regency crisis and the early stages of the French Revolution to Lindsey's death nineteen years later, at the height of the Napoleonic War. His letters from this period reveal in depth Lindsey's central role in the formation of Unitarianism as a distinctive denomination, his involvement in movements for religious and political reform, his close friendship with Joseph Priestley and the tribulations of dissenters during the 1790s. From his vantage point in London, Lindsey was a well-informed and well-connected observer of the responses in Britain to the French Revolution and the war of the 1790s, and he provides a lucid commentary on the political, literary and theological scene.
As with Volume I, the letters are fully annotated and are accompanied by a full contextual introduction. G.M. DITCHFIELD is Professor of Eighteenth-Century History, University of Kent at Canterbury.
David Hancock
The Letters of William Freeman, London Merchant, 1678-1685
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Colin Heywood
The Levant Voyage of the Blackham Galley (1696-1698)
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This volume publishes for the first time, the journal kept by John Looker (?1670—1715) recording his service as ship’s surgeon on the Blackham Galley, a London-built merchantman on its second trading voyage to the Levant, between December 1696 and March 1698. divides naturally into three parts. The Blackham Galley’s outward and homeward voyages were largely without incident. The time spent by the Blackham Galley in Turkish waters, covers its voyage from Smyrna to Constantinople, where the ship stayed for a month, and then returned to Smyrna. Captain Newnam’s ill-advised and disastrous attempt at privateering in Ottoman waters on the return journey to Smyrna, led to the detention of his vessel at Smyrna. Looker’s account of the Blackham Galley’s enforced stay in Smyrna furnishes a detailed account of social life in the international merchant community, as well as portside life seen ‘from below’, with its taverns and prostitutes, and the activities and frequent ‘debauches’ of an increasingly bored and fractious crew. Looker’s record also provides interesting detail of his professional approach to treatment of the illnesses, accidents and occasional deaths of members of the company of his own and other ships anchored off Smyrna.
Richard Barber
The Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince
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Letters, reports, campaign diaries and the chronicles of Geoffrey le Baker and Chandos Herald document the life and dazzling exploits of the legendary Black Prince.
Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, known as the Black Prince, is one of those heroes of history books so impressive as to seem slightly unreal. At sixteen he played a leading part in the fighting at Crécy; at twenty-six he captured the king of France at Poitiers; and eleven years later he restored Pedro of Castile to histhrone at the battle of Najera. His exploits were chronicled by Jean Froissart, but Froissart was writing three or four decades after the events he describes. There are other sources much closer to events, and it is on these that the present volume draws. Most immediate are the reports sent home by the prince's companions-in-arms and his own letters, which graphically convey the hardships and difficulties of campaigning, its dangers and sheer fatigue. These are followed by campaign diaries and the story of Crécy and other exploits of the prince's from Geoffrey le Baker's chronicle (c.1358-60), itself drawing on similar letters and diaries. Finally there is the chronicle of Chandos Herald, which shows the prince as he appeared to an English writer in the 1380s. Each of the sources is discussed in detail in the introductions to the extracts. RICHARD BARBER's books on the age of chivalry include The Knight and Chivalry, Edward Prince of Wales and Aquitaine, King Arthur: Hero and Legend and Arthurian Legends. He has also written the Companion Guide to Gascony and the Dordogne, the background to so many of the Black Prince's exploits, and the Penguin Guide to Medieval Europe.
Jade Scott
The Life and Letters of Lady Anne Percy, Countess of Northumberland (1536–1591)
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Collects the correspondence of a leader of the Northern Rebellion of 1569 who became a prominent figure in the English Catholic exile community.
Lady Anne Percy (1536-1591), Countess of Northumberland, rode with rebel forces, leading small parties of men independently, and intercepting post between Queen Elizabeth and the Regent of Scotland. After the failure of the rebellion, she became a prominent figure among the English Catholic exiles in the Low Countries throughout the 1570s.
She was at the centre of a transnational network of that shared intelligence and news in support of Mary, Queen of Scots. She also became a spokesperson for the English gentlemen fugitives seeking pensions from the Spanish court, as well as backing the publication of Catholic polemical tracts. She was able to secure personal and political support from papal, Spanish, and French authorities.
This edition collects Lady Anne Percy's correspondence for the first time. In a substantial introduction, Jade Scott provides an account of Lady Anne's life and her experience as an exile, first in Scotland and later on the Continent, and discusses the linguistic, rhetorical, and material features of her correspondence, highlighting the strategies that she employed to maintain her networks and ensure a position of influence throughout her life in exile.
Erica Siegel
The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy
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The first full-length biographical study of Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994).
The British-born Irish composer (Dame) Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) is best known today for her cycle of thirteen string quartets, composed over five decades. And yet, her oeuvre ranges from large scale choral works, to ballets, operas, and symphonic scores. Having studied with Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, many of her compositions also garnered accolades from peers and established musical figures such as Gustav Holst, Donald Francis Tovey, and Henry Wood, among others.
With access to a wealth of documentation previously unavailable, this book explores Maconchy's life and music within a greater consideration of the social and political context of the world in which she lived. While the influence of Bartók has been well documented, this book reveals the equally potent influence of Vaughan Williams on Maconchy's musical idiom. This book also discusses Maconchy's foray into administration and her advocacy of young composers through her work as the first woman to be elected Chairman of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain in 1959 and President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music following the death of Benjamin Britten in 1976. It will be required reading for those interested in the lives of women composers, twentieth-century British music, and musical modernism.
Jeffrey Arlo Brown
The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey
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The first biography of the composer Gérard Grisey shows how the artist's sensuality and rigor came together to form the musical genre known as spectralism.
The French composer Gérard Grisey (1946-98) changed the course of music history with his small but potent output. Labeled "spectral" music, his compositions looked to the physics of sound and the capacities of human perception for material and inspiration. Born in Belfort, Grisey was the son of a French Resistance veteran turned car mechanic and a homemaker. His first instrument was as humble as his background: the accordion. But Grisey rose from his provincial background to the heights of his profession.
This first biography of Grisey traces his journey from rigid Catholicism to broader mysticism; his studies in Olivier Messiaen's legendary composition class; the development of the first "spectral" works in the 1970s; Grisey's stint teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, during which he suffered severe depression; the development of his late, post-spectral style; and his untimely death at the age of 52, shortly after completing his masterpiece on death, the Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold. Drawing on original archival research, interviews with more than fifty of Grisey's colleagues, friends, and lovers, and the study of previously overlooked sketches, this biography shows the delirium and form at the heart of Grisey's life and art—the structured sensuality that allowed him to revolutionize the music of the twentieth century.
Jeffrey Arlo Brown
The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey
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The first biography of the composer Gérard Grisey shows how the artist's sensuality and rigor came together to form the musical genre known as spectralism.
The French composer Gérard Grisey (1946-98) changed the course of music history with his small but potent output. Labeled "spectral" music, his compositions looked to the physics of sound and the capacities of human perception for material and inspiration. Born in Belfort, Grisey was the son of a French Resistance veteran turned car mechanic and a homemaker. His first instrument was as humble as his background: the accordion. But Grisey rose from his provincial background to the heights of his profession.
This first biography of Grisey traces his journey from rigid Catholicism to broader mysticism; his studies in Olivier Messiaen's legendary composition class; the development of the first "spectral" works in the 1970s; Grisey's stint teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, during which he suffered severe depression; the development of his late, post-spectral style; and his untimely death at the age of 52, shortly after completing his masterpiece on death, the Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold. Drawing on original archival research, interviews with more than fifty of Grisey's colleagues, friends, and lovers, and the study of previously overlooked sketches, this biography shows the delirium and form at the heart of Grisey's life and art—the structured sensuality that allowed him to revolutionize the music of the twentieth century.
A. Clark
The Life and Times of Anthony Wood Antiquary of Oxford 1632-1695 Described by Himself vol. IV
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A. Clark
The Life and Times of Anthony Wood Antiquary of Oxford 1632-1695 vol. V
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P.J.C. Field
The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory
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The most comprehensive consideration of the competing arguments for Malory's identitu yet undertaken.`A tour de force of historical scholarship and detective work - so good it sets the mind racing.'LITERARY REVIEW
Malory's stories of King Arthur and the Round Table have been widely read for centuries, but their author's own life has been as variously reported as that of any Arthurian knight. The first serious attempts to identify him were made in the 1890s, but the man who then seemed most likely to have written the book was later found to have been accused of attempted murder, rape, extortion, and sacrilegious robbery and to have spent ten years or more in prison.Could this be reconciled with the authorship of the most famous chivalric romance in English? Other candidates for authorship were proposed but there was little consensus. This book gives the most comprehensive consideration of the competing arguments yet undertaken. It is a fascinating piece of detective work followed by a full account of the life of the man identified as theMalory. Close consideration of individual documents, many of whichwere entirely unknown in 1966, when the last book on Malory's life appeared, makes possible a fuller and more convincing story than has ever been told before. Professor P.J.C. FIELD teaches in the Department of English at theUniversity of Wales, Bangor.
Alexander D. Campbell
The Life and Works of Robert Baillie (1602-1662)
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First full study of the life and career of the Glaswegian minister Robert Baillie, establishing his significance and influence.
From 1637 to 1660, the Scots witnessed rapid and confused changes in government and violent skirmishing, whilst impassioned religious disputes divided neighbours, friends and family. One of the most vivid accounts of this period may be found in the letters of the Glaswegian minister, Robert Baillie; but whilst his correspondence has long featured in historical accounts of the period, the man behind these writings has largely been forgotten. This biography draws together for the first time an analysis of Baillie's career and writings, establishing his significance as a polemicist, minister, theologian, and contemporary historian. It is based on the first, systematic reading ofBaillie's extensive surviving manuscripts, comprising thousands of leaves of correspondence, treatises, sermons, and notebooks. Chapters address Baillie's writings on monarchy, church government, Reformed theology, liturgical change, Biblical scholarship, and Baillie's practice of record-keeping. Overall, the book challenges prevalent understandings of the intellectual landscape of Covenanted Scotland, situating Baillie and his contemporaries on the peripheries of a dynamic, European Republic of Letters.
Alexander D. Campbell is Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellow, Queen's University, Canada.
Gordon Burgess
The Life and Works of Wolfgang Borchert
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The first comprehensive study in English of the life and works of the important postwar dramatist and short-story writer.
Wolfgang Borchert has been called "the most important voice of post-war German literature." He came to fame literally overnight when his play Draussen vor der Tür (The Man Outside) was broadcast in the British zone of occupied Germany in February 1947 and evoked impassioned reactions both for and against. An examination of the plight of the returning soldier in the postwar world, it has become an icon of its time, capturing the futility of war and the true cost of the destruction in both physical and spiritual terms. Worldwide, Draussen vor der Tür has been produced more often than any other German play. Between January 1946 and his death in November 1947, Borchert wrote over forty short stories on the model of Hemingway and Wolfe, many of them highly experimental. Indeed, he is widely regarded as having introduced the short-story form into German literature. This is the first full-length account of Borchert's life and works in English. It benefits from unprecedented access to archival material and from interviews with Borchert's contemporaries. The study links Borchert's own literary ambition with the enlightened family circumstances in which he grew up, and charts his development from a rebellious teenager with a passion for theater via his fighting as a soldier on Germany's Eastern Front and his imprisonment by the Nazis to his brief but intense career as a writer.
Gordon Burgess is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Aberdeen.
Kathleen Garay, Madeleine Jeay
The Life of Saint Douceline, a Beguine of Provence
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Douceline de Digne, founder of the beguine community of the Ladies of Roubaud in Provence, was an important woman mystic of her time; contextual material includes comparison with the beguines of northern Europe.
The Life of Douceline de Digne introduces to an English-speaking audience a 13th-century woman mystic [d.1274] of great significance in the study of female spirituality in the middle ages. Douceline combined an active life of community service [as Mother of the beguine community the Ladies of Roubaud] with vigorous mysticism, and was the focus of an intense cult in Provence after her death. The Life, probably written by Philippa de Porcellet, a member of Douceline's community in Marseilles, is complemented by a study of Douceline's importance in terms of her own spiritual experience, and also as founder and leader of the community, dedicated followers of Franciscan spirituality; she is also compared to other holy women of the later middle ages, especially the beguines of northern Europe.
Michael Lepore
The Life of the Clinician
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The autobiography of one of America's most important gastroenterologists.
Michael Lepore [1910-2000] was a pioneer in the field of gastroenterology. He was a member of one of the first graduating classes of the University of Rochester Medical School, and went on to a distinguished career at Columbia University, New York University, and St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center of New York. This autobiography tells of his experiences as an Italian-American who overcame prejudices to become the personal physician to such notablesas Greta Garbo and President Herbert Hoover. His story is witty and cleverly written, and details the way the medical profession changed from the Great Depression to the late 1990s. Michael Lepore was an alumnus of Duke University Medical School and the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and was the Director, Gastroenterology Section, Departments of Medicine and Surgery Emeritus, St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center of New York.
William Poole
The Life, Poems, and Letters of Peter Goldman (1587/8-1627)
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Reconstructs the life of Peter Goldman and presents a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters.
The Dundonian physician Peter Goldman, one of an immigrant family of merchants, was the first Scot to take a medical degree from Leiden; he then undertook research in Oxford, London, and Paris, before resettling in Dundee. An important figure in contemporary Scottish literary culture, he maintained a wide correspondence with significant intellectual figures and influenced two landmark Scottish publishing projects: the Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (1637) and the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland (1654). However, his major literary achievement was his Latin poetry, which establishes him as a unique voice of his time. His longest and most prominent work is an elegy on the deaths of four of his brothers, strikingly narrated in the voice of their lamenting mother.
This book reconstructs and provides a study of Goldman's life, career and writing. It also offers a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters, with accompanying commentary. Appendices provide an edited list of his remarkable library and a transcript of his testament.
C W Foster
The Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey
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Yvonne Zivkovic
The Literary Politics of Mitteleuropa
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Shows how postwar writers in Austria and Yugoslavia re-imagined the concept of Mitteleuropa, Central Europe, as a cultural space between nostalgia and totalitarianism.
The German term Mitteleuropa, or Central Europe, was never just a geographical concept: it connoted extending German influence to the east. In the 1980s, the eastern European dissident writers György Konrád, Czesław Miłosz, and Milan Kundera revived the concept to counter a perceived Cold War memory vacuum, aligning themselves with the multiethnic and multilingual legacy of the Habsburg Empire. Their observations gave rise to a protracted public debate that posited literature against politics. This debate was both anticipated and expanded upon in postwar literary works by Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, and Christoph Ransmayr in Austria, and Danilo Kiš, Aleksandar Tišma, and Dubravka Ugrešić in (the former) Yugoslavia, all of whom questioned notions of geographic identity and national allegiance by imagining Mitteleuropa as a cultural space between nostalgia and totalitarianism. Yvonne Zivkovic draws on space and memory studies to show how Mitteleuropa emerged as an alternate memory discourse that reveals deep ties between the Second Austrian Republic and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The writers discussed address the major themes of the 1980s debate - traumatic memory, geographic displacement, and transnationalism - but also share a literary aesthetics that privileges the intersections of prose fiction and the essay, the literary fragment, and intertextuality. Zivkovic's book shows the persistence of Mitteleuropa as a literary network and as a cultural collective that examines civic values against public tendencies of memory manipulation.
Professor John Parham
The Literature and Politics of the Environment
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Essays exploring interrelated strands of material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing, through a rich variety of case studies.
Much as the complexities of climate change and the Anthropocene have queried the limits and exclusions of literary representation, so, too, have the challenges recently presented by climate activism and intersectional environmentalism, animal rights, and even the power of material forms, such as oil, plastic, and heavy metals. Social and protest movements have revived the question of whether there can be such a thing as an activist ecocriticism: can such an approach only concern itself with consciousness, or might it politicise literary criticism in a new way?
Attempting to respond, this volume coalesces around three interrelated strands: material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing itself. Contributors consider the ways in which literary form has foregrounded the complexities of both matter (in essays on water, sugar, and land) and political economics (from empire and nationalism to environmental justice movements and local and regional communities). The volume asks how life writing, nature writing, creative nonfiction, and autobiography - although genres entrenched in capitalist political realities - can also confront these by reinserting personal experience. Can we bring a more sustainable planet into being by focusing on those literary forms which have the ability to imagine the conditions and systems needed to do so?
Ernest Ernest Cole
The Literature of Contemporary Sierra Leone
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What are Sierra Leonean and diaspora authors writing about today? What genres are they working in? What are future possibilities and directions of travel?
The ethnically and linguistically diverse nation of Sierra Leone boasts a rich cultural legacy and, in the first decades of the twenty-first century, has built an internationally recognized literary canon despite the ravages caused by a brutal civil war and then the Ebola and Covid pandemics. While acknowledging the country's literary and creative heritage dating back to the mid-twentieth century, this book interrogates a number of prominent themes and critical perspectives on Sierra Leone's contemporary literature.
Drawing from body studies, post-colonial theory, spatial theory, trauma theory, ecocriticism, history, and cultural studies, scholars and writers from West Africa and the United States tease out the beginnings, ecology, and dynamism of a bona fide national literature. They do so through a careful examination of such themes as social oppression and class distinction, dystopia, ethnocentricity, homophobia, misogyny and gender disparities, anthropocentrism, self-discovery, social transformation, identity, social degradation, genocide, and trauma, while also theorizing constructs such as home, migration, displacement, community, and return. Throughout, contributors argue for a better appreciation of a vibrant national literature by Sierra Leoneans themselves as well as its place in and contribution to world literature more generally.
Dennis F. Mahoney
The Literature of German Romanticism
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Sharply focused essays on the most significant aspects of German Romanticism.
This volume of sharply focused essays by an international team of scholars deals not only with the most significant literary, philosophical, and cultural aspects of German Romanticism -- one of the most influential, albeit highlycontroversial movements in the history of German literature -- but also with the history and status of scholarship on the literature of the period. The introduction and first section establish an overall framework by placing German Romanticism within a European context that includes its English counterpart. Goethe and Schiller are considered, as are the Jena Romantics. The second section is organized according to the traditional distinctions between epic,dramatic, and lyric modes of writing, while realizing that particularly in the Romantic novel, there was an attempt to blend these three. A final group of essays focuses on German literary Romanticism's relation to other aspects of German culture: folklore studies, politics, psychology, natural science, gender presentation and representation, music, and visual art.
Contributors: Gerhard Schulz, Arnd Bohm, Richard Littlejohns, Gerhart Hoffmeister, Ulrich Scheck, Claudia Stockinger, Bernadette Malinowski, Fabian Lampart, Klaus Peter, Gabriele Rommel, Martha B. Helfer, Kristina Muxfeldt, Beate Allert, Paul Bishop and R. H. Stephenson, Nicholas Saul
Dennis F. Mahoney is Professor of German and Director of the European Studies Program at the University of Vermont.
Dr Margaret Kean
The Literature of Hell
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Essays considering the representation and perception of hell in a variety of texts.
Narratives of a descent to the underworld, of the sights to be seen and the punishments meted out there, have kept a hold on the popular imagination for millennia. The legacy from doctrinal warnings and the deep-set literary markers that identify a place of suffering and alienation continue to stimulate creative exchange and critical thinking. Such work takes risks: it braves the dark and questions the past. The contributions in this volume reflect on the exigency of hell in the stories that we tell. They consider the transfer and repurposing of motifs across genres and generational divides, and acknowledge the sustained immediacy of physical and psychological landscapes of hell. The essays span a wide chronological range and apply various contemporary critical approaches, including cognitive science, performance studies and narratology. This cross-period analysis is complemented by interviews with three creative practitioners: Jeya Ayadurai, director of "Hell's Museum" in Singapore, the actor Lisa Dwan, who is acclaimed for her dramatisation of Samuel Beckett's late works, and the writer David Almond. From ancient myth and early English sermons to mid-twentieth-century surrealism and current responses to terrorist activities and environmental damage, the literature of hell engages with issues of immediate relevance and asks its audiences to reflect on their cultural history, the meaning of social justice and the nature of embodied existence.
Simon Richter
The Literature of Weimar Classicism
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New essays providing an account of the shaping beliefs, preoccupations, motifs, and values of Weimar Classicism.
In Germany, Weimar Classicism (roughly the period from Goethe's return to Germany from Italy in 1788 to the death of his friend and collaborator Schiller in 1805) is widely regarded as an apogee of literary art. But outside of Germany, Goethe is considered a Romantic, and the notion of Weimar Classicism as a distinct period is viewed with skepticism. This volume of new essays regards the question of literary period as a red herring: Weimar Classicism is best understood as a project that involved the ambitious attempt not only to imagine but also to achieve a new quality of wholeness in human life and culture at a time when fragmentation, division, and alienation appeared to be thenorm. By not succumbing to the myth of Weimar and its literary giants, but being willing to explore the phenomenon as a complex cultural system with a unique signature, this book provides an account of its shaping beliefs, preoccupations, motifs, and values. Contributions from leading German, British, and North American scholars open up multiple interdisciplinary perspectives on the period. Essays on the novel, poetry, drama, and theater are joined by accounts of politics, philosophy, visual culture, women writers, and science. The reader is introduced to the full panoply of cultural life in Weimar, its accomplishments as well as its excesses and follies. Emancipatory and doctrinaire by turns, the project of Weimar Classicism is best approached as a complex whole.
Contributors: Dieter Borchmeyer, Charles Grair, Gail Hart, Thomas Saine, Jane Brown, Cyrus Hamlin, Roger Stephenson, Elisabeth Krimmer, Helmut Pfotenhauer, Benjamin Bennett, Astrida Orle Tantillo, W. Daniel Wilson.
Simon J. Richter is Associate Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania.
Helen Gittos
The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church
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New research into the liturgy of Anglo-Saxon history, with important implications for church history in general.
The essays in this volume offer the fruits of new research into the liturgical rituals of later Anglo-Saxon England. They include studies of individual rites, the production, adaptation and transmission of texts, vernacular gospeltranslations, liturgical drama and the influence of the liturgy on medical remedies, poetry and architecture; also covered are the tenth-century Benedictine Reforms and the growth of pastoral care. It will be valuable for anyoneinterested in later Anglo-Saxon England as well as medieval liturgy and church history.
Matthew Ward
The Livery Collar in Late Medieval England and Wales
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First full examination of the medieval livery collar, form, function, and significance.
The livery collar had a pervasive presence in late-medieval England. Worn about the neck to denote service to a lord, references to the collar abound in government records, contemporary chronicles and correspondence, and many depictions of the collar can be found in illuminated manuscripts and on church monuments. From the fifteenth century the collar was regarded as a powerful symbol of royal power, the artefact associating the recipient with the king; italso played a significant function in the construction and articulation of political and other group identities during the period. This first book-length study of the livery collar examines its cultural and political significance from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, in particular between 1450 and 1500, the period associated with the Wars of the Roses. It explores the principal meanings bestowed on the collar, considers the itemin its various political contexts, and places the collar within the sphere of medieval identity construction. It also investigates the motives which lay behind its distribution, shedding new light on the nature and understanding of royal power at the time.
Matthew Ward
The Livery Collar in Late Medieval England and Wales
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First full examination of the medieval livery collar, form, function, and significance.
The livery collar had a pervasive presence in late-medieval England. Worn about the neck to denote service to a lord, references to the collar abound in government records, contemporary chronicles and correspondence, and many depictions of the collar can be found in illuminated manuscripts and on church monuments. From the fifteenth century the collar was regarded as a powerful symbol of royal power, the artefact associating the recipient with the king; it also played a significant function in the construction and articulation of political and other group identities during the period.
This first book-length study of the livery collar examines its cultural and political significance from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, in particular between 1450 and 1500, the period associated with the Wars of the Roses. It explores the principal meanings bestowed on the collar, considers the item in its various political contexts, and places the collar within the sphere of medieval identity construction. It also investigates the motives which lay behind its distribution, shedding new light on the nature and understanding of royal power at the time.
Jonas Wellendorf
The Lives and Deaths of the Norse Gods
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A comprehensive study of the mortality of Norse gods, with close readings of the Prose Edda, Poetic Edda and Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum.
Divinity usually implies immortality. The very phrase "gods and mortals" highlights an ontological gap between two distinct categories of existence: immortal deities and transient humans. This divide, however, does not hold true in the Scandinavian mythological tradition, where the gods themselves are mortal. This mortality is central to myths such as those of Baldr and of Ragnarøk, and affords the Norse gods narrative potential, that is unparalleled in other traditions, such as those inherited from antiquity.
The first half of this study explores some salient consequences of this attribute, highlighting the striking anthropomorphism of the gods. The second half takes a more diachronic approach, examining the prehistory of the group of gods who became known as the Æsir and arguing that they developed from non-anthropomorphic divine forces shaped by and mobilized in ideologies of leadership and warfare in pre-Christian Northern Europe. By examining how divine mortality not only drives Norse mythic narratives but also reflects wider patterns of thought and belief, including early medieval theories of rulership and the sacralization of human excellence, this book reconsiders the boundaries between godhood and humanity in pre-Christian Scandinavia and, in doing so, questions what it means to be a god.
David Hunter
The Lives of George Frideric Handel
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How have Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories moulded our understanding of the musician, the man and the icon?
To evaluate the familiar, even over-familiar, story of Handel's life could be seen as a quixotic endeavour. How can there be anything new to say? This book seeks to distinguish fact from fiction, not only to produce a new biography but also to explore the concepts of biography and dissemination by using Handel's life and lives as a case study. By examining the images of Handel to be found in biographies and music histories - the genius, the religious profound, the master of musical styles, the distiller into music of English sentiment, the glorifier of the Hanoverians, the hymner of the middle class, the independent, the prodigious, the generous, the sexless, the successful, the wealthy, the bankrupt, the pious, the crude, the heroic, the devious, the battler of ill-fortune, the moral exemplar - and by adding new factual information, David Hunter shows how events are manipulated into stories and tropes. One such trope has been employed to portray numerous persons as Handel's enemies regardless of whether Handel considered them as such. Picking apart the writing of Handel's biographers and other reporters, Hunter exposes the narrative underpinnings - the lies, confusions, presumptions, and conclusions, whether direct and inferred or assumed - to show how Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories have moulded our understanding of the musician, the man and the icon.
DAVID HUNTER is Music Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin.
James Rattue
The Living Stream
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A history of holy wells from the pagan cult of water to the Christian wells of the middle ages, and including a full gazetteer.
The holy well is the absolute combination of mystery and utility. There are hundreds of them still to be found, some easily, others with good maps. This useful book lists them all, and in so doing takes us into the realm of a still little-known spiritual area... It also leads us through many exceedingly interesting though remote areas of Celtic and English Christian history. RONALD BLYTHE [TABLET] Holy wells are an ancient and mysterious part of the landscape, yet have been the subject of little serious study. James Rattue has been fascinated by them for many years, and has now written the first general history of wells and their religious and cultural associations. He begins the story in the ancient world, exploring the archetypal motifs present in the cult of water, then traces the distinctive development of the holy well in England, examining pagan wells and their Christianisation, the role played byecclesiastical history and institutions, the importance of saints' cults, and the social functions of wells in the middle ages.
Mical Raz
The Lobotomy Letters
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Drawing from original correspondence penned by lobotomy patients and their families as well as from the professional papers of lobotomy pioneer and neurologist Walter Freeman, The Lobotomy Letters gives an account of the widespread acceptance of this controversial procedure.
The rise and widespread acceptance of psychosurgery constitutes one of the most troubling chapters in the history of modern medicine. By the late 1950s, tens of thousands of Americans had been lobotomized as treatment for a host of psychiatric disorders. Though the procedure would later be decried as devastating and grossly unscientific, many patients, families, and physicians reported veritable improvement from the surgery; some patients were even considered cured. The Lobotomy Letters gives an account of why this controversial procedure was sanctioned by psychiatrists and doctors of modern medicine. Drawing from original correspondence penned by lobotomy patients andtheir families as well as from the professional papers of lobotomy pioneer and neurologist Walter Freeman, the volume reconstructs how physicians, patients, and their families viewed lobotomy and analyzes the reasons for its overwhelming use.
Mical Raz, MD/PhD, is a physician and historian of medicine.
Maryanne Kowaleski
The Local Customs Accounts of the Port of Exeter 1266-1321
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Exeter possesses the best series of local customs accounts from medieval England, beginning in 1266 and surviving for almost 70 per cent of the years up to 1498. They are also far more complete than other local accounts: listing ships' names, home ports, shipmasters and dates of arrival, as well as the importers and their cargoes. Equally remarkable is their focus on coastal as well as overseas traffic, unlike the better known national customs accounts which recorded only overseas trade. From the Exeter accounts we can follow the movements of foreign and domestic shipping, grain imports during the great Famine of 1315-17, and the identity of the merchants, shipmasters and marinerswho carried on the various kinds of trade. Dr Kowaleski's introduction provides the first detailed account of the port of Exeter and its activities during this period, followed by a complete translation of the surviving accounts from 1266 to 1321. The book also includes a specimen Latin account, a glossary of weights and measures, map, and full indexes.
Ellen McClure
The Logic of Idolatry in Seventeenth-Century French Literature
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A sensitive investigation into how French writers, including Descartes and Racine, treated a central preoccupation in early modern writings.
Idolatry was one of the dominant and most contentious themes of early modern religious polemics. This book argues that many of the best-known literary and philosophical works of the French seventeenth century were deeply engaged and concerned with the theme. In a series of case studies and close readings, it shows that authors used the logic of idolatry to interrogate the fractured and fragile relationship between the divine and the human, with particular attention to the increasingly fraught question of the legitimacy of human agency. Reading d'Urfé, Descartes, La Fontaine, Sévigné, Molière, and Racine through the lens of idolatry reveals heretofore hidden aspects of their work, all while demonstrating the link between the emergent autonomy of literature and philosophy and the confessional conflicts that dominated the period. In so doing, Professor McClure illustrates how religion can become a source of interpretive complexity, and how this dynamism can and should be taken into account in early modern French studies and beyond.
Mary-Rose McLaren
The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century
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The first attempt by ordinary lay people - merchants, scriveners, craftsmen - to write their own history, and its effect on the growth and development of London.
The early fifteenth century witnessed the first attempt made by ordinary lay people - merchants, scriveners, craftsmen - to write their own history, in the so-called "London chronicles", which have had a profound effect upon the growth and development of London. The earliest of the extant chronicles represents the first generation of historical writing to be undertaken in English since the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, and reflects an important shift in the movement from a primarily oral to a literate culture. However, despite their significance for evidence of this change, and as a secular and largely vernacular voice, much about the London chronicles remain a mystery. This study, the first for over 80 years, includes manuscripts unknown to Kingsford in his 1913 survey, studies them in relation to each other, and draws together what can be known about their origins, purpose and effect upon their audience. It alsoprovides an annotated edition of the previously unpublished text of Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives, MS 32D86/42, while a selection of crucial events recorded in the chronicles -- such as the Rising of 1381 and Cade's Rebellion-- is presented in an appendix.
MARY-ROSE McLAREN gained her Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne.
Robin Woolven
The London Diary of Anthony Heap, 1931-1945
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Diaries from the 1930s and 1940s reveal the reality of living in London during wartime.
Anthony Heap (1910-1985) kept a daily diary, recording his life in St Pancras, his work, loves and experiences from the age of 17 until shortly before his death. This volume provides selected extracts from the 1930s and the SecondWorld War, an eventful period during which his father committed suicide, Heap joined Mosley's Fascists, and then stood for the local Conservatives in 1937; the author vividly recounts what it was like to live through the Blitz, sleeping in air-raid shelters, and viewing the nightly raids on London. The diary also recounts more personal details, his fondness for weekly drinking in pubs in Fitzrovia and Hampstead, a series of girlfriends before marrying in1941, and his love of the theatre: it is predictably opinionated, often infuriating and cutting, but never dull. The extracts are presented here with notes, introduction, and an outline of the principal people involved.
Robin Woolven researched wartime London for his PhD, gained from King's College, London. His primary research interest concerns the twentieth-century history of Camden (Hampstead, Holborn and St Pancras).
Helena M. Chew, Martin Weinbaum
The London Eyre of 1244
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Caroline M Barron
The London Jubilee Book, 1376-1387
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Edition and translation of a copy of a vastly significant document for our understanding of fourteenth-century England, long believed lost.
In the summer of 1376 a spirit of reform was abroad in the city of London. A number of measures were taken to make those who were elected to govern the city more responsible to its citizens as a whole. A committee was set up to examine the ordinances at the Guildhall and present to the Commonalty those that were "profitables" and those that were not. Two years later, the committee produced a volume known officially as the Liber de Ordinancionibus, but popularly as "The Jubilee book", because it had been initiated in the jubilee year of Edward III's reign. But the reforming measures introduced in the book caused so many controversies and disputes that eventually, in a bid to restore order in the city, in March 1387 the "Jubilee Book" was taken outside the Guildhall and publicly burnt. Historians have long debated the possible contents of this contentious but hugely significant volume, widely believed to be lost. However, recently a fifteenth-century copy of the "Jubilee Book", possibly of an earlier draft put together in the course of the two years, but superseded by the final version, was discovered in a manuscript held at Trinity College Cambridge (Ms O.3.11).
Katya Krylova
The Long Shadow of the Past
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Examines key contemporary Austrian literary texts, films, and memorials that treat Nazism and the Holocaust for what they reveal about the country's contemporary politics of memory.
2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
The process of coming to terms with its National Socialist past has been a long and difficult one in Austria. It is only over the past thirty years that the country's view of its role during the Third Reich has shifted decisively from that of victimhood to complicity, prompted by the Waldheim affair of 1986-1988. Austria's writers, filmmakers, and artists have been at the center of this process, holding upa mirror to the country's present and drawing attention to a still disturbing past. Katya Krylova's book undertakes close readings of key contemporary Austrian literary texts, films, and memorials that treat the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust. The analysis focuses on texts by Robert Schindel, Elfriede Jelinek, and Anna Mitgutsch, documentary films by Ruth Beckermann and by Margareta Heinrich and Eduard Erne, as well as recent memorial projects inVienna, examining what these reveal about the evolving memory culture in contemporary Austria. Aimed at a broad readership, the book will be a key reference point for university teachers, undergraduates, and postgraduates engagedin scholarship on contemporary Austrian literature, film, and visual culture, and for general readers interested in confrontations with the National Socialist past in the Austrian context.
KATYA KRYLOVA is Lecturer in German, Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen, UK. The Long Shadow of the Past is her second book.
Katya Krylova
The Long Shadow of the Past
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Examines key contemporary Austrian literary texts, films, and memorials that treat Nazism and the Holocaust for what they reveal about the country's contemporary politics of memory.
2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
The process of coming to terms with its National Socialist past has been a long and difficult one in Austria. It is only over the past thirty years that the country's view of its role during the Third Reich has shifted decisively from that of victimhood to complicity, prompted by the Waldheim affair of 1986-1988. Austria's writers, filmmakers, and artists have been at the center of this process, holding upa mirror to the country's present and drawing attention to a still disturbing past. Katya Krylova's book undertakes close readings of key contemporary Austrian literary texts, films, and memorials that treat the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust. The analysis focuses on texts by Robert Schindel, Elfriede Jelinek, and Anna Mitgutsch, documentary films by Ruth Beckermann and by Margareta Heinrich and Eduard Erne, as well as recent memorial projects inVienna, examining what these reveal about the evolving memory culture in contemporary Austria. Aimed at a broad readership, the book will be a key reference point for university teachers, undergraduates, and postgraduates engagedin scholarship on contemporary Austrian literature, film, and visual culture, and for general readers interested in confrontations with the National Socialist past in the Austrian context.
KATYA KRYLOVA is Lecturer in German, Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen, UK. The Long Shadow of the Past is her second book.
Stephen S. Evans
The Lords of Battle
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First study of the Dark Age comitatus, or warband, drawing evidence from literary and historical sources.
The Lords of Battle examines the image of the comitatus, or warband, as it is portrayed in literary and historical sources from Britain's early medieval period, attempting to determine the extent to which it reflectsan historical reality. Through an extensive use of a variety of source material, literary, historical, and archaeological, the book investigates both the structure of the warband, and the practices and institutions which supported it. After a review of the historical background of Dark Age Britain, Stephen Evans explores the practical characteristics of the comitatus: its military organisation; its internal social structure and its place within society as a whole; and the lord-retainer relationship, its duties and obligations. He also examines the cultural, social, and economic institutions which produced and supported the warband. Overall, the study provides a numberof insights into the ideals and practices of Britain's Celtic and Anglo-Saxon warrior-élites during a turbulent period.
Dr STEPHEN EVANS gained his PhD from Temple University.
Dáithí Ó hÓgáin
The Lore of Ireland
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The definitive reference book on Ireland's cultural and religious heritage.
Ireland has one of the finest cultural heritages and a standard reference book combining the related subjects of folklore, myth, legend and romance is long overdue. There are 350 substantial entries, in alphabetical order from Abán, a 6th-century saint, to Weather, all with full references to sources, a synopsis of relevant stories, and discussion of their origin, nature and development. These are complimented by a genre-list of material under various headings, such as Mythical Lore, Fianna Cycle, Ulster Cycle, King Cycles, Peoples and Traditions, Religious Lore, and Folk Custom and Belief. There is also a wealth of genealogical detail, indicating how historical and social circumstances have influenced the growth and spread of Irish lore.
DAITHI O HOGAIN, Associate Professor of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin, was an international authority on folklore and traditional literature.
Gabriel Ronay
The Lost King of England
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After the murder of Edmund Ironside in 1016, Canute the Dane seized the crown of Wessex, banishing Edmund's small sons, Edmund and Edward, to Sweden with a `letter of death'.However, their lives were spared and the continental wanderings of the Anglo-Saxon princes began. Gabriel Ronay fills in the years of their exile concluding with Edward's death forty years later, just forty-eight hours after his triumphant return to England.
When Edward Ironside was murdered in 1016, Canute the Dane seized the crown of Wessex. The following year, conscious of the threat posed to his rule by Edmund's small sons, Edmund and Edward Ætheling, he banished them to Sweden, with a `letter of death'. The Swedish king, however, spared their lives, and the Continental wanderings of the Anglo-Saxon princes began; their uncertain fate greatly exercised the minds of contemporary English chroniclers. Forty years later the ageing, childless Edward the Confessor learned that his nephew Edward was living in Hungary; he invited him to return home, casting him in a crucial role in the struggle to avert a Norman takeover, but forty-eight hours after his triumphant homecoming he was dead, and the events that were to lead to the Norman conquest of 1066 were set in motion. Drawing on sources from as far afield as Iceland and Kievan Russia, this account of the extraordinary years of the princes' exile is a story stranger than fiction, unravelled by Gabriel Ronay with all the excitement of a modern-day crime study. GABRIEL RONAY wrote for The Times for many years. He was born in Transylvania, and studied at the universities of Budapest and Edinburgh. He came to Britain after the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Edited by Dr Brian Hodgkinson
The Louth St James Churchwardens’ Accounts: 1527-1570
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Tudor Paperwork: accounts revealing the trials and tribulations of church officials during the Reformation period.
The Louth churchwarden's accounts are some of the county's most comprehensive surviving parish records. These continue in an almost unbroken sequence from the beginning of the sixteenth century, opening a panorama on the financial undertakings of a large and relatively prosperous parish church. The first published transcription, edited by Reginald Dudding, Rector of Saleby (1859-1937), covered the years 1500/1 to 1523/4 and recount the construction of the church's magnificent spire in considerable detail. The documents transcribed in this present publication date from 1527/8 to 1570/1 and comprise of two volumes now deposited in the Lincolnshire Archives. These, alongside the comprehensive parish registers commencing in 1538, illustrate the fiscal and social interactions between a local parish church and its parishioners. Importantly, although these texts are in hindsight historically significant, to the churchwardens of the period they were primarily a statement of the financial situation of the church; merely Tudor paperwork.
Dario Fernández-Morera
The Lyre and the Oaten Flute: Garcilaso and the Pastoral
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman
The Lyrical Vision of María Luisa Bombal
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Beth Williamson
The Madonna of Humility
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Detailed analysis of an iconographic motif of huge significance in European art.
The image of the `Madonna of Humility', the Virgin and Child seated on the ground, is widespread in European art, yet it remains mysterious. This book provides a detailed and accessible investigation and explication of the theme'smultiple significances, and of other associated images (including the Virgin suckling the Child, the Woman of the Apocalypse and the Virgin Annunciate). It takes issue with the orthodox view of the origins of the image lying in the work of Simone Martini at Avignon, suggesting a longer process of development, with a key role for manuscript illumination in Metz. Subsequent chapters pursue the assimilation, appropriation, and adjustment of the image in a number of regions across Europe, challenging the simplistic idea of unequivocal iconographic meaning determined solely by the context of the image's genesis. The book argues for an essential fluidity and negotiability of meaning inthe visual arts, challenging the very idea of unitary and unequivocal iconographic readings; and its examination of the multi-layered functions of the image in different contexts and different regions provides not just an iconographical case-study, but a cultural history of a devotional resource with Europe-wide implications
Dr BETH WILLIAMSON teaches in the Department of Art History, University of Bristol.
Joanna M. Martin
The Maitland Quarto
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New edition of one of the most important collections of sixteenth-century Scots poetry.
The Maitland Quarto Manuscript was compiled in c.1586 in the circle of the Maitland Family of Lethington, East Lothian. It is a highly significant and rich collection of Older Scots poetry. It contains the most complete collectionof the poems of Sir Richard Maitland, judge, privy counsellor, and Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland under Mary Queen of Scots, together with poems attributed to Maitland's heir, John Maitland of Thirlestane, Chancellor to James VI, and to leading writers and intellectuals, including the king himself, Alexander Montgomerie, and Alexander Arbuthnot. It attests to new developments in Scottish literature in the late sixteenth century by including many unique examples of Calvinist lyric, the earliest known British Country House poem, and Sapphic verse, as well as poems influenced by Italian and French sources. It also provides evidence for the role of women in the composition, collection and copying of Older Scots verse. This critical edition offers fresh access to the fascinating contents of this important manuscript. It provides an authoritative text, with full modern annotation and glossary. Itsintroduction and notes address the textual transmission of the poems, and offer detailed contextualization of them in both historical and literary terms.
Joanna Martin is Lecturer in Middle English at the University ofNottingham.
Thomas C. Sawyer
The Making and Meaning of a Medieval Manuscript
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Develops a method for placing book-historical evidence in dialogue with literary meaning through a detailed investigation of a MS Bodley 851.
How do you read a medieval book? And what is the relationship between the study of manuscripts as material artifacts and the study of their textual contents? This book develops a method for placing book-historical evidence in dialogue with literary meaning. Medieval manuscripts do not simply witness the texts they contain: through the process of their making, they preserve and generate knowledge about literature itself.
Central to the expression of method in this study is a detailed investigation of an immensely complex composite manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 851. This manuscript survives as an important representative of textual cultures popular in late-medieval England: it attests the work of at least eight scribal agents and contains an infamous scribal version of Piers Plowman (Z-text), the sole surviving copy of Walter Map's De nugis curialium, and an array of satirical Anglo-Latin poetry, including the Apocalypsis goliae episcopi, the Speculum stultorum, and the Bridlington Prophecy. Close attention to the production of Bodley 851 underpins critical examinations of fragmentary misogamy, the construction of literary sequences, and the extent of pseudonymous authorship in the manuscript record.
Professor Graham A Loud
The Making of Medieval History
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Essays on the discipline of medieval history and its practitioners, from the late eighteenth century onwards.
A hugely interesting set of essays, reflecting on a variety of ways in which medieval history has developed to the present time. Scholarship of the highest standard, deeply thought-provoking and deeply engaged with the inheritances and future tasks of medieval academic history. The collection will be essential reading for all medievalists. John Arnold, Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge.
Medieval history is present in manyforms in our world. Monuments from the Middle Ages or inspired by them are a familiar feature of landscapes across Europe and beyond; the period between the end of the Roman Empire in Western Europe and the Reformation and European expansion is an essential part of our imagination, be it conveyed through literature, the arts, science fiction or even video games; it is also commonly invoked in political debates. Specialists in the field have played a majorrole in shaping modern perceptions of the era. But little is known about the factors that have influenced them and their work. The essays in this volume provide original insights into the fabric and dissemination of medieval history as a scholarly discipline from the late eighteenth century onwards. The case-studies range from the creation of specific images of the Middle Ages to the ways in which medievalists have dealt with European identity, contributed to making and deconstructing myths and, more specifically, addressed questions relating to land and frontiers as well as to religion.
GRAHAM A. LOUD is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Leeds;MARTIAL STAUB is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Sheffield.
Contributors: Christine Caldwell Ames, Peter Biller, Michael Borgolte, Patrick Geary, Richard Hitchcock, Bernhard Jussen, Joep Leerssen, G.A. Loud, Christian Lübke, Jinty Nelson, Bastian Schlüter, Martial Staub, Ian Wood.
Paul Banks
The Making of Peter Grimes [2 volume set]
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Facsimile of the composition draft of Peter Grimes, showing Britten's compositional method; companion volume containing essays on its history and significance.
Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten's first opera, established his stature as a composer, marked a turning point in the fortunes of English opera, and conquered operatic stages around the world. Though its setting and music reflect Britten's greatlove for his native East Anglia, the inspiration for the work was a chance encounter with the poetry of George Crabbe while Britten and the tenor Peter Pears (who eventually created the title role) were stayingin California in 1941; they made a number of draft scenarios while they waited for a passage to England, and after their return Montagu Slater was asked to write the libretto. The full score was completed by February 1945. The single document that reveals most about the work's creative history is the composition draft in which the composer wrestled with text and music, gradually fashioning the opera into its final version. The colour facsimile of this fascinating manuscript is published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its first production. It is accompanied by a commentary volume containing a series of essays on the work's history and its contemporary significance by leading Britten scholars, together with a brief note on the work by PETER PEARS(apparently never before published) and an account of the first production by the late ERIC CROZIER, who directed it. The volume is illustrated with colour reproductions of some of the original costume designs by Kenneth Green, his portrait of BenjaminBritten, and contemporary black and white photographs.
Paul Banks
The Making of Peter Grimes: Essays
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Historic accounts and new material illuminate the creation, early history and artistic intentions of Britten's first opera.
The premiere of Peter Grimes on 7 June 1945 announced the emergence of the first great composer of opera in English since Purcell. Surviving documents offer evidence of the complex interaction of differing ideas about the possible shape and content of the new work, most notably the composition draft, which these essays are particularly concerned to illuminate. They juxtapose historic material with fresh studies: three items written by members of theteam involved in the 1945 production are set alongside specially-commissioned articles, with the three-fold intention of presenting the views of some of the creators of the opera, outlining the work's early history, and offeringcontemporary perspectives on its historical context and its message.Professor PAUL BANKS is Research Development Fellow at the Royal College of Music.Contributors: PAUL BANKS, PHILIP BRETT, BENJAMIN BRITTEN, ERIC CROZIER, DONALDMITCHELL, PETER PEARS, PHILIP REED, ROSAMUND STRODE. Packed away in its pages is a very large amount of new information. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT A fitting tribute to the opera's enduring international stature, and undoubtedly [a] significant achievement in Britten studies. MUSIC AND LETTERS
Paul Hammond
The Making of Restoration Poetry
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A survey of Restoration poetry, from the forms in which it was disseminated to studies of important texts.
This book explores the complex ways in which authors, publishers, and readers contributed to the making of Restoration poetry. The essays in Part I map some principal aspects of Restoration poetic culture: how poetic canons were established through both print and manuscript; how censorship operated within the manuscript transmission of erotic and politically sensitive poems; the poetic functions of authorial anonymity; the work of allusion and intertextualreference; the translation and adaptation of classical poetry; and the poetic representations of Charles II. Part II turns to individual poets, and charts the making of Dryden's canon; the ways in which Mac Flecknoe operates through intertextual allusions; the relationship of the variant texts of Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress"; and the treatment of Rochester's canon and text by his modern editors. The discussions are complemented by illustrationsdrawn from both printed books and manuscripts.
PAUL HAMMOND is Professor of Seventeenth-Century Literature at the University of Leeds.
David Loades
The Making of the Elizabethan Navy 1540-1590
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An account of the development of the English navy showing how the formidable force which beat the Spanish Armada was created.
When Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509 the English Navy was rather ad hoc: there were no warships as such, rather just merchant ships, hired when needed by the king, and converted for military purposes, which involved mostly the transport of troops and the support of land armies. There were no permanent dockyards and no admiralty or other standing institutions to organise naval affairs. Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary, and theearly part of the reign of Elizabeth, all this changed, so that by the 1580s England had permanent dockyards, and permanent naval administrative institutions, and was able to send warships capable of fighting at sea to attack theSpanish in the Caribbean and in Spain itself, and able to confront the Spanish Armada with a formidable fleet. This book provides a thorough account of the development of the English navy in this period, showing how the formidableforce which beat the Spanish Armada was created. It covers technological, administrative and operational developments, in peace and war, and provides full accounts of the various battles and other naval actions. David Loadesis Honorary Research Professor, University of Sheffield, Professor Emeritus, University of Wales, Bangor, and a member of the Centre for British and Irish Studies, University of Oxford. He has published over 20 books, including"The Tudor Navy" (1992).
Patrick Walsh
The Making of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy
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The life and political career of William Conolly, a key figure in the establishment of the eighteenth century protestant ascendancy in Ireland.
William Conolly (1662-1729) was one of the most powerful Irish political figures of his day. As a politician, in the years 1715-29 simultaneously Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, Chief Commissioner of the Revenue, Lord Justice, and Privy Councillor, he made significant contributions to the role of the Irish parliament in Irish life, to the establishment of a more efficient government bureaucracy, and to the emergence of a constructive strain of patriotism. In addition, he was a patron of architects, contributing significantly to the fashioning of Georgian Dublin, and building his own Palladian mansion at Castletown, nowadays one of the most frequently visited Irish historic properties. His rise to wealth and eminence from very humble beginnings and a Catholic background also illustrates the permeability of Irish society. Conolly's career reflects the development of the early Georgian Irish political,cultural and ideological nation, in all its complexities and contradictions.
PATRICK WALSH is an IRCHSS Government of Ireland CARA mobility fellow jointly affiliated with University College London and University College Dublin. .
Charles R. Young
The Making of the Neville Family in England, 1166-1400
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A study of power in the middle ages: the Nevilles of Raby, who included among their members Warwick the Kingmaker, was one of the major baronial families in England.
The story of the Neville family is a fascinating one. From their inconspicuous beginnings in Lincolnshire after the Norman Conquest, by the fourteenth century the Nevilles of Raby were among the most influential groups in the north of England, virtually ruling the area by means of the royal offices they held, and their political power reached its zenith in the fifteenth century with Richard de Neville, earl of Warwick, the so-called Kingmaker. This new study aims to answer the question of how a family of knightly status but with no special prominence was able to rise to such heights, tracing its growth and development through a careful examination of surviving documents; it also illustrates how the governance of medieval England worked with the cooperation of baronial families in a pragmatic manner, quite apart from any abstract legal or constitutional principles. CHARLES R. YOUNG is Professor Emeritusof History at Duke University.
Peter Malpass
The Making of Victorian Bristol
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This book provides a detailed account of how Bristol was transformed by a growing population, industrial change, technological innovation and urban expansion over the course of the nineteenth century.
Overshadowed by more economically vibrant towns of the industrial north, Bristol's prospects in 1800 were far from certain. This book provides a detailed account of how Bristol was transformed by a growing population, industrial change, technological innovation and urban expansion over the course of the nineteenth century. It explores the development of the physical fabric of the city, looking at the impact on the landscape of new types of buildings, increased housing and the repurposing of older areas, the growth of manufacturing, and the disruptive technologies of the railways and steam-powered ships. The book examines how the population responded to the opportunities, and challenges, afforded by national economic growth and world trade and which groups had the power to decide what solutions should be adopted. Finally, it considers the growing influence of central government on local decisions in relationto issues such as public health, education and housing. The book offers a distinctive and original contribution not only to the historiography of Bristol, but also to the study of urbanisation in nineteenth-century Britain in general.
PETER MALPASS is Emeritus Professor of Housing and Urban Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, Michael N. Salda
The Malory Debate
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Seminal essays on one of the most crucial issues in Arthurian studies.
For the past fifty years, debates about which text of Malory scholars and teachers should prefer have sparked much controversy: which is the most authentic or authoritative, Caxton, the Winchester version, or a mixture of both (asproposed by Vinaver)? The papers in this volume represent the most important contributions to the dialogue; previously published articles have been updated where relevant and new issues are presented in several original essays, while the introductions place the argument in its theoretical and historical contexts.
Professor BONNIE WHEELER teaches at the Southern Methodist University; Professor MICHAEL SALDA teaches at the University of SouthernMississippi; Professor ROBERT KINDRICK teaches at the University of Montana.
Contributors: MICHAEL N. SALDA, KEVIN GRIMM, SHUNICHI NOGUCHI, CHARLES MOORMAN, P.J.C. FIELD, WILLIAM MATTHEWS, ROBERT KINDRICK, HELEN COOPER, TOSHIYUKI TAKAMIYA, YUJI NAKAO, NORMAN BLAKE
Christopher Wordsworth
The manner of the coronation of King Charles the first of England at Westminster, 2 Feb. 1626.
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K.S. Whetter
The Manuscript and Meaning of Malory's Morte Darthur
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An examination of the rubricated letters in the Morte makes a convincing case for the design being by Malory himself.
The red-ink names that decorate the Winchester manuscript of Malory's Morte Darthur are striking; yet until now, no-one has asked why the rubrication exists. This book explores the uniqueness and thematic significance of the physical layout of the Morte in its manuscript context, arguing that the layout suggests, and the correlations between manuscript design and narrative theme confirm, that the striking arrangement is likely to have been the product of authorial design rather than something unusual dreamed up by patron, scribe, reader, or printer. The introduction offers a thorough account of not only the textual tradition of the Morte, but also the ways in which scholarship to date has not done enough with the manuscript contexts of Malory's Arthuriad. The book then goes on to establish the singularity and likely provenance of Winchester's rubrication of names. In the second half of the study the author elucidates the narrative significance of this rubrication pattern, outlining striking connections between manuscript layout and major narrative events, characters, and themes. He suggests that the manuscript mise-en-page underscores Malory's interest in human character and knighthood, creating a memorializing function similar to the many inscribed tombs that dominate the landscape of the Morte's narrative pages. Inshort, Winchester's design creates a memorializing tomb for Arthurian chivalry.
K.S. WHETTER is Professor of English at Acadia University, Canada.
C. David Benson, Lynne S. Blanchfield
The Manuscripts of Piers Plowman: the B-version
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Charles A. Owen Jr
The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales
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Owen investigates what the manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales reveal about the way they came into being.
[see revs] This study of the manuscripts of the Canterbury Talescalls into question previous efforts to explain the complexities, the different orderings of the tales and the extraordinary shifts in textual affiliations within the manuscripts. Owen sees the manuscripts that survive, most of them collections of all or almost all the tales, as derived from the large number of single tales and small collections that circulated after Chaucer's death. This theory takes issue with all modern editions of the Canterbury Tales, which in Owen's view reflect the effort of medieval scribes and supervisors to make a satisfactory book of the collection of fragments Chaucer left behind. It is this collection of fragments, the authentic Tales of Canterbury by Geoffrey Chaucer, which reflects the different stages of the plan that was still evolving at his death. CHARLES A. OWEN Jr is former Professor of English and Chairman of Medieval Studies at the University of Conneticut.
Christian Rogowski
The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema
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New essays re-evaluating Weimar cinema from a broadened, up-to-date perspective.
Traditionally, Weimar cinema has been equated with the work of a handful of auteurist filmmakers and a limited number of canonical films. Often a single, limited phenomenon, "expressionist film," has been taken as synonymous with the cinema of the entire period. But in recent decades, such reductive assessments have been challenged by developments in film theory and archival research that highlight the tremendous richness and diversity of Weimar cinema. This widening of focus has brought attention to issues such as film as commodity; questions of technology and genre; transnational collaborations and national identity; effects of changes in socioeconomics and gender roles onfilm spectatorship; and connections between film and other arts and media. Such shifts have been accompanied by archival research that has made a cornucopia of new information available, now augmented by the increased availability of films from the period on DVD. This wealth of new source material calls for a re-evaluation of Weimar cinema that considers the legacies of lesser-known directors and producers, popular genres, experiments of the artistic avant-garde, and nonfiction films, all of which are aspects attended to by the essays in this volume.
Contributors: Ofer Ashkenazi, Jaimey Fisher, Veronika Fuechtner, Joseph Garncarz, Barbara Hales, Anjeana Hans, Richard W.McCormick, Nancy P. Nenno, Elizabeth Otto, Mihaela Petrescu, Theodore F. Rippey, Christian Rogowski, Jill Smith, Philipp Stiasny, Chris Wahl, Cynthia Walk, Valerie Weinstein, Joel Westerdale.
Christian Rogowski is Professor of German at Amherst College.
Daniel K. Connolly
The Maps of Matthew Paris
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An examination of the intricate cartography of Matthew Paris, and the meanings of the maps themselves.
The illustrations of the Benedictine monk, artist, and chronicler Matthew Paris offer a gateway into the thirteenth-century world. This new study of his cartography emphasises the striking innovations he brought to it, and shows how the maps became an investment and repository of certain medieval spatial practices: travel through the world, the occurrence of history in that world, and the religious practices and devotional attitudes that were assiduously cultivated within the larger visual culture of St. Albans abbey (in great measure produced by Matthew's own images). Travel (i.e. space), history (time), and devotion (liturgy), then, are the primary issues and meanings deposited in and registered by Matthew Paris's cartographic landscape. In searching out these contexts, the book explores the paradigm of imagined pilgrimage as an organizing principle that pushes into greater relief medieval understandingsof their arrangements of places and of histories. Thus traveling through geography could enact its meanings in a dynamic, religious, even devotional performance of the maps' materials. Richly illustrated with black and white and colour plates.
Richard Barber
The Marlborough Mound
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The Marlborough Mound has recently been recognised as one of the most important monuments in the group around Stonehenge. It was also a medieval castle and a feature in a major 17th century garden. This is the first comprehensive history of this extraordinary site.
Marlborough Mound, standing among the buildings of Marlborough College, has attracted little attention until recently. Records showed it to be the motte of a Norman castle, of which there were no visible remains. The local historians and archaeologists who had investigated it had found very little in the way of archaeological evidence beyond a few prehistoric antler picks, the odd Roman coin, and a scatter of medieval pottery. It was to be archaeology which provided the most dramatic discovery after the Mound Trust began to restore the mound in 2003. English Heritage were investigating Silbury Hill, and arranged to take cores from the Mound for dating purposes. The results were remarkable, as they showed that the Mound was almost a twin of Silbury Hill and therefore belonged to the extraordinary assembly of prehistoric monuments centred on Stonehenge. For the medieval period, this book brings together for the first time all that we know about the castle from the royal records and from chronicles. These show that it was for a time one of the major royal castles in the land. Most of the English kings from William I to Edward III spent time here. For Henry III and his queen Eleanor of Provence, it was their favourite castle after Windsor. It marks the end of the first stage of the work of the Mound Trust, which, following the restoration, turns to its second objective of promoting public knowledge of the Mound based on scholarly research. As to its final form as a garden mound next to the house of the dukes of Somerset, in the eighteenth century, this emerges from letters and even poems, and from the recent restoration. Much of this has been slow and painstaking work, however, involving the removal of the trees which endangered the structure of the Mound, the recutting of the spiral path and the careful replanting of the whole area with suitable vegetation. By doing this, the shape of the Mound as a garden feature has re-emerged, and can now be seen clearly. This book marks the end of the first stage of the work of the Mound Trust, which, following the restoration, turns to its second objective of promoting public knowledge of the Mound based on scholarly research.
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