Yoruba Pentecostalism and Child Witchcraft Accusations

$130.00

An exploration of Yoruba Pentecostalism's role in child witchcraft accusations, examining migration, leadership, and collective responsibility to address faith-based child abuse globally.

What drives communities to accuse children of witchcraft, and how do religious beliefs and leadership dynamics perpetuate this phenomenon across borders? Claire Ayelotan delves into the involvement of Yoruba (Nigerian) Pentecostal leaders in accusations of child witchcraft in Nigeria and the UK. Using a multidisciplinary approach, her research examines the theological, cultural, socioeconomic, and legal influences that drive such behaviours. Ethnographic studies and interviews with pastors and practitioners reveal how power dynamics, gender roles, and international migration intersect to perpetuate these harmful beliefs. The book uncovers gaps in current literature and presents original insights on the collective responsibility, shared beliefs, and complexities of Pentecostal leadership in this context. By focusing on the global aspects of child witchcraft accusations, it sheds new light on how migration impacts these practices and the negative consequences they have on vulnerable children.

An important read for academics, policymakers, and child welfare professionals, this book challenges assumptions and urges immediate action to combat faith-based child abuse in all its manifestations.

Cover image for Yoruba Pentecostalism and Child Witchcraft Accusations, isbn: 9781648251238

The Study of Medieval Chant

$170.00

Comparative studies of medieval chant traditions in western Europe, Byzantium and the Slavic nations illuminate music, literacy and culture.

Gregorian chant was the dominant liturgical music of the medieval period, from the time it was adopted by Charlemagne's court in the eighth century; but for centuries afterwards it competed with other musical traditions, local repertories from the great centres of Rome, Milan, Ravenna, Benevento, Toledo, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Kievan Rus, and comparative study of these chant traditions can tell us much about music, liturgy, literacy and culture a thousand years ago. This is the first book-length work to look at the issues in a global, comprehensive way, in the manner of the work of Kenneth Levy, the leading exponent of comparative chant studies. It covers the four most fruitful approaches for investigators: the creation and transmission of chant texts, based on the psalms and other sources, and their assemblage into liturgical books; the analysis and comparison of musical modes and scales; the usesof neumatic notation for writing down melodies, and the differences wrought by developmental changes and notational reforms over the centuries; and the use of case studies, in which the many variations in a specific text or melodyare traced over time and geographical distance. The book is therefore of profound importance for historians of medieval music or religion - Western, Byzantine, or Slavonic - and for anyone interested in issues of orality and writing in the transmission of culture.
PETER JEFFERY is Professor of Music History, Princeton University. Contributors: JAMES W. McKINNON, MARGOT FASSLER, MICHEL HUGLO, NICOLAS SCHIDLOVSKY, KEITH FALCONER, PETER JEFFERY, DAVID G.HUGHES, SYSSE GUDRUN ENGBERG, CHARLES M. ATKINSON, MILOS VELIMIROVIC, JORGEN RAASTED+, RUTH STEINER, DIMITRIJE STEFANOVIC, ALEJANDRO PLANCHART.

El activismo literario de las escritoras latinoamericanas actuales

$130.00

An incisive study of how Latin American women writers use literature as a form of intellectual activism to confront gendered violence, social injustice and enduring political legacies.

Building on existing Spanish and Anglophone criticism, chapters cover a variety of gendered societal ills, such as sexual abuse, prostitution, violence and femicide, as well as other socio-political and cultural conflicts. Thus, some contributors analyse the ways in which women discover and face inequality and injustice, and how State impunity and the silencing and shaming of female victims are at the core of the unstoppable increase of rapes and femicides, while others survey the problematics of migration, capitalism, environmental degradation and the lingering effects of the Argentinean and Chilean dictatorships on the individual and national subconscious. Overall, the book sheds light on how Latin American women writers including well-known names like Diamela Eltit and Cristina Rivera Garza, and emerging ones like Dina Ananco y Arelis Uribe, epitomize the current voices of intellectual and socio-historical activism, highlighting the ways in which they turn to their pen to engage with issues that affect us all, regardless of our gender.

Este volumen, que reúne a colaboradoras del Reino Unido, Estados Unidos, Nueva Zelanda, México, Argentina, Italia y España, cuestiona una visión demasiado a menudo despectiva de la literatura escrita por mujeres al examinar la denuncia que hacen las autoras latinoamericanas de problemáticas contemporáneas que trascienden lo personal, lo local e incluso lo nacional. En base a la crítica existente en español e inglés, los capítulos abordan una variedad de males sociales atravesados por el género, como el abuso sexual, la prostitución, la violencia y el feminicidio, así como otros conflictos sociopolíticos y culturales. Así pues, algunos de los estudios analizan las formas en que las mujeres descubren y confrontan la desigualdad y la injusticia, y cómo la impunidad estatal, el silenciamiento y la estigmatización de las víctimas constituyen la raíz del imparable aumento de violaciones y feminicidios, mientras que otros estudian la problemática de la migración, el capitalismo, la degradación medioambiental y los efectos persistentes de las dictaduras en el subconsciente individual y nacional de Argentina y Chile.

En conjunto, el libro nos demuestra cómo las escritoras latinoamericanas, algunas tan conocidas como Diamela Eltit y Cristina Rivera Garza, y otras que comienzan a despuntar, como Dina Ananco y Arelis Uribe, encarnan las voces actuales del activismo intelectual y sociohistórico, y destaca la manera en que recurren a la escritura para involucrarse en cuestiones que nos afectan a todos, independientemente de nuestro género.

Cover image for El activismo literario de las escritoras latinoamericanas actuales, isbn: 9781855664258

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

$120.00

Honoured during her lifetime as the "Tenth Muse," Mexican author and intellectual Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) earned a reputation in the twentieth century as the "First feminist of the Americas" thanks to her impassioned defence of a right to education for women.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the brilliant wit and erudition in Sor Juana's love poetry, her secular and religious theatre, and her bold defence of women's right to intellectual pursuits. It places her work not only within the intellectual and political contexts of the Latin American Baroque but also the critical perspectives that reveal her contemporary significance, including sound and visual studies. From the 1970s and especially the 1980s, studies of her poetry, prose, and theatre have flourished far beyond Mexico. There has also been a broad audience for fictionalizations of the scant details of her life in novels, operas, film, and a television series. Addressing Sor Juana's fame as a brilliant, defiant woman aware of her status as an anomaly, the book invites readers to engage with the lively poetic wit and daring intellectual exploration that made her a legend in her own time, as well as an inspiration for the popular fictions that surround her status as a twenty-first-century international feminist icon.

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Prize Money in Nelson's Navy

$130.00

An overview of British prize law from the late seventeenth century to the twentieth century, focusing especially on how prize law disputes were handled in the era of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Bringing the experience of a practising lawyer and drawing on previously untapped contemporary Georgian law reports, this book provides a fresh legal perspective on British prize law from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Focusing on how prize law disputes were handled in the era of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the book takes the reader into the socially connected worlds of lawyers, courts and naval officers. Setting out how conflicts were resolved within the rule of law, it considers real cases, notably the four-year litigation between Nelson and his patron Lord St Vincent over the 'flag' share of prize money from captured Spanish treasure. Highlighting how prize-taking was a crucial part of war strategy, it illustrates how the rules for the division of prize money evolved as an incentive, revealing a dynamic system adapting to economic and social pressures in a war for national survival. It also considers how prize money fitted in with 'international' law, how the United States handled prize money, discusses attempts to set up an International Prize Court that were ultimately rejected by Britain and explores how prize money in Britain was eventually brought to an end in 1945.

Grahame Aldous KC, barrister, judge, ocean sailor and naval historian completed his doctorate at King's College, London.

Cover image for Prize Money in Nelson's Navy, isbn: 9781837653713

The Angevin World, 1154-1204

$130.00

Fresh perspectives on how we understand the complex nature of the Angevin lands.

At the time of his death in 1189, the lands which Henry II had brought under his rule through inheritance, marriage, and military might stretched from Northumbria to Gascony, and across the Irish Sea. This vast agglomeration, often described in English as "the Angevin empire", and in French as "l'espace Plantagenêt", was a dominant force in the politics of western Europe until its fragmentation under John, beginning with the loss of Normandy to the French king Philip Augustus in 1204. Yet beyond the forceful personalities of its rulers, what - if anything - bound these wide and disparate lands together? To what extent were they interconnected politically, economically and culturally?
This multi-disciplinary volume brings together specialists in history, literature, material culture, art history, and manuscript studies to approach these questions from a range of different perspectives. From the cultural interactions of courts, to political thought and symbols of power, the diffusion of historical writing, and practical responses of the Angevins to the challenges of governing, whether in Aquitaine or in Ireland, and of waging war in expansion or defence of their territories, this book aims to provoke fresh thinking regarding how we understand the complex nature of the Angevin lands.

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Islands and Insularity in the Post-East German Novel

$120.00

Pathbreaking study of recent novels by former East German authors that contribute, by employing tropes of retreat to islands and insular private spaces, to the discourse of the individual vis-à-vis society.

Thirty-five years after it ended, East Germany still arouses widespread interest. Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos, set against the backdrop of the country's collapse, recently won the International Booker Prize, and Katia Hoyer's history of East Germany, Beyond the Wall, was an international bestseller. Alongside this, tropes of islands or insular spaces have proliferated in German-language literature of recent decades, sparking critical interest. The present study analyzes these tropes in twenty-first century novels by seven authors from the former East Germany, looking at what they say about both the GDR and contemporary Germany through the relationships they depict between individuals and society.
Retreats to islands and private, insular spaces in these novels suggest their characters' desire for autonomy and the creation of private "counterworlds" in the face of a public world that they experience as alienating, destructive, or compelling conformity, whether during the GDR years or in post-unification Germany. Drawing on a variety of literary theories to examine place and time in the novels, the study uses a range of psychological models to consider these works' explorations of the nature of the self and its interaction with the social environment. It argues that their authors show the negotiation of a stable sense of identity and meaningful forms of self-determination to be an enduring challenge for individuals before and after 1989.

Cover image for Islands and Insularity in the Post-East German Novel, isbn: 9781640142435

The Life of St Rose of Lima (1586-1617)

$130.00

The first historically accurate biography in English of Rose of Lima (1586-1617), the first saint canonised in the Americas.

The impact of Rose of Lima, patron saint of Peru, the Philippines, India and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, on the evolution of Latin American and, indeed, Christian culture has been significant. To this day, she is considered milagrosera (good at miracles) and venerated by Catholics and Anglicans alike.

This book is the first historically accurate biography of Rose in English. It draws on the 1664 Vita mirabiliis et mors pretiosa venerabiliis sororis Rosae de S. Maria Limensis (never translated into English) and the manuscripts of the Ordinary and Apostolic Processes in order to provide a reliable account of Rose's life, while remaining sensitive to the historical, political, and religious frameworks which governed the creation of hagiography in the Spanish colonies in the seventeenth century. Importantly, it takes account of a previously unknown manuscript detailing the Second Apostolic Process of St Rose, discovered by the author in the Vatican Archives, which has never before been consulted. The book replaces the guesswork of previous studies with historical fact to offer a new biography one of Latin America's most important saints.

Cover image for The Life of St Rose of Lima (1586-1617), isbn: 9782648689540

Shostakovich in France

$130.00

Traces how Shostakovich's music in France shifted from being seen in its communist context to an emblem of humanism and resistance across the twentieth century.

This book examines shifting critical responses to Shostakovich's music in France throughout the twentieth century - from its introduction in Paris during the 1930s, through to the 1990s, when the symphonies and Lady Macbeth were being performed and staged widely in the capital and across the provinces.

The story begins with the role of Shostakovich's music in 1930s Paris before investigating the period of repression of Soviet music under Vichy France and German Occupation. After the Liberation, an influx of Shostakovich symphonies premiered in Paris. The early years of the Cold War see Shostakovich making his only visit to France, when his music became entangled with international political and aesthetic debates regarding the creative freedom of artists. The era of political and cultural détente goes hand in hand with a warmer reception of Shostakovich's music across France, while Shostakovich's music sees intense programming during the revolutions of 1989 and the end of the Cold War. The narrative concludes with a look at programming Shostakovich in Paris and the provinces after the demise of the Soviet Union.

As this account shows, Shostakovich's music served as a means for French writers to articulate their own ideas, opinions and concerns about the Soviet Union: ultimately, the music of Shostakovich evolved from an icon of French Communism to a symbol of humanism and resistance with a broader social and political appeal.

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Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature

$120.00

Investigates how Old Norse myth, saga, and poetic traditions imagine human identity through encounters with animals, materials, and environments.

What happens to the category of the "human" in a world where bodies shift shape, objects fuse with living beings, and identities slip between species? This book explores how thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Icelandic texts confront this question, treating transformation not just as a narrative device, but as a way of thinking about what people are and how they inhabit the world.

From the fragmented and reassembled bodies in Snorra Edda to the intricate play between humans and things in skaldic verse and eddic riddles; from mind-altering acts of consumption in the Sigurðr-cycle to the sequence of limb-loss, prosthetic substitution, and reattachment in Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana-these works reveal a culture keenly attuned to bodily contingency and material entanglement. Tracing episodes and images of change across the corpus, including the wider lexicon of shapeshifting, the author presents a vision of medieval Icelandic thought creatively alive to the instability of human identity in its running negotiation with the nonhuman world.

This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND.

Cover image for Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature, isbn: 9781843848059

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 1824-1897

$130.00

An overview of the early years of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), highlighting the debates about how far the organisation should be self-supporting or state-funded.

One of the key dilemmas for the state in nineteenth century Britain was how far should it provide public services. The case of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), a private charity founded in 1824, demonstrates this dilemma in action. By 1850, despite a promising start, the RNLI was in danger of total collapse with a severe lack of funds, unable to provide the lifeboats required. This book, based on extensive original research, explores how the government, after some hesitation, funded the charity for a fifteen year period, withdrawing from involvement once the charity was back on its feet. The book examines how this limited support enabled the charity to re-organise and expand into a truly national service, absorbing many previously independent lifeboat organisations, so that by the end of the century the RNLI was a large, sophisticated and complex charity wielding considerable influence at the highest levels of the establishment, developing pioneering fundraising techniques and highly sophisticated publicity, branding and reputation management strategies. Overall, the book refines our understanding of how laissez-faire and state intervention worked in practice and shows how it came about that Britain and Ireland's lifeboat service is provided by a charity rather than the state.

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Writing St Guthlac

$120.00

The first radically longitudinal study of a saint who had a significant cultural presence in early medieval England.

What happens when the Life of a medieval Fenland hermit is read (and rewritten) over a broad span of time? Which elements do writers keep returning to, what additions are made, and which aspects are translated into new and curious forms?
This book answers these questions by tracing the reception trajectory of St Guthlac of Crowland, from the eighth century through to the twenty-first. Guthlac is predominantly associated with the landscape of the Fens - the low, flat region on the east coast of England whose waterways wind out to the Wash estuary. By looking at how Guthlac's narratives are rewritten by those based in the Fens, as well as by those hailing from beyond it, this book argues for the spiritual potential of flat landscapes; it explores the relationship between reading and pilgrimage practice in all its forms; and it gives fresh insights into the role of women in Guthlac's cultural construction. Methodologically, it provides a model of how to bridge the divide between medieval studies and medievalism studies. By reading texts as varied as Old English Lives, Anglo-Latin accounts and Middle English romances, as well as the poetry and prose of later writers such as John Clare, Charles Kingsley and Graham Swift, this book offers the first radically longitudinal study of a saint whose story started in early medieval England - one whose legacy continues in the present day.

EMMA NUDING is a Teaching Fellow in Medieval Literature at the University of Birmingham.

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Orientalism and the Making of Turkology in the Age of the Enlightenment

$190.00

Reveals how early modern European engagement with Muslim and Chinese sources forged Turkology and offers a cohesive synthesis of how Enlightenment Orientalism was shaped by both cross-cultural circulations and local dynamics.

Set against the backdrop of the Long Eighteenth Century, this book traces how European scholars engaged with the pre-Ottoman past and geographic presence of Turkic peoples, gradually defining a distinct field within Oriental studies: Turkology. Following the movement of people, books, manuscripts, artefacts, and ideas across Eurasia, it shows how transnational circulations, alongside careers, institutions, and scholarly practices, shaped emerging understandings.

Structured in two parts, Despina Magkanari's study offers a clear overview of scholarship on Turkic peoples. The first examines Barthélemy d'Herbelot's Bibliothèque orientale and its role in debates on Turkish origins. Through this lens, Magkanari reveals how d'Herbelot mediated between East and West, revisiting key Muslim sources with Antoine Galland to reshape European historical understandings. The second part explores Jesuit scholarship through Claude Visdelou, whose use of Chinese sources in the Histoire abrégée de la Tartarie reframed Inner Asian historiography. Visdelou's writings are situated within the political, religious, and intellectual landscapes of Qing China and Enlightened Europe, while highlighting the challenges of disseminating his work.

The study offers a cohesive synthesis of Enlightenment Orientalism, its actors, sites, practices, and transnational networks, while remaining attentive to local dynamics and reinterpretations.

Cover image for Orientalism and the Making of Turkology in the Age of the Enlightenment, isbn: 9781837653393

The Life and Music of Charles Wood

$170.00

Reassesses the life, music and enduring influence of Charles Wood, a central figure in British and Irish music and one of the foremost teachers of his generation.

Charles Wood (1866-1926), Armagh chorister and student of Chares Villiers Stanford, was one of the most significant figures in British and Irish music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and one of Britain's most important teachers.

This study not only evaluates the substance of Wood's ecclesiastical music, in which, together with Stanford, his contribution was pre-eminent, but also his work in other genres, such as secular vocal music, arrangements of Irish folksong and the Irish cultural revival, orchestral music, opera and, in particular, the string quartet. Wood also found himself at the heart of a new antiquarian revival of early music, plainsong, psalmody and hymnody where his knowledge was uniquely encyclopaedic. This book offers a reassessment of his lasting legacy, the admiration he drew from figures such as Vaughan Williams, Dent and Tippett, and also discusses a considerable series of posthumous publications.

Cover image for The Life and Music of Charles Wood, isbn: 9781837654109

The Postwar Fleet

$180.00

A revealing documentary account of how Britain struggled to shape a modern navy amid Cold War pressures, rapid technological change and relentless financial constraint.

The Postwar Fleet Vol 2 reproduces key documents relating to the planning of Britain's postwar Navy from the period 1950-1957, as the Government tried to reconcile worldwide requirements with severe financial constraints. It begins in June 1950 with the outbreak of the Korean War, which marks the end-point of Volume 1. This event overturned many previous planning assumptions and initiated a short-lived programme of rearmament. Succeeding years saw an almost annual cycle of what were, in effect, fresh defence reviews as the Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty tried to match resources and force levels to continuing commitments. Planners also had to respond to the increasing influence of technological change, especially nuclear weapons, computers and guided missiles.

The volume concludes with the publication of a major Defence Review in April 1957 which marked the beginning of a new, post-Suez Operation, phase in British defence policy.

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Print and Catholic Persistence in the Dutch Golden Age

$130.00

Reveals the hidden world of ephemeral Catholic print in the so-called Dutch Golden Age, reconstructing lost works to discover the lived experience of a religious community marginalised within a multi-confessional society.

Emerging from the turbulent politico-religious landscape forged by the Eighty Years' War (1566/8-1648), the rich and increasingly accessible print culture of the Dutch Republic generated a vast Catholic repertoire that sustained the identity and practice of a minority faith. Reconstructed from archival traces and contemporary references, and using innovative methods derived from digital humanities, this material reveals how clergy and laity created and used print to navigate their political and social marginalisation, as well as the demands of overlapping Catholic and Reformed regimes of censorship. Print, in both licit and illicit forms, acted as a lifeline, a tool for education and conversion, and even an instrument of religious controversy.

By integrating insights from novel research on early modern Catholicism, lived religion, and the history of communication, Elise Watson demonstrates how the Dutch Catholic experience can be reinterpreted when the full spectrum of printed materials is placed at the centre. Typologies developed for Catholic books and printed ephemera illuminate how these objects structured memory, education, devotion, and community. The result is a nuanced portrait of a thriving minority whose religious life was continually made and remade through print, shaped by local conditions and yet connected to a wider European world.

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Arthurian Literature XLI

$120.00

Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues.

This volume covers a wide range of materials, whether judged by national or linguistic literary traditions, time period, or critical methodology. It begins with the winning Brewer Prize essay (for an early career scholar): in this case, an investigation of transgender possibilities in the Grisandole episode from the Old French Suite du Merlin. Subsequent essays examine what can be gleaned of the legend of Melwas from surviving medieval and early modern Welsh tradition; the vexed question of Chrétien de Troyes' attitude to marriage; and the ways in which the authors of the Middle English Sir Percyvell and Middle Dutch Moriaen adapt and complete Chrétien's Conte du Graal. The volume closes with two different studies of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur. The first presents an argument for a continuation of Lollard concerns into the fifteenth century, concerns that run throughout Malory's Arthuriad. The second re-opens the question of the provenance of William Caxton's copy-text for Malory's Morte, proposing that it was Anthony Wydeville, the brother-in-law of King Edward IV, who provided Caxton with his copy-text manuscript - as he designed the striking red-letter names visible today in the layout of the Winchester manuscript.

Cover image for Arthurian Literature XLI, isbn: 9781843848110

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pre-1500 Manuscripts and Editions of the Canterbury Tales

$170.00

Provides a description of every extant manuscript and pre-1500 edition of Chaucer's best-known, yet unfinished work.

Nearly a century has passed since the first detailed descriptions of all the known manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales were published. Our better understanding of the processes of fifteenth-century book production, along with the development of new tools and methodologies, today allows for much more precise and accurate descriptions.

This Catalogue provides accounts of the manuscripts and pre-1500 editions of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales based on examinations of all the manuscripts (often multiple examinations) and almost all the known copies of the incunable editions. This includes 54 complete or once complete manuscripts; 29 manuscripts containing extracts or that are incomplete for other reasons; and four pre-1500 printed editions surviving in multiple copies. Each description is self-contained, and includes sections on contents, tale-order, progress of copying, materials, collation, format, hands (or printer's type for the incunables), decoration, date, dialect/spellings, and provenance. The front-matter provides details of tale-order types, textual relationships, sigla, abbreviations, and notational conventions referred to and employed in the individual descriptions.

These manuscripts were produced for a wide variety of consumers, which is reflected in the varying qualities of parchment, or paper, or combinations of paper and parchment on which they are copied. Some are sumptuously illuminated, while many are remarkably plain for a text whose stature we today regard so highly. Some contain only the Canterbury Tales; in others, it can be difficult to find any Chaucer at all. In a few, the portions of the Canterbury Tales they contain were copied from an early printed edition. While these incunable editions came off the press as more-or-less identical copies, some were elaborately decorated for purchasers, others received minimal "finishing," and many none at all. This Catalogue presents the stories - to the extent we have been able to reconstruct them - of these surviving witnesses to the fifteenth-century dissemination of Chaucer's best-known yet unfinished work.

Cover image for A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pre-1500 Manuscripts and Editions of the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, isbn: 9781843848028

Translating Swiss Theatre in Apartheid South Africa

$120.00

Examines how Afrikaans translations of Frisch and Dürrenmatt's plays shaped identity and resistance in apartheid South Africa.

In apartheid South Africa, the plays of the Swiss writers Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt found an unexpected life in Afrikaans. Because they did not follow their international contemporaries in supporting the cultural boycott, their works were frequently translated and staged there between 1948 and 1994.

This book investigates these Afrikaans translations by engaging in close readings of surviving scripts, interviews, and archival traces to uncover the lives and motives of the people who translated, directed and performed them. In the process, it reveals the sparks generated between the plays themselves and the South African political context in which they circulated.

Frisch and Dürrenmatt's plays helped to shape the growth of Afrikaans as a world language and an emblem of Afrikaner identity. Yet they were also enlisted as vehicles of resistance, carrying new ideas into an increasingly airless intellectual environment. Exploring these crosscurrents, the book moves beyond the specific concerns of translating Swiss literature into Afrikaans to consider cultural boycotts, censorship, and the ways translation can be harnessed to promote or subvert political and aesthetic values.

On publication this book is available as an Open Access ebook under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC.

Cover image for Translations of Swiss Theatre in Apartheid South Africa, isbn: 9781837653348

A History of the County of Wiltshire

$140.00

This volume, the first to be published in the VCH Wiltshire series since 2011, presents histories of Chippenham and six adjacent parishes, Bremhill, Christian Malford, Hardenhuish, Kington Langley, Kington St Michael and Langley Burrell.

With the publication of this 20th volume in the Wiltshire series, in progress since 1947, the history of the last of the major towns in the county has been given the standard VCH treatment. It is also the first Wiltshire volume to have been researched and published since local authority and academic funding was withdrawn in 2014, and is the work of five freelance historians contracted by a charitable trust established to continue the project to completion. As well as offering a history of the borough and extensive parish of Chippenham, there are histories of Chippenham hundred and of six rural (or formerly rural) parishes adjacent to the town: Bremhill, Christian Malford, Hardenhuish, Kington Langley, Kington St Michael and Langley Burrell.

Chippenham in northwest Wiltshire was an important bridging point across the River Avon, and a market town with manufacturing industries, including railway engineering after the GWR opened a station there in 1841. With good rail and motorway links the town has experienced rapid growth in recent decades, and the other parishes included in this volume, which all lie on or close to the Avon valley clayland, renowned in the past for dairying and cheesemaking, have also proved attractive to a commuting population, while retaining to a large extent their rural character. Natives to the area include historians John Aubrey and John Britton, and the clergyman Francis Kilvert, whose diaries offer a vivid portrait of Victorian life around Chippenham.

The principal authors are John Chandler, Mark Forrest, Rosalind Johnson, Matthew Kilburn and Louise Ryland-Epton.

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The Politics of Religious Toleration in Scotland, 1689-1714

$120.00

An examination of the last attempt to enforce Presbyterian religious uniformity across Scotland, and how toleration was perceived on the eve of the Enlightenment.

The revolution of 1688-90 was regarded by many as an opportunity to return the Church of Scotland to the Presbyterian uniformity and orthodox Calvinism of earlier generations. These aspirations, however, were undermined by a growing culture of Protestant nonconformity as the Episcopalians, among other dissenting groups, challenged the mono-confessional uniformity that the Presbyterians hoped to achieve.

Drawing on recent scholarship on religious toleration, this book explores how interconnected political, intellectual, and social forces reshaped Scotland's religious landscape and forced the Church gradually to concede that its exclusive monopoly on religious worship had ended. It provides new insights into the means by which uniformity was enforced and contested, moving beyond high politics to consider the practical realities of religious co-existence, the challenge presented by heterodoxy, the emergence of a tolerationist movement, the Scottish response to "liberty of conscience", and how the union of 1707 accelerated the collapse of uniformity. In doing so, it reveals how Scotland's reluctant embrace of pluralism contributed to the broader religious diversity of the emerging British state.

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Little Malvern Letters II

$65.00

This second volume of Little Malvern Letters documents a period of profound changes to Catholic life in England. Around the middle of the eighteenth century, priests and their benefactors could still fear prosecution, and papist estates had to be registered and were subject to double Land Tax assessments. By 1800, some measure of toleration had been extended, and refugees from the French Revolution had been welcomed, but caution still dominated. The nineteenth century saw full legal emancipation and social acceptance.
A microcosm of these national changes, Little Malvern Court, Worcestershire, went from a secret centre for the underground practice of a proscribed religion, to the licensing of a discreet chapel, to the foundation of a parish church in the newly established Catholic diocese of Birmingham, with the family that had made it possible accepted as pillars of county society.
These family papers touch on investments in the notorious South Sea Company, matchmaking in London and Bath, and revolutionary agitation in nineteenth-century Flintshire, but seen through a less familiar Catholic lens that includes coded references to clergy, pilgrimages to Holywell, international connections to monasteries and convent schools in pre-Revolutionary France and Flanders, and pilgrimages to Rome in the age of steam.

Cover image for Little Malvern Letters II, isbn: 9780902832374

The Register of Willliam Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317-1340

$49.95

William Melton acquired extensive financial skill and experience in the service of Edward II. When he became Archbishop of York in 1317 he applied these abilities in his new role. After a difficult period in his early years he became able to make considerable loans to the crown, his fellow bishops and northern nobility, gentry and religious houses.

The intrinseca camere section of Melton's register covers his financial transactions and documents his dealings with his agents in London, notably the merchant Simon Swanland and Peruzzi bankers based there with the aim of acquiring gold florins for payments to the curia at the most favourable rates of exchange. Entries relate to the re-establishment of the archbishop's Mint and to household and estate procurement. It is important for business and financial historians and reveals aspects of episcopal activity that normally are found neither in the registers nor the estate records of the episcopate.

The volume also covers the war with Scotland and reflects the resultant transfer of government departments to York. Entries relate to an attempt to raise forces against Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer's invasion in 1326 and to Melton's funding of the great West window of York minster.

Cover image for The Register of Willliam Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317-1340, isbn: 9780907239901

The Visitations of Horace Salusbury Cotton, Ordinary of Newgate

$105.00

Horace Salusbury Cotton was the Ordinary (chaplain) of Newgate Prison 1814-1838, a quarter-century in which both the prison itself and English criminal law were fundamentally transformed. This volume presents the text of Cotton's entries in the Prison Visitors Books. His remarks focus especially upon the spiritual and emotional state of those who were hanged - and sometimes pardoned - during the waning years of England's infamous "Bloody Code," opening a window into the lives of early nineteenth-century Londoners which are otherwise largely lost to us. Cotton's stern vision of his spiritual mission contrasts, not only with the more humane sentiments of many officials, but his own private life. Remarkable details about this ambitious but flawed clergyman are revealed here: his neglect and abuse of the wife whom he married only after two premarital pregnancies; his efforts to abandon his surviving daughters; and the whiff of scandal attached to his dealings with female prisoners.

Cover image for The Visitations of Horace Salusbury Cotton, Ordinary of Newgate, isbn: 9780900952517

The Charters of the Hommet Family, Constables of Normandy and Lords of Stamford, c.1020 – c.1260

$180.00

This is a critical edition of the charters and other documents of the Hommet family, who were constables of Normandy and leading barons under the Angevin kings of England and Capetian kings of France. It is the first major edition of the acts of a Norman baronial dynasty, with numerous records concerning 13 counties in eastern and southern England as well. It contains 450 deeds issued by 35 men and 19 women from the Hommet dynasty and their predecessors from the families of Say, Remilly, and Aunay, and appendices with 48 related documents. The collection reveals the roots of aristocratic power in the Anglo-Norman realm and early Capetian Normandy, including economic assets, judicial rights, fiscal exactions, and ties of loyalty. It also provides crucial evidence for the differing fates of the dynasty's four branches during and after the collapse of the Anglo-Norman realm under King John, and it casts an important light upon the division of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy after 1204.

Cover image for The Charters of the Hommet Family, Constables of Normandy and Lords of Stamford, c.1020 – c.1260, isbn: 9780901134974

Bedrich Smetana

$130.00

An insightful and engaging biography of Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, originally written in the 1940s and meticulously reconstructed and updated for twenty-first-century readers.

Czech-Jewish lawyer and music historian Jan Löwenbach (1880–1972) wrote this biography of nineteenth-century Czech composer Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) while living in New York in the 1940s, after fleeing the Nazi occupation of his homeland. Intended to highlight Czech cultural achievements and promote national independence, the book remained unpublished following the 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. Unlike later English-language biographies of Smetana, Löwenbach's work explicitly engages major early twentieth-century Czech scholarship on the composer and offers a uniquely informed perspective. As a "native informant," Löwenbach dispels long-standing nationalistic myths, while providing insightful commentary on Smetana's complete oeuvre, an engaging narrative of his life, and a thoughtful account of the broader social and cultural context. This edition, based on several Czech and English typescripts preserved at San Diego State University, presents a meticulous reconstruction and new translation of Löwenbach's text. With added references to recent scholarship, it stands as both an essential primary document and a rich resource for anyone interested in Czech music—scholars and general readers alike.

Cover image for Bedrich Smetana, isbn: 9781648251214

Holst and the Winds

$130.00

A detailed exploration of the works for winds by Gustav Holst, the renowned composer of The Planets, aided by musical analysis and rich historical documentation.

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) was an English composer and music educator whose work spanned four decades. Though he remains most widely known for his orchestral suite The Planets, his works for band or wind ensemble are also performed frequently, yet have rarely been studied in such systematic detail. They vary widely in genre (from chamber music to military and brass-band works) and in form (from sonata cycle to suite to symphonic poem).

As author Jon Mitchell shows, Holst's works for winds give plentiful evidence of the many influences on him, both musical (including Wagnerian romanticism, English folk song, and Baroque polyphony) and nonmusical (e.g., Sanskrit literature, William Morris, and Walt Whitman). The book gives careful attention to these influences and to the evolution of the works through analysis of sketches and full manuscript scores.

Holst and the Winds makes use of a wide array of primary sources, including Holst's personal papers, written correspondence, programs, and periodical reviews. Music educators, performers, conductors, and anybody who loves Holst's music will enjoy the insights provided herein.

Cover image for Holst and the Winds, isbn: 9781648251313

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Nineteenth-Century America

$120.00

Surveys the considerable nineteenth-century American discourse on and response to the writings of the German dramatist, critic, art theorist, and theological thinker.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was a leading figure in the humanist revival in German culture that culminated in Weimar Classicism. His plays and drama criticism mark the rise of middle-class forms and values and influenced contemporaries and successors alike. His work in art theory still stimulates discussion, while his liberal theological writing has had a perhaps even greater impact. In the US, Lessing first drew major attention during the German craze of the early nineteenth century and achieved his greatest fame during the third quarter of the century. His drama criticism and views on theology and the arts became entrenched in a robust American discourse about those subjects. Many Americans thought of him less as a historical figure than as a virtual contemporary.
This book surveys critical commentary on Lessing published in prominent journals and periodicals from 1796 to the end of the nineteenth century, a period before the professionalization of literary scholarship in America, when individuals of varying professional backgrounds routinely assessed foreign writers in the context of their own national experience. Chapters focus on the unfolding of Lessing's presence in the US, on broad assessments of his life and work, and, respectively, on American responses to his fables and epigrams, his plays and drama criticism, his art-historical and -theoretical writing, and his theological work.

Cover image for Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Nineteenth-Century America, isbn: 9781640142053

Companion to the Hispanic Romances of Chivalry

$130.00

The first comprehensive overview of Hispanic chivalric romance in English.

Hispanic romances of chivalry dominated Spanish and European fiction between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. They became a cultural sensation which had a crucial influence on the development of modern narrative and other art forms. This companion, written by experts from Mexico, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the USA, provides a comprehensive introduction to this highly successful early modern genre, covering its origins, characteristics, canonical texts, circulation, and origins. This book also considers the relationship between chivalric romance and other literary genres, for instance, sentimental romance and Arthurian literature, as well as the publishing context and readership. Thus, it considers the main narrative, cultural, and literary aspects that defined Hispanic chivalric romances and provides an up-to-date literature review. Additionally, it includes an overview of its scholarly reception, as well as chapters on the recreations of these romances in other art forms, such as plays, ballads, music, children's literature, and the decorative arts. Ultimately, this book seeks to make these romances accessible, in all their variety and complexity, to scholars and students alike.

Cover image for Companion to the Hispanic Romances of Chivalry, isbn: 9781855663701

British Statecraft and the Baltic Sea Region

$120.00

Offering editorial commentary and interpretation while presenting wide-ranging sources from the early modern period to the present day, the book chronicles how British statecraft has functioned in the Baltic as a geopolitical space.

British Statecraft and the Baltic: A Documentary History chronicles how British statecraft has functioned in the Baltic as a geopolitical space and shows how Britain's relationship with the region has shaped the evolution of British political economy. Bringing together a carefully selected variety of variety of sources, it begins in the early modern period, with the rise in diplomatic and commercial engagement with the Baltic Sea region and continues to the present day, engaging with the consequences of Brexit and increased Russian hostility. Britain's relationship with the Baltic has always been defined by its proximity firstly to the European geopolitical struggle centred on Germany, and secondly to a 'Eurasian hinterland' that has long provided Europe with crucial natural resources, from the grain, potash and naval stores that passed through the Danish straights, to oil and natural gas, and that gives Russia huge influence over the region. In light of these proximities, British statecraft in the Baltic has been fundamentally shaped by the challenges of preventing imperialism in Europe. From the role of neutrality in economic coercion to the question of whether, and how, Britain should commit to defending the sovereignty of European states, the Baltic is where Britain has always wrestled most acutely with the meaning of sovereignty.

Outside the European Union, Britain's relationship not only with 'Europe' as a single, increasingly integrated geopolitical area, but with different European geopolitical spaces and states has become even more important. The Baltic remains one of the key areas of geopolitical interest for Britain today, with British troops deployed to Estonia and Poland, and longstanding commercial and political relationships with states across the region established. The authors take a clear view: that Britain must continue to commit to its commitments under Article 5 to preserve liberty and democracy at home. However, by engaging with the historical documents that chart British statecraft over 300 years, British Statecraft and the Baltic allows specialist and non-specialist readers alike to form their own understanding of British statecraft.

Cover image for British Statecraft and the Baltic Sea Region, isbn: 9781837650903

Historical Performance in Baroque Music

$190.00

A practical and scholarly guide to performing Baroque music with historical insight and artistic confidence.

This is an in-depth guide to the performance of Baroque music for musicians, listeners, undergraduate and graduate music students, and conservatory and university instructors. Rigorously scholarly, yet readable by non-specialists, it is designed to serve not only as an introduction to historical performance for those new to the subject, but also as a reference book for those experienced in the field, and as a course book in early music performance practice. Part 1 covers essential topics such as historical voices and instruments, articulation, and ornamentation and improvisation. Part 2 turns to particular performance issues in selections ranging from vocal chamber music by Strozzi, Handel, Jacquet, and Bach to instrumental compositions by Castello, Corelli, Couperin, and (again) Bach.
The book draws on the author's broad experience as a performer, teacher and writer on Baroque music. It can serve as a general handbook on historical performance practice that also addresses specific questions raised by commonly performed recital and concert repertoire.

Cover image for Historical Performance in Baroque Music, isbn: 9781837653102

Women, Money and Markets, 1770–1914

$130.00

A rich exploration of the many ways women shaped the economic and cultural life of the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

This collection redefines the role of women in the development of modern capitalism, revealing their active participation as investors, entrepreneurs, theorists, and cultural producers between 1770 and 1914. Drawing on archival research and literary analysis, the essays uncover how women shaped financial systems, navigated market constraints, and leveraged sentiment, education, and capital to assert economic agency.

Bridging literary studies with social and economic history, Women, Money and Markets challenges the conventional portrayal of the marketplace as a purely rational domain, highlighting instead the emotional and relational dynamics that underpinned women's economic lives. From shareholder lists to fictional representations, contributors explore how women influenced the financialisation of the economy and contested their marginalisation in both historical records and cultural narratives.

Featuring fresh readings of authors like Wollstonecraft and Gaskell alongside lesser-known voices, this volume offers a plural and nuanced account of women's economic engagement, and its representation, across diverse contexts. It is essential reading for scholars of literature, history, gender studies, and anyone interested in the invisible hands that helped shape the modern world.

EMMA NEWPORT is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex.
JOYCE GOGGIN is Associate Professor of Literature at the University of Amsterdam.

Cover image for Women, Money and Markets, 1770–1914, isbn: 9781837652105

Constructing Polish Musical Identities outside Poland since 1880

$120.00

Examines music's role in political and cultural images of Poland during a period in which Poland regained independence, suffered cruelly in warfare, was a member of the Soviet bloc, then overthrew communism and joined the European Union.

This collection analyses the function of music in twentieth and twenty-first century constructions of 'Polishness' by non-Polish, or Polish emigré, musicians, writers, critics, film and TV makers. Musicological studies are interleaved with collaborations from scholars in related disciplines (literature and film studies) to generate new understandings of music's role in political and cultural images of Poland during a period in which Poland regained independence, suffered cruelly in warfare, was a member of the Soviet bloc, then overthrew communism and joined the European Union.

During this eventful period the musical images of 'Poland' made beyond its boundaries have taken fascinating turns. Music has played a key function in how constructions of 'Polishness' in artistic work, media and critical discourse made outside Poland have inflected Poland's international image and standing. Essays examine diverse musical styles and sources and their roles in composition, performance, cinema, television, literature, poetry, politics, the writings of history, and constructions of biography. Together, they contribute significantly to furthering the broader debates on ideas of Polishness. Contributors have diverse relationships with Poland. This diversity complements the disciplinary range represented. Musical figurations of 'Polishness' are therefore illuminated from multiple angles.

Cover image for Constructing Polish Musical Identities outside Poland since 1880, isbn: 9781837652051

A Companion to Basque Culture

$120.00

A comprehensive account of modern Basque cultural life, written from an insider's perspective.

Euskal Herria-the Land of the Basque Speakers-is a paradox: a nation without a state, a people divided between France and Spain, and a culture at once ancient and avant-garde. Long regarded as an anomaly, with a language unrelated to its neighbours and a population often imagined as rooted in prehistory, the Basque Country was, until recently, known internationally above all for the bombing of Gernika-immortalized by Picasso-and for the political violence of ETA. Yet in the twenty-first century, it has re-emerged as a vibrant cultural hub, drawing millions of visitors each year and projecting a distinctive image onto the global stage.
A Companion to Basque Culture offers a comprehensive account of modern Basque cultural life. Opening with an introduction to the region's origins, geography, and historical trajectories, subsequent chapters explore language, literature, improvisational singing, the visual arts, festivals, cuisine, gender and the notion of a matriarchal culture, migration, and the dynamics of the Basque "brand." Written from an insider's perspective, this volume challenges fossilized and exoticized representations of Basque identity, examining instead how contemporary Basques negotiate the tensions between cultural distinctiveness and the pursuit of global recognition.

Cover image for A Companion to Basque Culture, isbn: 9781855663756

English Benedictine Kalendars after 1100

$85.00

This book provides new editions of liturgical calendars from thirteen English Benedictine monasteries, with extensive commentaries. It complements the editions by Francis Wormald published between 1934 and 1946.

This volume complements and completes the edition of English Benedictine Kalendars edited by Francis Wormald and published by the Henry Bradshaw Society between 1934 and 1946. It provides editions of liturgical calendars from thirteen institutions, with extensive commentaries on the manuscripts consulted and on those saints whose cult is particular to each house. It will be followed by an edition of calendars from nunneries, Cluniac houses and various addenda, and then by a commentary volume with comprehensive indexes. The completed project represents almost a century of work by two of the foremost experts on the liturgy of medieval England.

Cover image for English Benedictine Kalendars after 1100, isbn: 9781907497391

Media and Marginals in India

$120.00

A critical exploration of how Indian media construct, negotiate and reshape the meanings and identities of marginalised communities.

The book highlights the role of media in comprehending the marginals with reference to medium, message, and meaning. The book addresses the consortia between the communication process, the economic, political and ideological structures of Indian society, and its relationships with marginals, particularly at structure and meaning levels. It presents new and emerging analyses about the representation, production, consumption of message, and meaning relating to caste, gender, minority, and disability question in the Indian media. This book also examines how the mediated phenomena have shifted the discourse on studies of marginals in India. The book focuses on several new dimensions in sociology and media research and addresses conceptual and methodological questions related to the social positioning of the marginal in media. The book provides new perspectives on the sociology of media covering aspects such as, memory, consciousness and Ashrāfiya morality; Dalit to Disability; agitation and workers; feminism to representation; and commodification to ideological domination.

Cover image for Media and Marginals in India, isbn: 9781837654307

Slaves From the Tamil Coast and European Trade Around the World

$120.00

A detailed study of Tamil participation in and subjection to the global slave trade, tracing transcontinental journeys, labour and social networks.

This book explores the lives of individuals who were enslaved, bought, sold and forcibly transported across continents from the Tamil coast. It argues that the region was deeply entangled in the global slave trade through European commercial networks. Tracing the journeys of Tamil slaves to destinations such as Melaka, Manila, Macao, Mexico City, Colima, Cape Town, Mauritius, Réunion, St. Helena and beyond - including in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Europe and North America - this study explores their social interactions, labour experiences and forced migrations. By drawing on underutilised yet richly detailed archival sources, this volume offers new insights into transnational and global history, focusing on merchant networks, global markets and intercontinental shipping.

Cover image for Slaves From the Tamil Coast and European Trade Around the World, isbn: 9781837654314

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 20

$75.00

The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines.

The essays collected here continue to showcase the Journal's wide-ranging and eclectic tradition. The topics addressed are a technical analysis of a fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry that was cut from the hanging and later restored; the inner workings of a fifteenth-century Lucchese cloth business; the luxurious textiles used and re-used for the Field of Cloth of Gold; the wardrobe of Kateryn Parr, Henry VIII's last queen, and how she manipulated clothing and textiles for political ends; Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley's use of sartorial strategies during his short reign as king of Scotland; and a detailed investigation of the textile known as the "Bacton Altar Cloth" that reconsiders its history and uses.

Cover image for Medieval Clothing and Textiles 20, isbn: 9781837654215

An Ipswich Man’s War

$115.00

Diaries of a First World War soldier.

The First World War diaries of the Ipswich man, George Punchard, are published here for the first time. They not only give a detailed account of his experiences in France, Belgium and on home service, but also reveal the inner thoughts of an extraordinary working man who served for the entire length of the war. In 1919 Punchard wrote out the diaries and supplemented them with photographs taken during his service, postcards he had bought, and some sketched plans, from which a selection illustrate this volume. He also casts light on his fellow territorial soldiers from Ipswich and East Suffolk who fought with him in the 4th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment.

Cover image for An Ipswich Man’s War, isbn: 9781916931411

Indian Christians

$120.00

A compelling exploration of Indian Christianity's identity, history and challenges within the nation's vibrant pluralistic landscape.

Religious traditions from both Indic and non-Indic backgrounds have significantly contributed to shaping India's rich and diverse religious culture. While there have been occasional challenges, most religious communities work to uphold the country's pluralistic values. Although the majority of Indians are religious, their faith does not lead to communal division. That said, religious communities in India face both shared and unique challenges, which they address according to the theological and ethical principles of their respective traditions. This book delves into Indian Christianity, examining the specific challenges it faces in today's socio-political and religious context. Though often regarded as a foreign religion, Christianity has been present in India for over two thousand years. It is fundamentally Indian because its followers are Indians who have the right to practice their religion within the republic. The national identity of Christians aligns with the broader Indic identity of Christianity.

Cover image for Indian Christians, isbn: 9781837654291

The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd

$240.00

First, complete, integrated corpus of this major Elizabethan writer and first critical edition of his collected works in over one hundred years, with major new discoveries of authorship and attribution.

Thomas Kyd (1558-94) is best known as author of The Spanish Tragedy, the first revenge play, hugely influential on Shakespeare and other dramatists. He also wrote another love tragedy, Soliman and Perseda, and Cornelia, a classical tragedy translated from the French. This is a small canon for a dramatist described as "industrious". Kyd worked between 1585 and 1594, when the instability in the London theatre caused by the plague led to companies breaking up and plays being published anonymously. For over a century scholars have been searching for Kyd plays, the most frequently attributed being Arden of Faversham.

Uniting accepted methods with modern electronic data processing, Brian Vickers has endorsed Kyd's authorship of Arden and added two other plays: King Leir, Shakespeare's main source, and Fair Em, a comedy - justifying Jonson's reference to "sporting Kyd". His research has also identified Kyd as co-author with Nashe of 'harey the vi', which became 1 Henry VI after Shakespeare adapted it to his "Wars of the Roses" sequence. The evidence suggests that Kyd and Shakespeare co-authored Edward III.

The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd brings together for the first time his dramas, poetry, translations, and letters in accurate modernized editions, each text edited by one of a team of internationally renowned scholars, accompanied by commentaries, collation notes, and introductions. Kyd emerges as a pioneering playwright of much greater generic range than has been hitherto recognized. His newly defined canon will stimulate a fresh evaluation of English drama in this crucial period.

Cover image for The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd, isbn: 9781843846956

Decoding Ambedkar

$120.00

Revealing Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's enduring impact on sociology, social justice, and political thought.

The book sets out a discourse on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's vast horizon of knowledge production. Through the essays in the book, the author has tried to deconstruct the reductionist approach adopted by mainstream academia, intelligentsia, and the Indian media to understand Ambedkar. It has recorded his erasures from various academic texts on sociology, history, literature, and creative fields like feature films. Juxtaposing this process of reductionism and erasure of Ambedkar, the book probes how he has been received and appreciated by international institutions and academicians; how, on the one hand, they have engaged with his writings on various aspects of society, polity, democracy, and social justice, and on the other, how they have hailed his academics in their writings. Further, the book maps the original and unique theoretical and philosophical insights provided by Babasaheb on Hindu social order with the place of an individual, varna, the genesis of caste, graded inequality, and the annihilation of caste, etc.
Additionally, taking clues from the essential elements of social justice delineated by Plato and Rawls, this book has tried to search for the aspects of social justice in Ambedkar's thoughts. His refutations of thoughts of social scientists, such as Senart, Nesfield, and Risley, and recognition of thoughts of Ketkar, Jefferson, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Tarde, Renan, and Acton, to name just a few, prove the point that Ambedkar should be regarded as one of the pioneers of Indian Sociology and treated at par with any national and international academics. In this sense, the book has underlined that Dalits are not engaged only in producing and analysing empirical data. Instead, they can evolve theoretical and conceptual propositions to deconstruct and reconstruct various social realities.

Cover image for Decoding Ambedkar, isbn: 9781837654284

Studies in Medievalism XXXV

$120.00

Essays exploring the intersections of politics and theory through medievalism in film, literature, gaming, and political movements.

Two vital, increasingly intertwined areas of interest are addressed by this collection: politics and theory. The volume begins with a general discussion of how the Middle Ages have been particularly mediated by subsequent artifacts. The essays then address: the motivations and machinations behind Joan of Arc AI in Michael Anderson's 1989 film Time Gate; medievalist historiography in Salman Rushdie's 1983 novel Shame; medievalist identity in Rome's contemporary far-right movement; Viking imagery in and around the Make America Great Again campaign; Robin Hood avatars in mid-twentieth-century B-westerns; medievalism by the Young German Order during the 1920s and 30s; the visibility of race in David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight; Orientalism and race in the 1974 game Dungeons & Dragons; manifestations of Chaucer's Pardoner in Kim Zarins' 2016 novel Sometimes We Tell the Truth; gender performance and sexuality in Maria Dahvana Headley's 2020 translation of Beowulf; and the term "Anglo-Saxon," particularly relative to the Ansax-1 and ANSAXNET online communities.

'"Donald the Orange": Vikings in and around the Maga Movement' is made Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND.

Cover image for Studies in Medievalism XXXV, isbn: 9781843847823

Conflict, Peace and Human Security in South Asia

$120.00

Revealing the forces driving conflict, peace, and human security in South Asia.

Conflict, Peace and Human Security in South Asia explores the region's complex socio-political landscape through nine insightful chapters by diverse scholars. From Nepal's shifting political dynamics and the rise of communism to gender inclusion in post-conflict governance, the volume addresses urgent questions of justice, empowerment, and democratic stability.
It examines legal reforms for crime victims, the ethical underpinnings of historical legal texts like the Muluki Ain, and the challenges posed by fragmented social unions in capitalist contexts. The book also discusses the plight of Bhutanese asylum seekers in Nepal and analyses China's expanding role in South Asia - particularly its impact on Nepal-U.S. relations.
This interdisciplinary volume offers fresh perspectives on the intersections of conflict, peacebuilding, and human security. A timely resource for scholars, policymakers, and students, it sheds light on the region's evolving challenges and the pathways toward more inclusive governance and sustainable peace.

Cover image for Conflict, Peace and Human Security in South Asia, isbn: 9781837654277

The East German Novel of Socialist Construction

$120.00

Examines an important novelistic genre of the early German Democratic Republic for what it tells us about the country's aspirations to remake labor affectively and thus to build a socialist society.

In a series of socialist realist novels written in the early 1950s, East German authors sought to capture "the new feeling of work" under socialism, to portray the collective enthusiasm of building a new world out of the ruins of fascism and war. In the GDR, this construction literature received an ambiguous reception even at the time; in the West it was dismissed as propaganda; and it is now largely forgotten. Why revisit it now? Drawing on the theorization of living labor elaborated in Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge's work, particularly their monumental treatise History and Obstinacy, and on contemporary Marxist feminist accounts of social reproduction theory, this book argues that East German construction literature provides us with a set of case studies in the social reorganization of work and the emotions and infrastructures that attend to it, even as these novels attempt to contain these transformations through socialist realist aesthetic strategies. The much-bemoaned awkwardness of these novels, then, is perhaps not only to be found in their didacticism but in the limits of that didacticism, where they seek both to portray and to disavow the transformation of work and the working class in the GDR. This book confronts the question: what was socialist affective labor and what could it have been?

Cover image for The East German Novel of Socialist Construction, isbn: 9781640141407

New Medieval Literatures 26

$120.00

This volume continues the series' engagement with intellectual and cultural pluralism in the Middle Ages, showing the best new work in the field.

Essays in this volume cover a rich and diverse range - in chronological terms, from the ninth to the fifteenth century, and across linguistic traditions from Old and Middle English to medieval Latin and Middle French. Using varied conceptual tools and detailed explorations of social, cultural, and intellectual contexts, they offer new interpretations of key works from the central and late Middle Ages. Contributors explore the educational background of the Middle English "Ricardians" - Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, John Gower, and the Gawain-poet - through the novel perspective of versification; the intellectual context for the poem St Erkenwald, where a poem about the miraculous salvation of a pagan reflects a detailed engagement with contemporary theology that tests the limits of theological orthodoxy; and the social background of the Gawain-poet, via examples of household hierarchy. A form of textual analysis known as "ergodics" is deployed to offer a way of making sense of the unique challenge of the Old English Maxims, and their position in monastic reading cultures. The Middle English Titus and Vespasian, which tells the story of the siege of Jerusalem, is shown to contain a complex and conflicted form of anti-Judaism, traversed in complex ways by anxieties about gender as well religion and race. Finally, in a linked suite of essays, late medieval heraldry is illuminated from a range of unexpected perspectives drawn from the study of literary form, examining heraldic miscellanies, the creativity of the heraldic imaginary, and the community-building work of the late medieval poetic society known as the Cour Amoureuse.

Cover image for New Medieval Literatures 26, isbn: 9781843847922

The Church of England’s Western Schism

$130.00

Examines one of the most significant events in the history of the late Georgian church, and revises accepted notions of Evangelical and Anglican ecclesiology and identity.

This study examines the establishment and progress of the Western Schism, which occurred between 1815 and c.1825-the first group secession from the Church of England since the Nonjurors during the late seventeenth century. As such, the Schism proved to be one of the most significant events in the history of the Church between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the enactment of the 'Constitutional Revolution' of 1828-32. Despite the fears of many inside and outside the Church that the Schism would produce a wave of Evangelical secessions throughout England and Ireland, its influence was largely confined to London and the counties of Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Somerset, Sussex and Wiltshire. Its leadership was comprised of a comparatively small group of clergy and laity drawn from prominent and influential commercial and clerical families (especially those from the Baring banking tribe) and bound by close ties of kinship, friendship and ideology. These factors, along with the Schism's heretical pronouncements and unusual ecclesial practices, its inclusion of women's ministry, and its secretive nature, generated considerable sensationalism and novelty value. The same factors also provoked a sustained period of criticism in which numerous leading religious figures, journals and newspapers participated.
Surprisingly, while this criticism of the Schism emerged from every point on the religious compass, including High Churchmen, liberals and Nonconformists, it was the Evangelicals who quickly emerged as the Schism's principal critics. Evangelicals denounced not only the heretical nature of the Schism, but also its inclusion of women in leadership, its abandonment of the Established Church and its attempts to tarnish the reputation of the 'gospel party' by calling into question its adherence to apostolic fidelity and the Reformed heritage of the English Church.
This work, the first extensive examination of the Western Schism, revises accepted notions of Evangelical (and Anglican) ecclesiology and identity during the late Georgian period. It discloses how a prominent and small, but influential, group of clergy and laity, alarmed by the Church's failure to respond adequately to the disruptive social and spiritual events of the day, set out to establish a rival ecclesial body which, despite the investment of significant energy and financial resources, ultimately failed to coalesce into a viable and lasting alternative to the Established Church.

Cover image for The Church of England’s Western Schism, isbn: 9781837652976

FGM/C in Africa and the Diaspora

$170.00

A nuanced, interdisciplinary examination of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) that challenges dominant health and human-rights narratives by situating the practice within its social, ritual, and cultural contexts, and foregrounding the voices of affected communities.

Few issues arouse as much controversy as female circumcision, also called a variety of terms including female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), and female genital modification. The very terminology is contentious, reflecting polarised ideological stances. This book discusses, critiques, and analyses contemporary issues around female circumcision in Africa and the diaspora, campaigns and legislation against it, and alternatives to it. It traces historical continuities in anti-FGM/C campaigns and examines how certain hegemonic narratives have developed as initiatives, legislation, and protocols were rolled out. The book argues that FGM/C is not 'just' a health, human-rights, and gender-violence issue but is multi-faceted and intersectional.

Moving away from a focus on the physical 'cut', chapters examine FGM/C in terms of social relations, asserting that FGM/C must be situated and understood in deeper ritual context and that external interventions aimed at ending the practice are doomed to fail unless external actors listen to and truly engage with the communities concerned. At the same time, FGM/C is discussed in parallel with male circumcision, as both mark ritual initiation into adulthood, raise people's status, and underpin the structure of age-organised societies. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, including perspectives from anthropology, history, political science, medicine and zemiology, the book includes a range of voices, importantly, those of community members as well as scholars, development practitioners and public health professionals, with a view to promoting constructive dialogue between sectors.

Cover image for FGM/C in Africa and the Diaspora, isbn: 9781847014245

Gender, Science and Sociability in the Diary of Jane Ewbank of York (1778-1824)

$130.00

Examines the newly-discovered diary of Jane Ewbank as a vital site of knowledge-making, illuminating women's intellectual lives in Enlightenment York, where science, cultural criticism and sociability intersected.

Between 1803 and 1805, Jane Ewbank of York kept a fascinating diary which chronicled her place within the lively Enlightenment world of northern England. Written in engaging prose, the diary offers a rare, richly textured account of a provincial woman's engagement with science, cultural criticism, and sociability in York and beyond.

This interdisciplinary volume includes an annotated transcription of Ewbank's 34,000-word diary alongside essays situating it within the gendered knowledge networks of northern England. Exploring her participation in scientific lectures, women's writing and the arts in York, contributors interrogate the diary as a media technology, a cognitive tool, and an emotionally informed thinking device. Ewbank's encounters with figures such as the novelist and educationalist Maria Edgeworth, the scientific lecturer Henry Moyes, and the philanthropist Catherine Cappe are explored throughout. Intersecting topics ranging from natural theology and scientific education to literature, theatre and music are all discussed.

The essays variously engage with historiographies of early modern life-writing, Enlightenment sociability, and the emotional economies of medicine, while offering reflections that challenge colonial silences and foreground global entanglements. Drawing on recent work in the history of science, literature and feminist theory, this volume redefines the diary as a critical artefact of Enlightenment culture and offers a compelling model for studying gendered intellectual life in regional contexts.

MATTHEW DANIEL EDDY is Durham University's Professor and Chair in the History and Philosophy of Science and Co-Director of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

RACHEL FELDBERG is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York.

JANE RENDALL is an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Eighteenth Studies and the History Department at the University of York.

Contributors: Michael Brown, Matthew Daniel Eddy, Rachel Feldberg, Corinne Fowler, Joanna de Groot, Roseanna Kettle, Karen Lipsedge, Jon Mee, Jane Rendall, Gillian Russell, Millie Schurch.

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Granville Bantock and the Orchestral Refiguring of Literature

$190.00

Illuminates Bantock's experimentation with musical structure to create effective representations of literature, while offering new notions of the modern in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music.

Granville Bantock (1868-1946) remains one of the most significant British composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This book provides an in-depth exploration of a series of orchestral compositions by Bantock based on different forms of literature (the poem, the drama, the novel) penned by a wide range of authors including Robert Browning, Samuel Butler, Dante, Ernest Dowson, Thomas Moore, Percy Shelley, Sophocles and Robert Southey.
The majority of the musical works discussed date from Bantock's most successful period as a composer (c.1899-1911), when his music was perceived to be 'modern'. Although critics were struck by his skills in orchestration, central to his modernist credentials is his distinctive approach to musical structure. The book's in-depth analyses, drawing on a wide range of literary scholarship, demonstrate a more meaningful way to appreciate these designs as individual responses to the literary texts on which they are based. As well as tackling the vexed issue of programme music, the book also highlights Bantock's association with orientalism.
As the first major study of Bantock's orchestral music, this book not only demonstrates the composer's experimentation with musical structure to create effective representations of literature, but its findings also have a wider significance in terms of notions of the modern and the interdisciplinary potential of music-literature studies in general.

Cover image for Granville Bantock and the Orchestral Refiguring of Literature, isbn: 9781837651740

British Merchant Seafarer Training and Education

$130.00

The first overview of merchant seafarer training and education in a single volume, outlining the development of training and education from the earliest time to the present.

Because merchant seafarers practise their occupation largely out of sight of the general population ashore, there persists a widespread ignorance of seafaring and seafarers, which has been labelled "sea blindness". Moreover, much writing on seafarers and seafarer training is dispersed in journal articles, which tend to be restricted in scope. This book presents the first overview of merchant seafarer training and education in a single volume. It outlines the development of training and education from the earliest time to the present, examines the different aspects of training and education, and covers the numerous and differing policies and training structures put in place by various shipowners. Despite national state regulation merchant shipping is not a single organisation like the Royal Navy. In addition to being a contribution to maritime studies and maritime history, the book also reveals a great deal about vocational training and education in general.

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Lloyd George and the Coalition Liberal Party

$120.00

Key documents from around the time that the Labour Party replaced the Liberals as the main opposition to the Conservatives.

The Scovell papers provide previously unseen insights into the Coalition Liberal party: a party created to support David Lloyd George, prime minister 1916-1922, and his allies who had split from the main Liberal party during the First World War. They document the evolution of British politics at the point when the Liberals were giving way to Labour as the opposition to the Conservatives. They also document Lloyd George's failure to achieve a fusion of the Conservatives and Coalition Liberals to create an anti-socialist centre right party to stem the rise of Labour. The documents, at the intersection between the party at Westminster and the wider party in the country, make a significant contribution to debates about the relative primacy of the higher level versus the lower level within the evolution of British political system in this period. They show that the Coalition Liberal party had genuine substance at the local level,built up with painstaking spadework by Scovell and others, sufficiently strong to strike local deals in the 1922 election, thereby raising Lloyd George's hopes, falsely as it turned out, that he would be a key power broker and potentially still prime minister in the new parliament.

Cover image for Lloyd George and the Coalition Liberal Party, isbn: 9781837653126

Richard Wagner: My Life [Two Volume Set]

$250.00

The first fully annotated scholarly edition and masterful new translation of Wagner's autobiography, revealing the composer's self-fashioning and mythmaking.

Richard Wagner's life was as tempestuous as his music and in his own retelling it constitutes a gripping narrative. His autobiography, My Life, matters if one wants to understand the composer's life or the way in which he himself saw that life. And yet, it has a flawed publishing history: Bayreuth published the first commercial edition in 1911, but it was not until 1963 that the full text appeared in an annotated German edition. An anonymous English translation was published in 1911, the work of a translator unfamiliar with the subject. A second translation, published in 1983, remains problematical. Until this day, no edition published in any language has risen to the challenge of providing adequate annotation. This new scholarly edition and translation by Stewart Spencer is the first edition to do so.

Annotations provided here explain references and allusions that Wagner himself took for granted and correct lapses of memory that the text contains. The edition highlights various strategies of concealment as far as Wagner's love life and revolutionary activities were concerned. As the text illustrates, by the 1860s Wagner was anxious to portray himself as Beethoven's natural successor, and his life in defence of art as a bulwark against the decline of Western civilization. This new critical edition and translation of Richard Wagner's autobiography is a response to one of the most pressing needs in the entire Wagner bibliography.

Cover image for Richard Wagner: My Life [Two Volume Set], isbn: 9781837650569

The British Army, Society and Soldiering in Ireland, 1699-1793

$120.00

A comprehensive overview of the British army in Ireland in the eighteenth century and the army's relationship with the local population.

The eighteenth-century army in Ireland, which consisted of 12,000 to 15,000 men, and which was its own quasi-independent "Establishment", paid for, housed by, and commanded from Dublin, represented a significant proportion of overall British military forces. This book, based on extensive original research, presents an overview of army life in Ireland in the period. It covers the administration of the Irish Establishment, recruitment, desertion, criminality, drunkenness, everyday routines, soldier-civilian relations, the response of soldiers to growing revolutionary unrest, and more. It overturns much established thinking, demonstrating for example that desertion in the army in Ireland was no different from desertion in the army elsewhere, that the army in Ireland was well-trained and efficient, and that Irish soldiers were far more common in British service than previously thought. In addition, the book discusses ideas of masculinity, the army's place in the defence of Ireland against foreign invasion, in securing the ascendancy regime and in suppressing unrest, and the unusual situation of Ireland as both subject and participant in the development of the British empire.

Cover image for The British Army, Society and Soldiering in Ireland, 1699-1793, isbn: 9781837650996

Scotland, the Wars of the Roses, and European Politics

$130.00

Traces Scotland's involvement in the increasingly dynamic international relations of the fifteenth century.

In 1461 the eyes of much of Europe were trained on Scotland. King Henry VI of England had fled into exile there following his defeat by Edward of York at Towton. This attention may have been exceptional, but it demonstrates that despite its location, Scotland was an integral part of the European political world and, in particular, between the 1450s and 1490s, a key external player in the Wars of the Roses.
However, although Scotland's role in these decades was never confined to Britain, scholarship has tended to downplay its continental connections. This book demonstrates the extent to which the Scots were active and engaged participants on a wider stage. Military, dynastic, and economic contacts meant that during the fifteenth century, Scotland was a recognised factor in the diplomacy of rulers from Italy to Scandinavia. It shows the importance of maintaining external relationships for the Scots, the fluctuating value of these relationships to other rulers, and how English political events were also bound up with wider patterns abroad.

Cover image for Scotland, the Wars of the Roses, and European Politics, isbn: 9781837654147

The Importance of Elgar

$130.00

A landmark celebration of Edward Elgar's life, music and enduring influence, bringing together leading voices from across the musical world.

Of the many biographies and other books published about Edward Elgar few have brought together as many composers, performers, and writers as this anthology, in celebration of his art and life. Published to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Society which bears his name, The Importance of Elgar brings together both executant musicians and others who share their love and appreciation of his music and what it means to them and, more widely, his place in the canon of western music.
With a foreword by the Society's President, Sir Mark Elder, the more than 60 contributors include Dame Janet Baker, Sir Stephen Hough, Sir James MacMillan and Christian Tetzlaf. The choice of the word 'importance' ensured that those who contributed to this volume would write something personal. The Elgar Society's first President, Sir Adrian Boult, was one of the great interpreters of Elgar's music and his commitment remains an inspiration to many today. It was Sir Adrian who suggested the formation of The Elgar Society during a series of concerts in Malvern in 1950. Four months later, in January 1951, what became the largest composer society in Britain was formed.
Edited by David Morris, The Elgar Society's Secretary, and Andrew Neill a former Society Chairman, this book offers the practising musician and music lover alike some fresh insights into Elgar's music and his importance beyond the shores of Britain.

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Apartheid, Thought Crime and South Africa’s New Left

$120.00

Of all the groups charged in the early 1960s under apartheid security laws in South Africa, the National Liberation Front was the only one whose members did not engage in violence. Yet six months after its launch, its founding members were arrested and then sentenced to between five and ten years in prison. Why?

A Cape Peninsula offshoot of the Non-European Unity Movement, the NLF was explicitly socialist and part of the long 1960s New Left. Although the NLF challenged South Africa's racial and capitalist orders, it has scarcely appeared in the liberation movement historiography. This book recovers the NLF's lost history, tracing its perspectives on colonialism, apartheid, political education and guerrilla struggle. The book examines the NLF in its international and national contexts, exploring its relationships with both the transnational New Left and the South African left, and evaluating the conditions producing and then smashing South Africa's New Left.
Debates about apartheid focus on race, political economy, and state and institutions. But apartheid also strove to control thought through unequal education and censorship. While bringing the NLF's critique of racial capitalism to life, the book also uncovers the NLF's unique educational approach and the state's attempt to contain its thinking.

Cover image for Apartheid, Thought Crime and South Africa’s New Left, isbn: 9781847014849

Agricultural Modernisation and the Green Revolution in the Twentieth-Century World

$130.00

An overarching history of the origins, development, and application of agricultural innovation in the past, and of the paradigms and institutional frameworks in which they were developed throughout the twentieth century.

From the late nineteenth century onwards, rural societies and agrarian production across the world were profoundly transformed. Prior to the Second World War, technological innovations developed within an intensive organic framework and advanced largely in dialogue with existing producers. After the war, social engineering became the prevailing model in agricultural and rural policies almost everywhere. Modernisation was imposed from above, targeting so-called "archaic" or "anti-modern" peasants and farmers, who were pushed to produce ever-greater quantities of food, timber, and other raw materials through the expanded use of industrial and inorganic resources. Applied as a USA political programme in Asian, Latin American and African countries, this strategy became known as the "Green Revolution". Although it undermined rural societies and eroded the sustainability of agricultural production, it remained central to political agendas, leaving a difficult legacy for future generations.

This book analyses agrarian change and agricultural policies before and after 1945, highlighting the socio-economic and environmental consequences of these two very different periods in global agrarian history. Its diverse case studies span continents and political systems, considering topics from post-war reconstruction in the UK and Denmark to development policies in the Belgian Congo and post-fascist Ethiopia; from production projects in communist Hungary to agricultural transformations across the Southern Cone and India.

Chapter 6 is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND

Cover image for Agricultural Modernisation and the Green Revolution in the Twentieth-Century World, isbn: 9781837653317

Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2000-2025

$130.00

Is democracy surviving in Africa? Despite the continuance of multiparty elections, in the face of unmet expectations for greater freedom, social justice, and inclusive development, an increasing authoritarianism is spreading across the continent.

Although most African states continue to use some form of multiparty elections according to the formal rules of liberal democracy, the reality is that people's expectations for greater freedom, social justice, and inclusive development have not been met. The result is a growing number of African states where power relations are increasingly authoritarian - a trend seen in the West as well.

Bringing together contributors from Africa, Europe, and North America, this volume seeks to analyze democracy in sub-Saharan Africa beyond the mere examination of the elements that determine its impasse, the political factors that hinder the proper functioning of democratic institutions or even the models through which a country's level of democratic status is "indexed." Instead, the goal is to address current states of "democracy" in Africa within a larger, global history.

Given the post-colonial histories of most African nations, the current demise of democratic governments on the continent cannot be interpreted as a new phenomenon without precedent. The volume presents a longer-view perspective to explain more specifically how history can explain the current crises in democracy and development, exploring how negotiations between external and internal interests have always contested their meanings in Africa, and arguing that these struggles continue to create new conditions for new democratic spaces.

Cover image for Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2000-2025, isbn: 9781847014290

Drawings in Books in Medieval Britain from the Ninth Century to the Reformation

$240.00

The first broad and long study of a major aspect of British medieval art, examining the historical relationships between medieval drawings and books.

The art of drawing and its products had a determining relationship to the visual arts of the Middle Ages. They also had other purposes, which if understood, help one to grasp the broader availability and usefulness of the medium. This groundbreaking study deals particularly with the historical relationships between medieval drawings and books. Using a wide range of material and documentary evidence, it explains how book-bound drawings may be defined, classified, and understood in relation to their physical settings and the ends they were made to serve. In orientation, the study is primarily art historical: most of its arguments emerge from curiosity about the psychology and experience of making drawn images. As such, it tackles a surprisingly neglected field. Because it deals with a pervasive aspect of book-design, it also makes a basic contribution to medieval codicology. There are six substantial chapters, the first two dealing with the definition of drawings, existing scholarly approaches to them, and issues of artistic status and agency. These lay the groundwork for the rest of the study, which analyses the placement of drawings at the fronts and backs of books (chapters 3, 4), and drawings embedded in the bodies of manuscripts that were mainly devoted to text (chapters 5, 6). Drawing emerges as an accessible, flexible medium of expression to rank with writing.

Cover image for Drawings in Books in Medieval Britain from the Ninth Century to the Reformation, isbn: 9781837653430

Destroyers, Naval Culture and British Identity

$130.00

An overview of what destroyers were and how their capacity for heroic deeds captured the popular imagination.

Destroyers, first developed over the course of the late 1880s and 1890s, were fast, manoeuverable warships intended to escort larger vessels and defend them against a wide range of threats. In Britain their speed, nimbleness and capacity for heroic deeds captured the popular imagination, and they became symbolic vessels, encapsulating the fortitude and ingenuity which contemporaries felt characterised the British navy. Based on extensive original research, this book provides both an overview of destroyers' operational roles and how these developed over time and also a detailed examination of destroyers' place within British culture, society and identity. Considering a wide range of sources including news reporting, pageantry, literature, film, art and more, the book reveals how the destroyer as symbol was used as propaganda, fitted in to popular, civic and artistic cultures and affected naval policy, British people's morale and outlook, and international views of Britain's naval power. One striking example of the depth of British people's attachment to destroyers was the scheme during the Second World War for individual towns to each adopt their own destroyer, a scheme which achieved astonishing success, with many small towns raising huge sums sufficient to fund entirely the building of their own destroyer.

Cover image for Destroyers, Naval Culture and British Identity, isbn: 9781837652501

Global Perspectives on Women Pianists

$170.00

Pathbreaking study that explores the piano as an instrument of globalism, colonialism and mobility and what this meant for women pianists from around the world.

This book surveys women pianists around the world. It focuses on the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries, an era that witnessed sustained interest in piano performance against a backdrop of technological and socio-political transformation. The authors range from emerging to established scholars, from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. They take diverse approaches to the piano as an instrument of globalism, colonialism, class, and mobility, within women's lives. These include explorations of mapping, networks, and cultural transfer; feminist examinations of archival traces; the implications of distinctive geographies and socio-political conditions; and the links between gender and genre, including contemporary and experimental musics. The volume offers a bold account of global approaches to women in music and encourages innovative ways of rethinking piano culture.

Global Perspectives on Women Pianists will be an exciting contribution to the growing landscape of global music history. This book will also contribute to the fields of gender studies, historical musicology, and material history.

The editors have curated a volume that achieves a genuine spread of "global" essays (and commendably, one that includes the "West" as simply another part of the globe).

JOE DAVIES is a faculty member in the Arts and Humanities Division at New York University Abu Dhabi. He previously held research and teaching positions at Maynooth University, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Oxford.

NATASHA LOGES is Professor of Musicology at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. She was previously Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music, London.

Cover image for Global Perspectives on Women Pianists, isbn: 9781837652037

Liberty in France and Britain, 1159–1789

$190.00

Documents the influence Britain and France had on the ideas of liberty and human rights from the twelfth century to the French Revolution.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the motto of the French Republic, encapsulates the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. The authors trace the history of each article in that Declaration to the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. That period saw the invention by the French-speaking Norman rulers in England of the common law based on reason and natural rights, of limited monarchy and habeas corpus; and in both France and England the replacement of trials by ordeal and battle with the right to a fair trial or due process, the disappearance of chattel slavery, and the development of the rule of law and republican government. The authors show that the ideas that the French and British held in common from that period were deployed to justify the rebellions and revolutions in the Netherlands and Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in France and the USA in the eighteenth century. That in turn led to the adoption of human rights declarations, treaties and laws in the twentieth century.
The authors trace these ideas from the Policraticus (1159) of John of Salisbury, the Englishman educated in France who dedicated his work to his patron Thomas Becket, through (among others) Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Jean Bodin's Six Books of the Republic (1576), John Locke's Treatises on Government (c.1689), Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) and William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) that was widely cited in France and propounds the natural rights of mankind listed in the 1789 Declaration.

Cover image for Liberty in France and Britain, 1159–1789, isbn: 9781837653294

Weird Music: Reading John Ireland and Arthur Machen

$120.00

Using John Ireland's fascination with Arthur Machen as case study, this book challenges our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.

The composer John Ireland (1879-1962) declared repeatedly that no one could understand his music until they had first read the work of his favourite writer, Arthur Machen (1863-1947). This book is the first study to take Ireland at his word. Revolving around Machen's classification as a founding figure of 'weird fiction', it uses weird aesthetics as an interpretative lens with which to understand Ireland's notoriously cryptic life and music. Its four chapters deal respectively with Machen's and Ireland's parallel explorations of weird art's relationship with eroticism; with fin-de-siècle London; with the English pastoral tradition; and with unsettling implications of alternative historiography.

The resulting portrait reveals Ireland to be one of Britain's pre-eminent 'weird artists', placing Ireland in the aesthetic context with which he wished to be associated. It therefore fills a significant gap in British musicology, while at the same time contributing to a growing appreciation of Machen as a major figure in British culture, one whose influence exceeds far beyond the literary sphere to which he is traditionally confined. Using Ireland's fascination with Machen as its case study, this book makes a timely and necessary connection between the literary weird and its musical doppelgänger, enriching and challenging our perception of the correspondence between music and literature in twentieth-century Britain.

Cover image for Weird Music: Reading John Ireland and Arthur Machen, isbn: 9781837652907

The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Northamptonshire, volume VIII

$140.00

Long-awaited volume for the Victoria County History of Northamptonshire covers the 6 parishes in Towcester Hundred including the historic market town of Towcester.

This contribution to the Red Book series is the eighth volume of the Victoria County History of Northamptonshire. It provides accounts of Towcester hundred, encompassing 6 parishes including the historic market town of Towcester. The rolling landscape is punctuated by dispersed villages that form the hundred with each settlement linked to the Roman Watling Street that traverses the full length of the hundred. Towcester's history is inextricably linked to this transport corridor, with an important coaching trade emerging in the 17th and 18th centuries. The hundred had a notable range of localised industries by the 1800s, including shoemaking, lacemaking and framework knitting. Its predominantly agricultural landscape was interrupted by the coming of the Grand Union Canal and railway in the 19th century, bringing industry, manufacture and expansion.

Cover image for The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Northamptonshire, volume VIII, isbn: 9781904356592

Smuts and Mandela

$170.00

Compares how, as individuals, Smuts and Mandela shaped key aspects of the making of South Africa, moving beyond sweeping condemnation of the first and uncritical reference of the second to provide a more rounded assessment of their significance in the history of the nation.

South Africa has produced two leaders who achieved global recognition and renown in their respective eras: Jan Christiaan Smuts (Prime Minister, 1919-24 and 1939-48) and Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (President, 1994-99). The former was much celebrated for playing a significant role in reconstructing international architecture after both world wars; the latter remains globally admired for his leading part in drawing South Africa back from racial war and becoming a democracy. As a result, both have attracted multiple biographies. Today, however, whereas Mandela remains a much-admired global icon, Smuts' reputation is much diminished, with contemporary historians citing his racism and role in constructing the foundations of apartheid South Africa.

In this controversial book, Roger Southall provides a re-evaluation of Smuts' hugely contradictory career by proposing fascinating parallels with the life and political trajectory of Mandela. Both came to maturity as political leaders as freedom fighters - Smuts against the British and Mandela against the apartheid regime. Both played a pre-eminent in founding a new South Africa, the first made for whites at Union in 1910 and the second for all South Africans in 1994. Both aspired to be nation-builders, but while Smuts' hoped-for South African nation was white, Mandela aspired to bring all of South Africa's people together. Both came to stride on the international stage, albeit in very different ways and for various reasons.

Smuts' career failed, and he was ejected from office. Mandela retired gracefully from office and continued to be lauded for his well-earned retirement, yet South Africa's contemporary travails reveal his hopes and policies as unfulfilled. This book makes the case that we cannot fully understand Mandela without first understanding Smuts and how South Africa continues to struggle with the legacy he left behind.

Cover image for Smuts and Mandela, isbn: 9781847014702

The Military Papers of Field Marshal Sir George White, 1885–1900

$110.00

Key documents relating to White's service in Burma, India, and South Africa as well as important background and analysis of some of Britain's most significant small wars during the Victorian period.

After graduating from the Royal Military College, George Stuart White was posted to India where he served in the Rebellion. Twenty years later, he fought in the Second Afghan War, where he was decorated with the Victoria Cross for gallantry in action. After a brief stint in the Sudan campaign, White returned to India, where he solidified his reputation, eventually rising to the position of Commander-in-Chief. During those years he commanded field forces in Burma and Baluchistan, sent expeditions to the North-West Frontier, and oversaw the end of the Presidency Armies. As war loomed on the horizon in South Africa in 1899, White was selected to command the Natal Field Force. This force was besieged for 118 days in the town of Ladysmith. Despite continuous Boer shelling, disease, and limited supplies, White managed to maintain the force and the civilian population in good order until its liberation. He was christened the "Defender of Ladysmith." In 1903, he was promoted to Field-Marshal.

Cover image for The Military Papers of Field Marshal Sir George White, 1885–1900, isbn: 9781838387730

The Brewers’ Book, Part 2, 1429-40

$105.00

This book presents the second part of William Porlond's Brewers' Book, 1429-40. It provides a fascinating glimpse of this craft and fraternity, and the gaining of the company's Royal charter in 1438.

This is the second part of William Porlond's Brewers' Book, for the years 1429-40, until the clerk's death. After a gap, his records resumed, listing income, expenditure, entries to the freedom of the craft, to the fraternity and matters concerning the Brewers of London. Many payments were recorded in pursuit of the Brewers' Royal charter, which King Henry VI granted in 1438. Costs for making the commonalty seal were also recorded. At this time of change, when beer, rather than ale, was being made and sold in London, the clerk questioned the virtue of beer. He recorded the annual feasts, some important guests, and the purchase and distribution of livery cloth. The clerk gave insight into national events, with lists of the Brewers' contributions towards waging soldiers in Calais. Inventories of the goods of three Brewers' almsmen give glimpses of their lives. Porlond's records, kept mostly in English in this part of the book, illustrate the developing role of the company clerk.

Cover image for The Brewers’ Book, Part 2, 1429-40, isbn: 9780900952647

Lexicography

$170.00

Articles on Xhosa language and folklore

Robert Godfrey's major contribution to Xhosa-language studies is his revised and expanded edition, published in 1915, of Albert Kropf's classic Kafir-English Dictionary (1899). As a member of the staff of the Blythswood Institution, Godfrey edited the Blythswood Review, and in 1924, in preparation for a third edition of the Dictionary, he commenced an extended series of articles under the title Lexicography. Through these columns he invited his readers to supply him with the Xhosa names for birds and animals. The scope and range of the articles expanded, and he increasingly incorporated into his column quotations from pupils' essays on Xhosa lore and language. Selections from these articles comprise Godfrey's Bird-lore of the Eastern Cape Province (1941), now long out of print, and an article that Godfrey wrote on John Bennie (1934), but the articles as originally printed and as assembled here contain considerably more information, on a wider range of topics, and demonstrate the development of his knowledge.

Godfrey's contributions to the Blythswood Review contain invaluable knowledge on aspects of the domestic lives and language of the Xhosa-speaking peoples, much of it expressed in the Xhosa words of his informants, information on proverbs and riddles and taboos, on children's games and bird-lore, on hlonipha words and the Xhosa words for flora and fauna, on the months of the year and place names, on Xhosa grammar and the linguistic achievements of John Bennie, whose transcription of the Xhosa language became the earliest standard spelling system. Also included in this volume is an extensive collated list of lexical definitions intended for inclusion in the third edition of the Dictionary, which in the event was never published.

Altogether, this collection of Godfrey's articles constitutes a significant source of information on the folklore of the Xhosa-speaking peoples and the state of their language in the early decades of the twentieth century.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Lexicography, isbn: 9781847014542

African Futures in the Making

$130.00

What lies ahead for rural Africa, given a rapidly increasing population, climate change, poverty, inequality and projections of an increasing vulnerability to natural hazards and food shortages?

Bringing together scholars in ecology, agriculture, economics, human geography and cultural anthropology, from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Germany, The Netherlands and the UK, this book focusses on social-ecological transformation and future-making in rural Africa, especially in areas of rapid land-use change following the establishment of development corridors, conservation areas, and large-scale infrastructure projects. In Africa, discussions on the way forward are particularly conflict-ridden because people do not agree about desirable goals, because the gap between winners and losers seems to be bigger than elsewhere, and because the struggle for desirable futures is embedded in a problematic history of foreign domination and exploitation.

Focussing on eastern and southern Africa, topics examined range from the history of conservation initiatives and wildlife protection to visions of green development, from the gender implications of extreme climate events on pastoral economies to the use of information and communication technologies on farms and mobile money in geographically remote territories, from large-scale energy infrastructure projects and growth corridors to local ways of managing risk. The volume opens with reflections on African utopic registers of the future and conceptual decolonization in African futurity.

Published in association with the Collaborative Research Centre FUTURE RURAL AFRICA, funded by the German Research Council (DFG).

Cover image for African Futures in the Making, isbn: 9781847014221

The Accounts of Two Westminster Fraternities, 1474-1540

$36.95

An edition of the surviving accounts of two important religious fraternities, one based at St Margaret's Westminster, the other at the Chapel of St Mary Rounceval at Charing Cross.

These organisations drew their membership from across the social spectrum, from nobles and senior clergy, to local parishioners and merchants. They formed a key focus of social and religious life, and their accounts throw light on the regular activities of Westminster inhabitants.

Cover image for The Accounts of Two Westminster Fraternities, 1474-1540, isbn: 9781837653089

Mola, False Conception, and False Pregnancy in British Medicine, 1550–1850

$120.00

When reproduction defied certainty, it unsettled medicine, law, and belief. This book reveals how ambiguous pregnancies reshaped knowledge, emotion, and the cultural meaning of conception across centuries.

Across the long durée of the early-modern period, British medical practitioners and society at large were preoccupied with the elusive phenomenon of "false generation"-a term encompassing false conceptions, molae, moles, and spurious pregnancies. These non-foetal pregnancies, often indistinguishable from true gestations, generated profound uncertainty in medical, legal, and theological thought. Drawing on sources ranging from anatomical treatises and midwifery manuals to women's letters, diaries, and court records, Donaghy traces how false generation shaped reproductive knowledge and understandings of the embodied experience. Through case studies such as Mary I and Joanna Southcott, the book highlights how reproductive ambiguity was not merely a private ordeal but a public and intellectual crisis. Engaging with figures like Galen, Jean Fernel, François Valleriola, and Frederik Ruysch, the book situates British debates within wider contemporaneous European contexts as well as a transhistorical development of medical knowledge.

By foregrounding uncertainty as both an emotional and conceptual force, this monograph contributes to the history of emotions, knowledge, and the body. It offers a field-defining account of how false generation unsettled assumptions about life, conception, and pregnancy, and how these ideas evolved into modern categories such as molar pregnancy. The book speaks directly to current debates in reproductive justice and healthcare, while presenting a compelling case for the historical contingency of reproductive knowledge and the diverse ways it has been shaped by cultural, scientific, and experiential factors.

Cover image for Mola, False Conception, and False Pregnancy in British Medicine, 1550–1850, isbn: 9781914967177

Skaldic Poetry as Christian Propaganda

$120.00

A detailed literary study of fourteenth-century poetry composed in honour of a controversial thirteenth-century bishop.

Vernacular poetry was a powerful influence in fourteenth-century Icelandic elite literary culture, even to the extent of providing the means of elevating a local bishop, Guðmundr Arason, to sainthood. Three Icelandic poets, Abbots Arngrímr Brandsson and Árni Jónsson, and Lawman Einarr Gilsson, composed impressive encomia of Guðmundr, with the intention of recording the holy bishop's sanctity in the language of contemporary religious devotion and to persuade Church authorities in both Scandinavia and the wider Christian world to canonize him. While the local campaign ultimately failed to sway the Catholic Church, it did succeed in producing a significant corpus of vernacular religious poetry, unmatched in combining the traditional diction and metres of Old Norse skaldic verse with the vernacular poetics of affective piety and Christian hermeneutics.

This important group of poems is examined here for the first time as literary works. The manuscript context of the Guðmundr poetry is investigated in the first chapter. The next three chapters offer a detailed analysis of the poems themselves while the final chapters situate the Guðmundr poetry within the milieu of the vernacular learning that flourished particularly in mid-fourteenth-century Icelandic bishoprics and monasteries. They also explore the relationship between contemporary prose sagas of Guðmundr Arason and the poetry composed in his honour, which, it is argued, offers figural interpretations of the substance of the prose texts.

Cover image for Skaldic Poetry as Christian Propaganda, isbn: 9781843847731

Medieval Commentary and Exegesis

$130.00

Interdisciplinary study of the medieval commentary tradition, covering a range of sources from the Wycliffite Bible and French Marian Lyric to John Lydgate and Anselm of Canterbury.

Textual and material survivals from across medieval Europe testify to a pervasive commentary culture on Scripture. The biblical text becomes a central object of explication and comment, generating a variety of interpretive texts and genres. But precisely because it is so ubiquitous, medieval commentary can also prove elusive, requiring perspectives from different disciplines. How can we define commentary, and how does it develop and function in different linguistic and geographical areas? What role do commentaries play in the formation and reformulation of personal and national identities across the period? How can contemporary scholars best approach this fundamental genre of the medieval world?

Exploring these among many other questions, this volume revises and refines our current understanding of the intellectual, cultural, and literary dynamics of the medieval commentary tradition. Contributors consider matters such asauthority, patronage, readership, textual genesis, and material contexts of commentary, as well as the absences and lacunae in our knowledge, and how we might take these into account from today's perspective. Expansive in their chronological, methodological, and disciplinary scope, the chapters here illuminate the origins and forms of commentary from Late Antiquity to the late medieval period in Western Europe, extending across Hebrew, Latin and vernacular texts, and examine a wide range of literary and cultural artefacts, from single-authored works to manuscript compilations.

Cover image for Medieval Commentary and Exegesis, isbn: 9781843847670

Scottish Witchcraft Narratives and Tracts

$60.00

This book is a scholarly edition of primary sources for witch-hunting and demonic possession in Scotland. It contains narratives of remarkable witchcraft prosecutions, and tracts expounding witchcraft theory.

The narratives provide the intense emotional drama, eye-catching colour and nightmarish horror that made witchcraft such a compelling idea. The accused witches' own voices are sometimes heard, under the harrowing circumstances of interrogation under torture. Meanwhile, educated ministers and lawyers develop their theoretical ideas about witches and the Devil. Not every theorist agrees with the prosecutions, and doubts arise that would eventually lead witch-hunting to lose its credibility. The book's most detailed narrative concerns the Bargarran witches of 1697, in which seven witches were executed for the demonic possession of the 11-year-old Christian Shaw. The book shows how this was connected with the sensational witchcraft panic in 1692 at Salem, Massachusetts.

Cover image for Scottish Witchcraft Narratives and Tracts, isbn: 9780906245521

The Register Of Thomas Hatfield, Bishop Of Durham, 1345-1381

$105.00

The full record of diocesan administration under Bishop Hatfield. This edition completes the publication of the surviving medieval episcopal registers from the diocese of Durham.

Thomas Hatfield was a member of the inner circle of Edward III, who advanced him as his candidate for election to the chapter of Durham and for provision to the pope after the death of Richard Bury in April 1345. As a trusted administrator, his choice was no doubt attractive to the king, in part because along with the diocese came the palatinate of Durham. He was involved in the early stages of the war with France and was present at the battle of Crécy. For most of his episcopate, however, he struck a balance between remaining in his diocese and the palatinate most of each year and staying near the centre of national affairs in London. The first wave of the Black Death struck England in June 1348 and spread throughout the country in 1349. The long-term effects can be seen at several points in the register in respect of shortage of priests and declining revenues of religious houses, parish churches, and chantries. Primarily a document of diocesan administration, the register is chiefly composed of the transfer of benefices, but there are ample letters concerned with discipline of the clergy and the laity, and the rare example of a detailed record of a trial, that of an archdeacon of Northumberland for the killing of a layman.

This edition completes the publication of the surviving medieval episcopal registers from the diocese of Durham.

Cover image for The Register Of Thomas Hatfield, Bishop Of Durham, 1345-1381, isbn: 9780854440863

Catholic Print Networks in Restoration London, 1660-1688

$130.00

Uncovers the hidden networks behind Catholic publishing in Restoration London, where politics, religion, and print intersected in unexpected ways under Charles II, James VII/II, and Queen Catherine of Braganza.

In the politically volatile decades following the Restoration, the Catholic book trade in London remained a vibrant and adaptive force. This study reconstructs the networks-commercial, familial, and religious-that sustained the production and circulation of Catholic texts between 1660 and 1688. These networks operated within and across confessional boundaries, drawing in Protestants and Catholics alike, and were shaped by shifting legal frameworks, urban patronage, and the ambiguities of what constituted a 'popish' text.

Focusing on the lived experience of printers, booksellers, and readers, the book challenges the notion of Catholic isolation in Protestant England. It reveals how Catholic print culture was embedded in the broader English print economy and public sphere, often sharing tools, spaces, and strategies with dissenting and loyalist traditions. From Somerset House to the streets of London, Catholic actors navigated censorship and suspicion with ingenuity, contributing to a paradoxical print culture that was both illicit and integrated.

Engaging with the fields of Catholic history, book history, and Restoration studies, this monograph offers a new framework for understanding religious identity, toleration, and the mechanics of clandestine publishing. It brings to light the agency of overlooked figures and repositions Catholic print as a central, rather than marginal, feature of early modern English society.

Cover image for Catholic Print Networks in Restoration London, 1660-1688, isbn: 9781914967108

Early Medieval Sculpture in Stone

$170.00

Multidisciplinary scholarship showcasing innovative methods for working with sculptural material - with essays ranging from Merovingian funerary art to Old English and Scandinavian runic inscriptions.

The stone sculptures surviving across Europe from the early medieval period are an exceptional resource for understanding the communities that created them. Found at waysides, in architectural settings, and graveyards - standing crosses, inscribed stones, runestones and grave-markers are just some of the highly varied forms that attest to the art, technologies and beliefs of both Christian and non-Christian societies. The new approaches to sculpture studies found in this volume range from rethinking late antique influences to exploring how sculpture was used and encountered in a variety of political and cultural contexts; contributors also draw out the dialogues inherent in form and decoration within and across temporal and national boundaries. These fresh perspectives on iconographies, narrative art, sculpture and nature and the power of sculpture in multi-media environments, alongside studies of sourcing, production and portability, and the afterlives of carved stones, reflect the vibrancy of current research and the way in which it now integrates digital, scientific and spatial methods.

The introduction and chapters 26 and 27 are available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND. This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/R003556/1] and the British Academy [AQ2324\240012].

Chapter 17 is Open Access under the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND with funding from the Swedish National Heritage Board.

Cover image for Early Medieval Sculpture in Stone, isbn: 9781837651535

Animal Symbolism in Hispanic Literature

$120.00

Whether unicorns, phoenix, and chimera, or axolotl, jaguars, and giant snakes, animals have often had the human experience grafted onto them, in a conscious or unconscious reflection of a society's beliefs, ambitions, and inequalities.

This volume seeks to explore different representations of real and imaginary animals across Hispanic literary production from the early modern era to the present day in order to gain a better understanding of how they serve as projections of human identities, knowledge, values, and vices. How do beasts enable the colonizing gaze and its reaches? How might beasts offer a means of decolonizing the Hispanophone world? And how do beasts articulate social unrest and a desire to resist inequality, poverty, and other ills of the modern world that collectively reinforce the status quo?

Working to better understand how Spanish and Latin American authors, illustrators, and graphic artists have understood animals and beasts, and how they interacted with them, contributors from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Spain shed light on the use of animals as symbols and emblems, as well as how they have been employed to construct others as monstrous and less human.

Cover image for Animal Symbolism in Hispanic Literature, isbn: 9781855664241

Spenser and the Filidh in Early Modern Ireland

$120.00

Uncovers a vibrant literary culture often overlooked by colonial historiography and Anglocentric critical traditions. Reimagines Spenser's Munster through multilingual networks, bardic poetry, and digital methodologies.

Long dominated by Anglocentric narratives, early modern literary studies have often cast Ireland as a backdrop to English self-fashioning. This volume reorients that perspective by foregrounding the multilingual, polyvocal literary culture of Munster in the late sixteenth century, situating Edmund Spenser not as an isolated colonial voice but as one writer among many-Gaelic, Old English, and New English-engaged in a contested cultural landscape. Drawing on archival, digital, and geospatial methodologies, the essays presented here explore bardic poetry, deep mapping, and the politics of language in texts by and about Spenser and his contemporaries. Case studies of bardic poetry, manuscript culture, and poetic networks reveal a vibrant and dynamic Gaelic literary tradition that responded to colonial violence.

By integrating perspectives from Irish-language literature, English studies, and digital humanities, this collection offers a vital corrective to monolingual historiographies and opens new pathways for understanding the cultural entanglements of Spenser's Munster. It reconceptualises the idea of Spenser in Ireland by highlighting the region's cultural complexity and multilingualism, demonstrating how attention to this richness deepens our understanding of one of the most fraught and fateful periods in the shared history of Ireland and England.

Cover image for Spenser and the <i>Filidh</i> in Early Modern Ireland, isbn: 9781843847083

Miscellany XVII

$60.00

The seventeenth volume in the Scottish History Society's Miscellany series, showcasing editions of unpublished short texts.

Volume XVII of the Scottish History Society's Miscellany includes editions of nine unpublished short texts dating from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. These include a rich range of legal, economic, and intellectual documents ranging from an "Essay on Resistance to Magistrates" (c.1637-38), to a poem on the appointment of a judge at Melrose in 1682, to new material on the (in)famous physician and philosopher Archibald Pitcairne. This volume continues the Society's programme of making previously unpublished and unedited primary sources for Scotland's history available in scholarly and accessible forms.

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Robert of Torigni's Chronography and the Universal Chronicle Tradition

$130.00

Offers a reassessment of universal chronicle-writing and its ideological implications in the twelfth century.

The Chronography of Robert of Torigni is a key source for the political landscapes of twelfth-century Normandy, England, and wider Western Europe. Robert was at the heart of the Norman political network that revolved around Empress Matilda and her son Henry II, and so a crucial witness to the intense political transformations occurring in the Anglo-Norman world.

This book places his chronicle within its wider textual community, casting new light on the social practices, intellectual rationale, and ambitions of the chroniclers who followed the historiographical traditions of Eusebius of Caesarea, Jerome and Sigebert of Gembloux. Along with Torigni's Chronography, the book examines how independent chroniclers and continuators at Savigny, Mortemer, Ourscamp as well as John of Salisbury adapted the chronicles of Eusebius-Jerome and Sigebert, openly engaging with - or reacting against - their understanding of time, empire and power. It demonstrates how textual traditions and ideological discourses can move across geopolitical boundaries, illuminating the specific circumstances that made the Eusebius-Jerome and Sigebert tradition of chronicle-writing successful in this period.

Cover image for Robert of Torigni's <i>Chronography</i> and the Universal Chronicle Tradition, isbn: 9781914049323

The Art of Musical Ciphers, Riddles and Sundry Curiosities

$190.00

Offers the first comprehensive account of a centuries-old tradition of encrypting covert messages into music, from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Question: What do J. S. Bach, beef cabbage, coffee, the SATOR Square, and Marlene Dietrich have in common?

Answer: Composers have enciphered these and many other words into music.

Since time immemorial riddles have intrigued us, partly for their mirthful manner of connecting incongruous ideas, partly for their arresting way of opening fresh perspectives on our shared human condition. When we think of riddles, we normally recall verbal conundrums from cultures around the globe. But riddles can penetrate non-verbal aspects of our existence as well. Masking messages in music so that they lurk beneath the sonorous surface is an august Western tradition spanning the Middle Ages to the present. Known as musical cryptography, these puzzling pursuits form the subject of this book, construed broadly enough to capture not just musical ciphers and codes but also a curiosity shop of related techniques, which arguably can advance the greater virtue. They entertain, edify, and enthral, but also bewitch and bewilder, and, when unsolved, perplex and perturb.

Cover image for The Art of Musical Ciphers, Riddles and Sundry Curiosities, isbn: 9781837653034

Hadi waseluhlangeni

$190.00

All the clearly identifiable writings of Jonas Ntsiko, the 'national harp' of South Africa, in English and in isiXhosa

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Xhosa literature was dominated by two writers: William Wellington Gqoba and Jonas Ntsiko. Gqoba's status and reputation are today assured, and he is well known and recognised by authorities who have written on the early history of Xhosa literature. In sharp contrast, Ntsiko's contribution to Xhosa literature is almost entirely overlooked. Very little is known about him and his substantial contribution to early Xhosa literature; not one of the items included here has subsequently been republished. Ntsiko is a ghostly presence, defined by his absence, an ancestral shade invoked by none.

Ntsiko (1850-1918) wrote under the pseudonym 'Hadi waseluhlangeni', the National Harp. This volume contains two substantial essays, by Marguerite Poland and Jeff Opland, that offer an account, for the first time, of Ntsiko's life and times, his early schooling in Grahamstown, his three years of study in England, his ordination as a deacon in the Anglican Church and his ten-year career in church service, ending abruptly in the termination of his licence. Thereafter, he grew progressively blind and ended his working life serving the magistrate in the rural village of Tsolo.

This book assembles for the first time all the clearly identifiable writings of Ntsiko in English and in Xhosa: journals, narrative and lyrical poetry, obituaries and polemical articles on the bible translation, politics and church affairs. It seeks to claim recognition for him as a major voice in the history of Xhosa literature, as an outspoken social critic and as a leading intellectual in the early formulation of African nationalism.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Hadi waseluhlangeni, isbn: 9781847014580

Xhosa literature

$170.00

Essays examining isiXhosa oral literature, novels and journalism and the interconnections between them in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Xhosa Literature: Spoken and Printed Words consists of fourteen essays addressing Xhosa literature in three media - the spoken word, newspapers and books. Literary critics tend to focus on Xhosa literature published in books; some attention has been paid to Xhosa oral poetry and tales, but by and large the contribution of newspapers to the development of Xhosa literature has been overlooked. This book explores aspects of Xhosa literature in all three media, and their interconnections.

Six of the essays treat historical narratives (amabali) and praise poetry (izibongo), setting out the social and ritual function of poetry and the poet (imbongi), mapping changes in the izibongo of three poets as South Africa moved towards democracy in the 1990s, and analysing recordings of two poems recited by S.E.K. Mqhayi. Three essays are devoted to the first Xhosa novel, Mqhayi's U-Samson (1907), to the publication of the greatest novel in Xhosa, A.C. Jordan's Ingqumbo yeminyanya (1940), and to the first published poem in praise of Nelson Mandela, D.L.P. Yali-Manisi's 'UNkosi Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela' (1954). There follow accounts of Xhosa literature in the nineteenth century and the appropriation of the press by Xhosa editors towards the end of that century, of Nontsizi Mgqwetho's fiery poetry published in Umteteli wa Bantu and of poems by Mgqwetho and Mqhayi published in Abantu-Batho, two Johannesburg newspapers. The volume concludes with an exposition of an imaginative response to David Yali-Manisi and his poetry.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Xhosa literature, isbn: 9781847014528

Umoya wembongi

$170.00

All 65 of John Solilo's poems from Izala, now out of print, with an additional 28 first published in newspapers, in isiXhosa and English translation, with a comprehensive introduction

John Solilo (1864-1940) was a prolific contributor to Xhosa-language newspapers. He submitted letters and articles on a variety of issues, local news reports from Cradock and Uitenhage, and a considerable body of poetry. His major literary contribution was his collection of poems entitled Izala (A Rubbish Dump), published in 1925, the earliest volume of poetry by a single author in the history of Xhosa literature.

Solilo's literary reputation today, however, is at variance with his prominence as a major author in the first four decades of the twentieth century: he is hardly mentioned, if at all, by literary historians, Izala has long been out of print, and copies can no longer be located. In restoring to the public domain the 65 poems that made up Izala and adding an additional 28 that were published in newspapers both before and after the appearance of Izala, the editors hope to revive John Solilo's reputation as a poet, and to establish his status as a pre-eminent Xhosa author.

In his poetry, Solilo urged passivity and opposed political revolt, but he could also be scathing in his denunciation of black indignities suffered under white control, inspired as he was by umoya wembongi, the spirit of the imbongi, the praise poet whose stirring declamations roused his audiences to action or contemplation.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Umoya wembongi, isbn: 9781847014467

Iimbali zamandulo

$190.00

Recollections of ordinary people, in isiXhosa and English translation, of daily life and historical events in the nineteenth century

Iimbali zamandulo - 'Stories of the Past' - is a selection of historical testimonies produced by Xhosa-speaking residents of the Eastern Cape between 1838 and 1910. These narratives offer fresh insights into the history of the Xhosa-speaking peoples, providing their own perspectives on their own past.

The volume contains recollections reaching back to seventeenth-century dynastic disputes, to a period preceding the southward migrations in the early nineteenth century into territories settled by Xhosa-speaking peoples. It passes on through those migrations, the clashes and resettlement of peoples and of individuals, the contest for land throughout the century, and on to the struggle for social control and the assertion of cultural identity by the century's end.

To a remarkable extent, we are lent intimate access here to the lives of ordinary people, seeking better pastures for themselves, their families and their livestock; hunting, fighting and, above all, confronting personal conflict in their choices between mission Christianity and ancestral beliefs; between support for their chiefs or the colonial authorities; between active or passive resistance to encroachment on their territory; and between colonial distortions purveyed in the schools and their receding grasp of their own sustaining histories.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Iimbali zamandulo, isbn: 9781847014566

Xhosa Poets and Poetry

$190.00

Essays examining the poetry and leading poets of the Xhosa-speaking peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

The Xhosa-speaking peoples who settled along the south-eastern seaboard of South Africa promoted traditions of praise poetry (izibongo), poetry produced orally by men and women, adults and children, about people, clans, ancestors and animals. Throughout the nineteenth century, authors who used the Xhosa language gradually developed the craft of composing poetry for publication in newspapers, and expanded this process in the twentieth century, when books containing secular literature appeared, but the practice of oral poetry persists, flourishing now as it did before the incursion of colonial settlers. The dominant poet in the community is the imbongi, who continues to produce poetry praising or criticising figures of authority on occasions of local and national significance.

Xhosa Poets and Poetry (Iimbongi nezibongo) contains fourteen essays originally published between 1974 and 1996. Based on fieldwork conducted between 1969 and 1985, and on extensive archival research, the first six essays examine the social function of poetry in the community, the element of improvisation in the production of poetry, especially in the poetry of the imbongi, and the structural principles of his poetry. Individual poets are then presented, among them D.L.P. Yali-Manisi, Melikaya Mbutuma, Peter Mtuze and Nontsizi Mgqwetho, the first woman to produce a substantial body of poetry. The concluding four essays are thematic, treating issues introduced by the medium of print: the role of newspapers in fostering literature; censorship and control of the press; the damaging effects of changes in Xhosa spelling and the demand for books for school prescription; and, finally, the suspicion in which Xhosa poets held books and writing.

This second edition updates the bibliographical references and amplifies some of the arguments. Xhosa Poets and Poetry offers a keen engagement with its subject, enlivened by extracts from conversations with poets and copious examples of their poetry in Xhosa and in English translation. It offers a cultural context for the volumes in this series.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Xhosa Poets and Poetry, isbn: 9781847014504

Izibongo zoogxa

$120.00

33 poems by Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi, in isiXhosa and English translation, with a comprehensive introduction

Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi is renowned and justly celebrated as the most accomplished writer in the Xhosa language, the author of collections of poetry, novels, biographies, monographs, translations and an autobiography in book form. Mqhayi's Izibongo Zoogxa is a collection of 33 poems about persons and personages who lived during his lifetime (1875-1945). Originally published in ephemeral newspapers, none of the poems has subsequently been republished; all appear here in more permanent form for the first time.

Mqhayi's poetry was directed at readers of the Xhosa language (isiXhosa) and sought to encourage them, instil in them pride and hope, and sway them towards a more humane disposition. One of the striking features of the poems in this collection is the range of subjects, not just Xhosa but also Zulu, Sotho and Tswana; not just black leaders but white as well; male and female; South African as well as British and German; close friends as well as foreign politicians; chiefs and commoners.

Samuel Mqhayi was a much-admired, much-celebrated poet, a true man of the people, who lived his life, as he signed himself, enkonzweni yesizwe (in the service of the nation). The poems assembled here offer insights not only into their subjects but also into the life and thought of Mqhayi himself, Imbongi yesizwe jikelele (Poet of the entire nation), a cultural icon, humane patriot and passionate inspiration to his people.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Izibongo zoogxa, isbn: 9781847014603

Iziganeko zesizwe

$190.00

Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi's occasional poems, in isiXhosa and English translation, with a comprehensive introduction

Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi (1875-1945) was the most prominent South African imbongi of his day, a Xhosa oral poet who declaimed his impromptu poetry on occasions of significance to his people. The author of numerous works of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, biography, autobiography and translation, Mqhayi's contributions to Xhosa-language newspapers remains unparalleled in scope and volume.

This book reclaims and assembles a chronological sequence of Mqhayi's occasional poems, for the most part now unknown - 60 poems celebrating significant events in the calendar, on occasions of national or international importance. They constitute Iziganeko zesizwe, a chronicle of the nation, between 1900 and 1943: poetic responses to events from the perspective of the greatest figure in Xhosa literature. Wars feature prominently in these occasional poems - the Boer War, the First World War, the invasion of Abyssinia, the Second World War - as do political deputations to England, visits from British princes and the death of British kings, the appearance of Halley's Comet and meetings with Ministers of State. Running through the collection is Mqhayi's proud and fierce determination to maintain an identity rooted in custom and history in the face of territorial dispossession, the loss of title deeds and the vote, and the steady erosion of human rights.

Throughout these years, Mqhayi remained constant in offering praise and encouragement to his people, in celebrating their achievements, and in expressing Christian consolation and an unflinching faith in the future liberation of South Africa's black population from foreign control.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Iziganeko zesizwe, isbn: 9781847014481

Iimbali zamanyange

$130.00

Eight of David Livingstone Phakamile Yali-Manisi's narrative poems, in isiXhosa and English translation, with a comprehensive introduction

David Livingstone Phakamile Yali-Manisi (1926-99) was a Thembu imbongi, the most powerful exponent of the art of praise poetry in the Xhosa language, in the second half of the twentieth century. His literary career, however, was blighted by circumstances beyond his control, and he died in total obscurity. Manisi was obliged to seek his audiences throughout the lifetime of South Africa's reviled policy of apartheid, and the poet's reputation, initially full of promise, waned as a consequence. He was a lifelong supporter of Nelson Mandela and the author of the earliest poem in praise of Mandela (1954), but he was never able to fulfil his ambition of performing a poem in honour of Mandela in a liberated South Africa.

Manisi exhibited a marked penchant for extending the panegyric mode of the imbongi into explicit narrative; he also displayed an astonishing capacity to compose poetry in the act of performance. This volume presents eight of his narrative poems in isiXhosa and in English translation. Four of them are drawn from his earliest published books, together with the complete text of his epic poem on the War of Mlanjeni, published in 1983; also included are three remarkable spontaneous poems produced with little forethought. The poems address events in the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, and feature blunt assessments of figures such as Ntsikana, Ngqika, Nonesi, Sandile, Sir Harry Smith, Nongqawuse and Sir George Grey. David Yali-Manisi ardently anticipated the restoration of black control under those imprisoned on Robben Island, fighters for liberty quite as heroic as the crane-feathered warriors of the nineteenth century. His poetry, both written and performed, plumbed the past to inspire resistance to present injustices.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Iimbali zamanyange, isbn: 9781847014443

North, South, East and West in Twelfth-Century Thought

$130.00

Considers how twelfth-century authors used the four cardinal points as a conceptual system to make sense of and construct their world.

From the Great White North to the West End or the Global South, we frequently carve up our world according to the cardinal points. These divisions are rarely mere geographical conveniences; they bring with them a host of ideas about regions and their inhabitants.

This book examines how this phenomenon operated in the Middle Ages, drawing on sources from the Ordinary Gloss on the Bible to the geographies of Hugh of Saint Victor and Honorius Augustodunensis. It begins by tracing the consolidation of the cardinal points as a foundational spatial vocabulary in the Middle Ages and looks athow these terms accumulated new meaning and significance in biblical exegesis, geography and history writing over the twelfth century. It pays particular attention to the ways in which authors actively engaged with and manipulated this tradition, showing how authors like Sigebert of Gembloux, Romuald of Salerno and Orderic Vitalis made use of these ideas to underscore the broader narrative agendas of their universal histories. Subsequent chapters focus on the role of space in narratives of identity formation, using as case studies histories of the First Crusade, the duchy of Normandy and the abbey of Cluny.

Cover image for North, South, East and West in Twelfth-Century Thought, isbn: 9781837650637

Musical Amateurs as Artistic Citizens in Schubert’s Vienna

$120.00

Details the wide, integral and influential role played by 'amateur' participants in early nineteenth-century Vienna's musical life.

During Franz Schubert's lifetime in early nineteenth-century Vienna, amateurs and dilettantes were a vital part of the music scene, so much so that Eduard Hanslick considered it the high point of musical dilettantism in Vienna. Schubert himself participated extensively in this rich world of domestic music-making. Around 1800 terms such as "amateur" and "dilettante" had broader and more positive connotations than today, and "amateurs" could indeed often portray a high skill level. The book considers the amateurs' and dilettantes' identities and motivations for making music, and their various roles in the musical life of early nineteenth-century Vienna. It dives deeply into contexts, performance practices and spaces, as well as instruments that have so far been little explored. Musical Amateurs in Schubert's Vienna uncovers new key agents in early nineteenth-century Viennese musical life who have so far remained invisible.

Cover image for Musical Amateurs as Artistic Citizens in Schubert’s Vienna, isbn: 9781837652440

Beowulf and Grettis saga

$130.00

Investigates the relationship between two texts separated by hundreds of years and nearly two thousand miles.

In the saga, Grettir fights a giant who wields a hepti-sax; in the poem, Beowulf uses a hæft-mēce on Grendel's mother. These two unique words for "hafted blade" appear to be related. Can the same be said for the works that surround them? This book says yes, arguing not that the weapons have a common origin, nor that their likeness is a coincidence, but that Grettis saga has borrowed from Beowulf.

The case for a textual loan begins in the context of England's connection with Denmark in the reign of Cnut the Great (1016-35). This book argues that Cnut took an interest in Scyld and the Scyldings of Beowulf and that his skalds transformed these names into "Skjǫldr" and the "Skjǫldungar". The Beowulf manuscript is placed in Lichfield in 1017, with the suggestion that it was commissioned by Eadric Streona as a gift for Earl Thorkell of Skåne. It is proposed that in 1159 a copy of Beowulf was brought from Lincoln to Iceland to serve the interests of a family that claimed descent from Skjǫldr, that in the 1180s the poem influenced Skjǫldunga saga, and that in the 1190s Beowulf went north to Þingeyrar abbey, where Oddr the Monk, author of Grettis saga, used it to enhance Grettir's fights with Glámr and the trolls of Bárðardalr. This is a daring book that sheds new light on the circulation of Beowulf, on questions of dating and patronage, and on the authorship of Grettis saga.

Cover image for <i>Beowulf</i> and <i>Grettis saga</i>, isbn: 9781843847632

British Choral Singing

$170.00

Charts choral traditions in Britain, evolution, sociological composition, engagement with and place within cathedrals and secular spaces.

Choirs are living organisms and ever changing. This book tells the story of British choral singing (not choral music) and deals with both sacred and secular choirs and institutions from the medieval era through to the Covid pandemic and its aftermath. A series of different choral traditions has emerged over the centuries. The oldest is that of the all-male cathedral choir, while the secular choral society evolved from the eighteenth century onwards. Although there are many histories of individual cathedrals and choral societies, this is the first general history of British choral traditions. While English matters predominate, those of Scotland, Wales and Ireland are also considered. Even though British choral traditions have penetrated many parts of the world, there has also been much cross-fertilization of late with the rich choral cultures of other nations in Europe and beyond. Choral singing inevitably involved matters of social class, and a much more nuanced story is told here than the current view of choirs as being a largely middle-class phenomenon might suggest.

Scholarly in method while highly readable, the book offers invaluable background to choral practitioners. When choral activity is reviving healthily after the Covid 19 pandemic, such a volume appears timely, reminding the reader of the essentially communal and social nature of the choral experience.

Cover image for British Choral Singing, isbn: 9781837652945

Motherhood and its Spaces in Medieval Romance

$120.00

Discusses the spaces occupied and used by mothers in French and English medieval romance of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.

Mothers have tended to be overlooked in romance scholarship, in favour of fantastical adventures, courtly love stories, and connections with historical events. Yet they are often central to the action in these narratives, whether in a birthing chamber, a royal court, a forest or the Otherworld.
This book focuses on the spaces occupied and utilised by mothers in French and English medieval romance of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Analysing mothers' use of social space shows how these texts intervene in contemporary social, cultural, legal, and medical debates on motherhood and its place in elite society and families. In examining the presence and contributions of maternal figures in such narratives as the Roman de Melusine, Emaré, Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval and Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale, it demonstrates how romance distorts and subverts gendered roles in order to reveal the complexities of medieval selfhood and social interaction. Recognising the importance of these figures not only sheds a new light on how we may read these romances but on the role of elite mothers in society more generally, presenting a model in which motherhood is central to the construction of not just lineage, but of alliances, communities, cities and nations.

Cover image for Motherhood and its Spaces in Medieval Romance, isbn: 9781843847649

Gabriel Fauré: Influences and Influence

$190.00

Presents Fauré not as a solitary figure, but part of a vibrant continuum of nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers and the first member of a French musical 'trinity', with Debussy and Ravel.

A composition professor at the Paris Conservatoire since 1896, and its director from 1906 to 1920, Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was said to have created no school as Cesar Franck had before him, encouraging originality among his students rather than emulation. This collection portrays Fauré, influenced by Wolfgang Mozart, Fryderyk Chopin, and Felix Mendelssohn, plus the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, as an early Modernist who provided a reference point for Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Francis Poulenc. Casting a wide net, it explores Fauré's influence on his younger contemporaries Lili Boulanger and Frederick Delius, as well as on the later twentieth-century American composers Aaron Copland, Walter Arlen, Robert Helps, and Ned Rorem. Fauré no longer appears as a solitary figure, but part of a vibrant continuum of nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers, and the first member of a French musical 'trinity' that included Debussy and Ravel.

Cover image for Gabriel Fauré: Influences and Influence, isbn: 9781837651658

Science and the Romantic Vision in Early Nineteenth-Century Opera

$120.00

An interdisciplinary study of how early nineteenth-century science and opera articulated a transnational romantic vision of harmony between self and nature, and how this ideal gave way to mid-century realism and social conflict.

The end of the Napoleonic era ushered in a transnational outlook for Europe, where the traditional boundaries that separated people, ideas and things were blurred in favour of a unified and cosmopolitan vision for society. The result of this shift created a 'romantic vision', a new way to perceive the imagined potential of the self in correspondence with the infinite reality of the natural world. Early nineteenth-century scientists such as Alexander von Humboldt (earth sciences), Franz Anton Mesmer (mesmerism), Johann Wilhelm Ritter (galvanism) and Frédéric Dubois d'Amiens (hysteria) are explored in this context to see how the romantic vision was reflected in their work and received by society. Seeing opera as a confluence of all the arts and encompassing a similar romantic vision, this book examines three paradigmatic operas that contend with the forces of nature: Weber's Der Freischütz (1821), Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). In these three highly successful works from separate operatic traditions, the unseen, inner world of nature reveals a wholeness of the self with the divine, showcasing a healthy optimism for society.
The book concludes by discussing Gounod's Faust (1859), a work that highlights the struggle of an early-16th-century scientist and places it against the context of the social revolutions of 1848 and the seminal publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859. In this post-1850 era, the potential of the unseen reality of nature is cast aside and replaced with the certainty of the everyday-the violence of man against man, the struggle for power and the destruction of nature itself.

Cover image for Science and the Romantic Vision in Early Nineteenth-Century Opera, isbn: 9781837652334

Isizwe esinembali

$190.00

Edition and translation of all of William Wellington Gqoba's clearly identifiable writings in isiXhosa and English, with a comprehensive introduction

William Wellington Gqoba (1840-88) was prominent among the African intellectuals emerging in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa towards the end of the nineteenth century.

By trade he was a wagonmaker, licensed preacher of the Free Church of Scotland, teacher, historian, poet, folklorist and editor. For much of his brief life he served on mission stations as a catechist, and ended his career as editor of the Lovedale newspaper Isigidimi sama-Xosa, to which he contrived to contribute subversive poetry outspokenly critical of Western education, the European administration of black people and the discrimination suffered by colonised blacks. Gqoba fashioned the figure of the Xhosa man of letters. Unrivalled in his time in the generic range of his writing, he was the author of letters, anecdotes, expositions of proverbs, histories and poetry, including two poems in the form of debates that stood for over fifty years as the longest poems in the Xhosa language.

This book assembles and translates into English all of William Wellington Gqoba's clearly identifiable writings. They offer an insider's perspective on an African nation in transition, adapting uncomfortably to Western mores and morality, seeking to affirm its identity by drawing on its past, standing on the brink of mobilisation to resist white control and to construct its social, political and religious independence of European colonialism.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Cover image for Isizwe esinembali, isbn: 9781847014429

Popularising the Middle Ages in Modern Fantasy

$120.00

Examines the development, nature, and significance of gritty (neo)medievalism in popular culture, from Assassins Creed: Valhalla and Berserk to Robert Eggers' The Northman.

Twenty-first-century popular culture has a fascination for the medieval. Its imagery, tropes and settings have become an integral part of the epic fantasy genre across different media, demonstrated by and following the success of such globally acclaimed television shows as Game of Thrones and Vikings. This volume studies this phenomenon, aiming to establish a broader understanding of why the Middle Ages have become so popular in an era of transmedia productions; it argues that concepts of accuracy and "authenticity" are key to this popularity, alongside engagement with contemporary debates about identity, race and gender, and agile responses to fan-community and media critiques.
The essays address a variety of topics, from worldbuilding and narrative structures to female agency and the reception of Vikings, across a wide range of media, including film, television, literature, video games and manga. It also explores how contemporary fantasy engages with both academic knowledge and developments in imagination more widely, responding to ever-changing ideas about how an "authentic" Middle Ages may be created.