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

Whites and Democracy in South Africa

$26.99

Key book in Whiteness Studies that engages with the different ways in which the last white minority in Africa to give way to majority rule has adjusted to the arrival of democracy and the different modes of transition from "settlers" to "citizens".

How have whites adjusted to, contributed to and detracted from democracy in South Africa since 1994? Engaging with the literature on 'whiteness' and the current trope that the democratic settlement has failed, this book provides a study of how whites in the last bastion of 'white minority rule' in Africa have adapted to the sweeping political changes they have encountered. It examines the historical context of white supremacy and minority rule, in the past, and the white withdrawal from elsewhere on the African continent. Drawing on focus groups held across the country, Southall explores the difficult issue of 'memory', how whites seek to grapple with the history of apartheid, and how this shapes their reactions to political equality. He argues that whites cannot be regarded as a homogeneous political grouping concluding that while the overwhelming majority of white South Africans feared the coming of democracy during the years of late apartheid, they recognised its inevitability. Many of their fears were, in effect, to be recognised by the Constitution, which embedded individual rights, including those to property and private schooling, alongside the important principle of proportionality of political representation. While a small minority of whites chose to emigrate, the large majority had little choice but to adjust to the democratic settlement which, on the whole, they have done - and in different ways. It was only a small right wing which sought to actively resist; others have sought to withdraw from democracy into social enclaves; but others have embraced democracy actively, either enthusiastically welcoming its freedoms or engaging with its realities in defence of 'minority rights'. Whites may have been reluctant to accept democracy, but democrats - of a sort - they have become, and notwithstanding a significant racialisation of politics in post-apartheid South Africa, they remain an important segment of the "rainbow", although dangers lurk in the future unless present inequalities of both race and class are challenged head on.

African Sun Media: South Africa

Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture

$29.99

Winner of the Best First Monograph from the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England (ISSEME) 2021.

An examination of the Old English medical collections, arguing that these texts are products of a learned intellectual culture.

Four complete medical collections survive from Anglo-Saxon England. These were first edited by Oswald Cockayne in the nineteenth century and came to be known by the names Bald's Leechbook, Leechbook III, the Lacnunga, and the Old English Pharmacopeia. Together these works represent the earliest complete collections of medical material in a western vernacular language.
This book examines these texts as products of a learned literary culture. While earlier scholarship tended to emphasise the relationship of these works to folk belief or popular culture, this study suggests that all four extant collections were probably produced in major ecclesiastical centres. It examines the collections individually, emphasising their differences of content and purpose, while arguing that each consistently displays connections with an elite intellectual culture. The final chapter considers the fundamentally positive depiction of doctors and medicine found within literary and ecclesiastical works from the period and suggests that the high esteem for medicine in literate circles may have favoured the study and translation of medical texts.

Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture

Lancelot-Grail: 9. The Post-Vulgate Cycle. The Quest for the Holy Grail and The Death of Arthur

$36.95

The revised version of The Quest of the Holy Grail gives a greater role to Perceval, and introduces a number of knights not found in the Vulgate; but the largest change is that much of the story of Tristan (and of his rivalPalamedes) is incorporated into the story. The achievement of the Grail quest centres on Galahad's healing of Pellehan, which has to be accomplished before the knights can reach the Grail itself. The Death of Arthur is little more than a relatively brief postscript, bringing the story of the adventures of the kingdom of Logres to an end; Lancelot and Guenevere are revealed as lovers, and Arthur fights both Lancelot and then the Romans. Despite thisvictory, he is betrayed and killed by Mordred, as has been foreshadowed from the outset of the new material. The romance ends with king Mark of Cornwall's death when he attempts to kill Lancelot and Bors at the hermitage to whichthey have retreated. For a full description of the Post-Vulgate Cycle see the blurb for the complete set.

Lancelot-Grail: 9. The Post-Vulgate Cycle. The Quest for the Holy Grail and The Death of Arthur

A Companion to Latin American Literature

$36.95

The evolution of Latin American literature.

A Companion to Latin American Literature offers a lively and informative introduction to the most significant literary works produced in Latin America from the fifteenth century until the present day. It shows how the press, and its product the printed word, functioned as the common denominator binding together, in different ways over time, the complex and variable relationship between the writer, the reader and the state. The meandering story of the evolution of Latin American literature - from the letters of discovery written by Christopher Columbus and Vaz de Caminha, via the Republican era at the end of the nineteenth century when writers in Rio de Janeiro as much as inBuenos Aires were beginning to live off their pens as journalists and serial novelists, until the 1960s when writers of the quality of Clarice Lispector in Brazil and García Márquez in Colombia suddenly burst onto the world stage- is traced chronologically in six chapters which introduce the main writers in the main genres of poetry, prose, the novel, drama, and the essay. A final chapter evaluates the post-boom novel, testimonio, Latino and Brazuca literature, gay, Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Brazilian literature, along with the Novel of the New Millennium. This study also offers suggestions for further reading.

STEPHEN M. HART is Professor of Hispanic Studies, UniversityCollege London, and Profesor Honorario, Universidad de San Marcos, Lima

The Catalan Expedition to the East

$22.95

Ramon Muntaner's account of the bloody adventures of the Almogaver army under Roger of Flor in the eastern Mediterranean in the early fourteenth century, one of the most spellbinding narratives of medieval European literature.

Before its definitive fall into Turkish hands, the Byzantine Empire was the target of adventurers of many nations. Outstanding among these groups was the Almogaver army led by Roger of Flor, composed of mercenaries hardened in thewar between the Catalan and Angevin dynasties for domination of Sicily. The Catalan presence in Constantinople aroused suspicion among the Greek nobility who assassinated Roger of Flor and tried to exterminate his men. The devastating reaction of those who escaped the slaughter led to Catalan control of broad swathes of the Empire, including Athens. Ramon Muntaner, one of the ringleaders of the expedition, recounted the adventures of the Almogaver army inthe eastern Mediterranean in the fascinating section of his Chronicle translated here. The preface is by N. D. Hillgarth.

Dr. Robert D. Hughes is a translator and researcher with particular expertise in the fields of fine art, the history of ideas and Catalan culture.

Published in association with Editorial Barcino

'Charms', Liturgies, and Secret Rites in Early Medieval England

$36.95

A re-evaluation of the mysterious "charms" found in Anglo-Saxon literature, arguing for their place in mainstream Christian rites.

Since its inception in the nineteenth century, the genre of Anglo-Saxon charms has drawn the attention of many scholars and appealed to enthusiasts of magic, paganism, and popular religion. Their Christian nature has been widely acknowledged in recent years, but their position within mainstream liturgical traditions has not yet been fully recognised. In this book, Ciaran Arthur undertakes a wide-ranging investigation of the genre to better understand how early English ecclesiastics perceived these rituals and why they included them in manuscripts were written in high-status minsters. Evidence from the entire corpus of Old English, various surviving manuscript sources, and rich Christian theological traditions suggests that contemporary scribes and compilers did not perceive "charms" as anything other than Christian rituals that belonged to diverse, mainstream liturgical practices. The book thus challenges the notion that there was any such thing as an Anglo-Saxon "charm", and offers alternative interpretations of these texts as creative para-liturgical rituals or liturgical rites, which testify to the diversity of early medieval English Christianity. When considered in their contemporary ecclesiastical and philosophical contexts, even the most enigmatic rituals, previously dismissed as mere "gibberish", begin to emerge as secret, deliberately obscured texts with hidden spiritual meaning.

'Charms', Liturgies, and Secret Rites in Early Medieval England

Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England

$36.95

A fresh approach to the implications of obtaining, preparing, and consuming food, concentrating on the little-investigated routines of everyday life.

Food in the Middle Ages usually evokes images of feasting, speeches, and special occasions, even though most evidence of food culture consists of fragments of ordinary things such as knives, cooking pots, and grinding stones, which are rarely mentioned by contemporary writers. This book puts daily life and its objects at the centre of the food world. It brings together archaeological and textual evidence to show how words and implements associated with food contributed to social identity at all levels of Anglo-Saxon society. It also looks at the networks which connected fields to kitchens and linked rural centres to trading sites. Fasting, redesigned field systems, and the place offish in the diet are examined in a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary inquiry into the power of food to reveal social complexity.

Allen J. Frantzen is Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago.

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The Reflector

$29.95

Incorporates etymology, history, art, drawing, and reflective writing to support medical students in the integration of the science and humanity of anatomy.

A comprehensive and holistic understanding of human anatomy is foundational to the care of patients. The Reflector is an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to the learning of human anatomy; it incorporates etymology, history, art, drawing, and reflective writing to integrate the learning of anatomical structures with the nonanatomical curriculum of the anatomy lab, thus establishing the foundation for a biopsychosocial approach to medicine. To develop visual skills, this work features drawings that illustrate the original inspirations for anatomical terminology while also providing the space to artistically reimagine these structures. Together, these activities enhance the comprehension and retention of anatomical information for application in medical sciences. The Reflector employs thought-provoking questions that emphasize humanity in anatomy, in order to prompt consideration of the anatomical structures beyond basic science. Reflecting on the experiences of anatomical dissections, specifically in relation to development of habits of mind necessary for patient- and family-centered care, continually connects students to the purpose of their studies - to become a knowledgeable, compassionate, self-aware, reflective, and skilled member of a healing profession.
Edited by a medical student with a Master's of Science degree in Medical Humanities; an anatomical science faculty member dedicated to the holistically educated medical provider; an expert in visual learning and self-reflection; and a bioethicist, The Reflector is a valuable resource for all who want to understand the human in human anatomy.

The Lobotomy Letters

$29.99

Drawing from original correspondence penned by lobotomy patients and their families as well as from the professional papers of lobotomy pioneer and neurologist Walter Freeman, The Lobotomy Letters gives an account of the widespread acceptance of this controversial procedure.

The rise and widespread acceptance of psychosurgery constitutes one of the most troubling chapters in the history of modern medicine. By the late 1950s, tens of thousands of Americans had been lobotomized as treatment for a host of psychiatric disorders. Though the procedure would later be decried as devastating and grossly unscientific, many patients, families, and physicians reported veritable improvement from the surgery; some patients were even considered cured.
The Lobotomy Letters gives an account of why this controversial procedure was sanctioned by psychiatrists and doctors of modern medicine. Drawing from original correspondence penned by lobotomy patients andtheir families as well as from the professional papers of lobotomy pioneer and neurologist Walter Freeman, the volume reconstructs how physicians, patients, and their families viewed lobotomy and analyzes the reasons for its overwhelming use.

Mical Raz, MD/PhD, is a physician and historian of medicine.

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.

Myths and Legends of the British Isles

$39.95

Tales from the dawn of Christianity to the age of the Plantagenets reveal a mythology in its time as potent as that of the classical world.

The British Isles have a long tradition of tales of gods, heroes and marvels, hinting at a mythology once as relevant to the races which settled the islands as the Greek and Roman gods were to the classical world. The tales drawntogether in this book, from a wide range of medieval sources, span the centuries from the dawn of Christianity to the age of the Plantagenets. The Norse gods which peopled the Anglo-Saxon past survive in Beowulf; Cuchulainn, Taliesin and the magician Merlin take shape from Celtic mythology; and saints include Helena who brought a piece of the True Cross to Britain, and Joseph of Arimathea whose staff grew into the Glastonbury thorn. Tales of the British Arthur are followed by legends of later heroes, including Harold, Hereward and Godiva. These figures and many others were part of a familiar national mythology on which Shakespeare drew for Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet, creating the famous versions that are known today. Here the original stories are presented.

RICHARD BARBER's other books include and The Knight and Chivalry.

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.

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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

Knowledge of the Stasi in the East German Literary Sphere

$29.99

The first book to investigate what writers, publishers, and editors knew about the Stasi and how, rethinking the relationship between knowledge, secrecy, intuition, trust, and agency under an authoritarian regime.

While much scholarship has explored what the East German Ministry for State Security - the Stasi - knew about writers, publishers, editors, and others involved in the GDR's literary sphere, none has asked what these groups knew about the Stasi, how they acquired that knowledge, and how it circulated. The present book flips the approach of existing scholarship to ask those questions, thus offering an innovative approach to studying the production and circulation of literature in East Germany. It uncovers the myriad ways in which those who wrote, published, or supported literary production that was critical of the state negotiated, circumvented, and actively confronted the threat posed by surveillance and control. The study draws on original interviews, Stasi files, and writings by Uwe Kolbe, Ekkehard Maaß, Christa Moog, Gabriele Stötzer, Bernd Wagner, and Bettina Wegner, as well as works by Stefan Heym, Ralf-Günter Krolkiewicz, Günter Kunert, and Christa Wolf. The book shows that the Stasi was a kind of "public secret"-a known unknown that was positioned between revelation and concealment. It engages with theoretical frameworks drawn from anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, surveillance studies and cultural studies to reconceptualize the relationship between knowledge, secrecy, intuition, trust, and agency in an authoritarian context.

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

SARA JONES is Professor of Languages, Cultures, and Societies at the University of Birmingham, UK.
TARA TALWAR WINDSOR is Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Leeds, UK.
BETIEL WASIHUN is Lecturer in Cultural and Literary Theory at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.

Cover image for Knowledge of the Stasi in the East German Literary Sphere, isbn: 9781640141957

A History of India [3 Volume Set]

$410.00

Comprehensive and in-depth exploration of one of the oldest civilisations in the world, revealing the dynamic changes of its society, the links to the rest of the world and the underlying forces that led to India's significant role on today's global stage.

This three-volume history of India explores the dynamics at play in the subcontinent from the first human settlements to the 2014 general election.

The first volume examines the history of India from the first human settlements in the subcontinent up to the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1717. The political, military, economic and social developments are analysed against the backdrop represented by the rise, decline, fall and renaissance of flourishing urban civilizations. The book also demonstrates that, despite exceptions, an essentially harmonious coexistence prevailed between Hinduism and Islam, which often resulted in cooperation.

The second volume covers the collapse of the Mughal Empire to the end of colonialism in 1947. It analyses the features of the most important pre-colonial Indian states and the role played by British colonialism. Finally, the volume closely examines the rise and evolution of Indian nationalism, the reasons that forced the British to end their rule, and the causes of partition.

The third volume examines the political, economic and social evolution of India from independence to the 2014 general election. It argues that the period is subdivided into two main phases. The main features of the first phase were a secular democracy, a dominant-party system, and an economy where the state played a crucially important economic role. The second Neoliberal Age, was characterized by the eclipse of the dominant party system and the implementation of neoliberal economic policies, which sped up development but widened social and economic disparities, and also saw the rise of Hindutva.

Cover image for A History of India [3 Volume Set], isbn: 9781837651467

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Elizabeth Sweeting: The Best and Happiest Days

$49.95

An essential volume for anyone interested in Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and the history of the Aldeburgh Festival.

Britten invited Elizabeth Sweeting (1914-1999) to be the General Manager of the Aldeburgh Festival after observing her organisational skills for the English Opera Group. She worked closely with Britten and Peter Pears, administering all aspects of the first eight Aldeburgh Festivals - from booking artists to tearing ticket stubs - beginning with the inaugural festival in 1948.

She was to become one of the most significant facilitators in the performing arts in the post-war era, and a pioneering figure in the new profession of arts administrator. Her tenure as Manager of the Oxford Playhouse in the 1960s and 1970s was followed by five years as Director of the Arts Council of South Australia. Her inspirational guide, Theatre Administration (1969), was a vital handbook for those following her.

Sweeting's honest and lively memoir of her Aldeburgh years, written in the mid-1980s and here published complete for the first time, offers an insider's account of what those early festivals were like - charting both their highs and their lows. Also included is most of the extant correspondence between Sweeting and Britten and Pears. Beginning in 1948, it extends from her time working at Aldeburgh through to her Oxford years and her period in Australia.

The editors provide a contextualising introduction and detailed annotations throughout.

Elizabeth Sweeting: The Best and Happiest Days is an essential volume for anyone interested in Britten, Pears and the Aldeburgh Festival.

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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.

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Rewriting the First Crusade

$29.99

An exploration of the letters from the First Crusade, yielding evidence for a number of reinterpretations of the movement.

The letters stemming from the First Crusade are premier sources for understanding the launch, campaign, and aftermath of the expedition. Between 1095 and 1100, epistles sustained social relationships across the Mediterranean and within Europe, as a mixture of historical writing, literary invention, news, and theological interpretation. They served ecclesiastical administration, projected authority, and formed focal points for spiritual commemoration and para-liturgical campaigns.

This volume, grounded on extensive research into the original manuscripts, and presenting numerous new manuscript witnesses, argues that some of the letters are post hoc "inventions", composed by generations of scribe-readers who visited crusading sites from the twelfth century on, adding new layers of meaning in the form of interpolations and post-scripts. Drawing upon this new understanding, and blurring the distinction of epistolary "reality", it rewrites central aspects of the history of the First Crusade, considering the documents in a new way: as markers of enthusiasm and support for the crusade movement among monastic clergy, who copied and consumed them as a form of scribal crusading. Whether authentic letters or literary "confections", they functioned as communal sites for the celebration, commemoration and memorialisation of the expedition.

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Christ the Physician in Late-Medieval Religious Controversy

$36.95

A consideration of the allegory of Christ the Divine Physician in medical and religious writings.

Discourses of physical and spiritual health were intricately entwined in the Middle Ages, shaping intellectual concepts as well as actual treatment. The allegory of Christ as Divine Physician is an example of this intersection: it appears frequently in both medical and religious writings as a powerful figure of healing and salvation, and was invoked by dissidents and reformists in religious controversies.

Drawing on previously unexplored manuscript material, this book examines the use of the Christus Medicus tradition during a period of religious turbulence. Via an interdisciplinary analysis of literature, sermons, and medical texts, it shows that Wycliffites in England and Hussites in Bohemia used concepts developed in hospital settings to press for increased lay access to Scripture and the sacraments against the strictures of the Church hierarchy. Tracing a story of reform and controversy from localised institutional contexts to two of the most important pan-European councils of the fifteenth century, Constance and Basel, it argues that at a point when the body of the Church was strained by multiple popes, heretics and schismatics, the allegory came into increasing use to restore health and order.

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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.

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The British Country House Revival

$29.99

British country houses have experienced a renaissance since the early 1970s. A new accord is needed today, recognising the increasingly contested contribution of country houses to British cultural life.

Fifty years ago, the future for country houses in Britain looked bleak. The Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition The Destruction of the Country House, which opened in October 1974, charted the loss of over a thousand country houses in the preceding century. The makers of the exhibition warned that history could be "about to repeat itself" because of the threats besetting mansion properties, principally from higher taxation. Houses faced the prospect of having to be stripped of their collections and sold for use as offices, hotels, or hospitals, with their parks and gardens turned into golf clubs. Government might afford to save just a handful of the most significant of these places, working in tandem with charities such as the National Trust. The rest would be consigned to history.

This book traces the history of country houses in Britain, from the Destruction exhibition to the present day. The wave of country house losses anticipated in 1974 never actually happened. Instead, over the next five decades Britain's country houses experienced a renaissance. Fiscal rules changed in the mid-1970s to make it easier for owners to hold on to their assets. Economic improvements in the 1980s and 1990s allowed many houses and estates to develop profitable commercial businesses. All of this was achieved only after dedicated campaigning from heritage organisations in support of the country house cause. The book argues that a new accord is needed today, to recognise and value the ongoing, if increasingly contested, contribution of country houses to British life and culture in the twenty-first century.

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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?

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The Crisis of Democratization in the Greater Horn of Africa

$29.00

Analyses the structural and institutional obstacles to democratization in transitional societies - fractured societies, fragmented economies and institutions of governance, weak or deformed state structures - and how to overcome these.

In the early 1990s, a wave of democratization swept through many African countries, but its prevailing election-centred liberal approach failed to result in sustainable democracies. Why should this be and what can be done about it? This multi-disciplinary work on the Greater Horn investigates the impact on the efforts to bring greater democratization of the characteristically complex socio-economic state structures of the countries of the Greater Horn of Africa and, importantly, suggests an alternative, more effective, approach.
Detailed studies of Ethiopia, Somaliland, Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda reveal the difficulties posed by institutional structures that are often weak and lack accountability; fragmented economies - which range from modern capitalist to subsistence farming and pastoral systems; and governance marked by differing conceptions of property rights and conflict adjudication practices and varied resource allocation systems. Chronic violent ethnic-based civil wars and social conflicts and deep-rooted ethnic divisions only exacerbate the states' ability to foster democratic governance, or even to manage diversity properly. The contributors examine why the countries of the Horn have been unable to overcome these obstacles to democratization and explore how and why an alternative approach is more likely tobe compatible with the socioeconomic realities and cultural values in transitional societies.

Kidane Mengisteab is Professor of African Studies and Political Science at Pennsylvania State University. He is co-editor ofRegional Integration, Identity and Citizenship in the Greater Horn of Africa (James Currey, 2012) and, most recently, Traditional Institutions in Contemporary African Governance (2017).

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ALT 36: Queer Theory in Film & Fiction

$36.95

ALT 36 turns a "queer eye" on Africa, offering provocative (re-)readings of texts to position formerly erased sexualities and contemporary sexual expression among Africans on the continent, and abroad.

Debates on the future of the African continent and the role of gender identities in these visions are increasingly present in literary criticism forums as African writers become bolder in exploring the challenges they face and celebrating gender diversity in the writing of short stories, novels, poetry, plays and films. Controversies over the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) communities in Africa, as elsewhere, continue inthe context of criminalization and/or intimidation of these groups. Residual colonial moralizing and contemporary western identity norms and politics vie with longstanding polyvalent indigenous sexual expression. In addition to traditional media, the new social media have gained importance, both as sources of information exchange and as sites of virtual construction of gender identities. As with many such contentious issues, the variety of responses to the"state of the question" is strikingly visible across the continent. In this issue of ALT, guest editor John Hawley has sampled the ongoing conversations, in both African writing and in the analysis of contemporary African cinema,to show how queer studies can break with old concepts and theories and point the way to new gender perspectives on literary and cinematic output.

This volume also includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles anda Literary Supplement.

Guest Editor: John C. Hawley is Professor in the Department of English, Santa Clara University
Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.
Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma

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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.

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Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy

$29.99

The medieval in the modern world is here explored in a variety of media, from film and book to gaming.

Medievalism - the ways in which post-medieval societies perceive, interpret, reimagine, or appropriate the Middle Ages - permeates popular culture. From Disney princesses to Game of Thrones, medieval fairs to World of Warcraft, contemporary culture keeps finding new ways to reinvent and repackage the period. Medievalism itself, then, continues to evolve while it is also subject to technological advances, prominent invocations in political discourse,and the changing priorities of the academy. This has led some scholars to adopt the term "neomedievalism", a concept originating in part from the work of the late Umberto Eco, which calls for new avenues of inquiry into the wayswe think about the medieval.
This book examines recent evolutions of (neo)medievalism across multiple media, from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to the film Beowulf and medieval gaming. These evolutions can take the form of what one might consider to be pop culture objects of critique (art, commodity, amusement park, video game) or academic tools of critique (monographs, articles, lectures, university seminars). It is by reconciling theseseemingly disparate forms that we can better understand the continual, interconnected, and often politicized reinvention of the Middle Ages in both popular and academic culture.

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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.

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The Importance of Elgar

$36.95

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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FGM/C in Africa and the Diaspora

$130.00

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.

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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.

Cover image for Gender, Science and Sociability in the Diary of Jane Ewbank of York (1778-1824), isbn: 9781837652365

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.

Cover image for British Merchant Seafarer Training and Education, isbn: 9781837651542

Janácek’s Sinfonietta

$29.99

A definitive study of Janáček's Sinfonietta, tracing its creation, reception, and rise to international prominence.

This book provides a musical 'biography' of Leoš Janáček's (1854-1928) most famous orchestral piece - his Sinfonietta - by analysing its sources, composition, reception history, recordings and musical component parts. The most up-to-date research on the genesis and performance history of the work, it considers in detail Janáček's orchestral writing, the inspiration and genesis of the Sinfonietta, a documentation of all the surviving sources for the work, the work's performance history during Janáček's lifetime and following his death until the end of the Second World War, including press reviews and relevant correspondence.

The book also examines the growth in the worldwide popularity of the Sinfonietta. This evolved from cautious and hostile critical responses to the premiere recording in 1946 to its gradual acceptance as one of the key works of the 1920s, largely thanks to the advocacy of conductors whose work is considered in detail, alongside other significant recordings. Questions of performance, rehearsal, interpretation and the musical text are considered in a wide-ranging interview with the conductor Jakub Hrůša, and a concluding chapter provides a detailed commentary on the music itself. The book includes a valuable appendix describing the annotated scores used by conductors such as Otto Klemperer, František Neumann and Henry Wood, as well as a comprehensive discography.

Cover image for Janácek’s <I>Sinfonietta</I>, isbn: 9781837654413

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

Medieval Arms and Armour: A Sourcebook. Volume III: 1450-1500

$41.95

Authoritative reference guide, using the documents in which arms and armour first appeared to explain and define them.

Medieval arms and armour are intrinsically fascinating. From the smoke and noise of the armourer's forge to the bloody violence of the battlefield or the silken panoply of the tournament, weapons and armour - and those who made and bore them - are woven into the fabric of medieval society. This sourcebook will aid anyone who seeks to develop a deeper understanding by introducing and presenting the primary sources in which these artefacts are first mentioned. Over seventy original documents are transcribed and translated, including wills, inventories, letters and chronicle accounts, from a period which saw rapid advances in military technology. The book also includes an extensive glossary, and is lavishly illustrated with images of both extant armour and weapons from the period, and contemporary artistic depictions from illuminated manuscripts and other sources. This book will therefore be of interest to a wide audience, from the living history practitioner, crafter, and martial artist, to students of literature, military history, art, and material culture.

Cover image for Medieval Arms and Armour: A Sourcebook. Volume III: 1450-1500, isbn: 9781837653898

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 1987, is notable for its wayward style and many inaccuracies. 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. Crucially, as this edition illuminates, 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. It will be widely welcomed by a substantial Wagner community of readers.

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

The Tithe War in England and Wales, 1881-1936

$39.95

Brings to life a fascinating page of history in a scholarly but highly readable account of the "tithe war".

Co-WINNER: 2025 Thirsk Prize (British Agricultural History Society)

During the 1930s, farming communities waged a campaign of "passive resistance" against Tithe Rentcharge, the modern version of medieval tithe. Led by the National Tithepayers' Association, farmers refused to pay the charge, disrupted auctions of seized stock and joined demonstrations to prevent action by bailiffs. The National Government condemned their "unconstitutional action", ruled out changes in the law and mobilised police to support the titheowners. Meanwhile, the Church of England and lay titheowners - including Oxford and Cambridge colleges, public schools and major landowners - sought to vindicate their right to tithe; in a particularly shameful episode, the Church established a secret company to buy taken produce and remove it from farms.

This "tithe war" was fought outside farms, in the courts, in the press and in the wider arena of public opinion. It posed problems for the Church, legal system, and every political party; split the National Farmers' Union; and provided opportunities for the British Union of Fascists and other sections of the extreme right to cause disturbance.

Drawing on extensive archival research, accounts in local newspapers, and private papers, John Bulaitis traces the evolution of what has been described as this "curious rural revolt", from the late nineteenth century to its climax in 1936, when the Tithe Act brought an end to this form of tax.

Cover image for The Tithe War in England and Wales, 1881-1936, isbn: 9781837653584

Textiles of the Viking North Atlantic

$36.95

An examination of the uses, meanings, and social impact of Viking Age textiles.

This volume offers the first full study of archaeological fabrics and their decoration found in the North Atlantic region and dating broadly from the Viking or Norse period. With contributions from both academic scholars and practitioners, it shows how approaching early medieval textiles from archaeological, historical and literary contexts, and through the processes of learning and employing the traditional skills of making them, brings about a more nuanced understanding of early medieval cloths: their creation, use and meanings within their respective societies.

The book is divided into two parts. The first, "Textiles and their Interpretation", takes the reader on a journey from how wool was processed in the Viking Age, and the conservator's role in preserving and interpreting archaeological textiles, to different types of analyses that researchers use to understand and explain textiles from across the wide area of the Viking-influenced North Atlantic region. The second, "Understanding through Replicating", investigates the results of practical experiments in the reconstruction of surviving medieval fabrics and the resulting empirical conclusions that can be made about their manufacture and wider cultural implications.

Cover image for Textiles of the Viking North Atlantic, isbn: 9781837653850

Medieval Arms and Armour: A Sourcebook. Volume II: 1400–1450

$41.95

Authoritative reference guide, using the documents in which arms and armour first appeared to explain and define them.

Medieval arms and armour are intrinsically fascinating. From the smoke and noise of the armourer's forge to the bloody violence of the battlefield or the silken panoply of the tournament, weapons and armour - and those who made and bore them - are woven into the fabric of medieval society. This sourcebook will aid anyone who seeks to develop a deeper understanding by introducing and presenting the primary sources in which these artefacts are first mentioned. Over a hundred original documents are transcribed and translated, including wills and inventories, craft statutes, chronicle accounts, and challenges to single combat. The book also includes an extensive glossary, lavishly illustrated with forty-six images of extant armour and weapons from the period, and contemporary artistic depictions from illuminated manuscripts and other sources. This book will therefore be of interest to a wide audience, from the living history practitioner, crafter, and martial artist, to students of literature, military history, art, and material culture.

Cover image for Medieval Arms and Armour: A Sourcebook. Volume II: 1400–1450, isbn: 9781837653881

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 Thun-Hohenstein Album

$49.95

The first extensive study of the depiction of the armour in the Thun-Hohenstein Album against the vibrant artistic and cultural contexts that created it.

In late medieval and early modern Europe, armour was more than a defensive technology for war or knightly sport. Its diverse types formed a complex visual language. Luxury armour was fitted precisely to a wearer's body, and its memorable details declared his status. Empty armour could evoke an owner's physical presence, prompting recollection of knightly personae, glittering pageantry, and impressive feats of arms. Its mnemonic power persisted long after the battle had ended, the trumpets had gone silent, and the dust had settled in the tournament arena.

Previously believed to contain preliminary designs sketched by master armourers, the Thun-Hohenstein album is a bound collection of drawings by professional book painters depicting some of the most artistically and technologically innovative armours of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Like a paper version of the princely armories that first formed during the 1500s, the album's images offered rich sites of meaning and memory. Their organization within the codex suggests the images' significance to their compiler. At the same time, the composition and details allow the reader to trace the transmission of recognizable armours, and the memories they embodied, from the anvil to the page.

This book is the first to examine the album, and the armor it depicts, in their vibrant artistic and cultural context. In five thematic chapters, it moves from case studies of these drawings to explore the album's complex intersections with the genres of martial history, material culture, and literature. It also reveals the album's participation in cultures of remembrance that carried mythic, knightly personae constructed around powerful Habsburg princes forward in time from the Middle Ages into the early modern era, from the courts of the Holy Roman Empire to emerging urban audiences.

Cover image for The Thun-Hohenstein Album, isbn: 9781837653843

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.

Cover image for The Importance of Elgar, isbn: 9781837653492

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

Religious Plurality in Africa

$36.95

Grounded in ethnographic and historiographic research and taking a cross-regional approach, this book explores the complex dynamics of similarity and difference, rapprochement and detachment, and divergence and competition between practitioners of Christianity, Islam, and African religious traditions.

Across Africa, Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of African religious traditions live in shared settings, demarcating themselves in opposition to one another and at times engaging in violent conflicts, but also being entangled in complex ways and showing unexpected similarities and mutual cross-overs. However, while encounters and entanglements of African religious traditions with either Islam or Christianity have long been a central research issue, the configuration as a whole has barely been taken into account, even though Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of African religious traditions have long co-existed - and still co-exist - more or less peacefully in many settings in Africa. Building on recent interventions to move beyond the compartmentalization of the study of religion in Africa, this edited volume will spotlight why and how an integrated approach to Islam, Christianity, and African religious traditions is important. Bringing together stimulating case studies from Kenya, Nigeria, Zanzibar, Ghana, and Mozambique that offer new directions for ethnographic and historical research, the volume will not only shed light on an important phenomenon out there in the world - the long-overlooked ways in which Muslims, Christians and practitioners of African religious traditions interact with one another in various majority-minority configurations - but will also engage with a critical rethinking of the study of religion in Africa (and beyond).

Cover image for Religious Plurality in Africa, isbn: 9781847014108

Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2000-2025

$120.00

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

Anglophone African Detective Fiction 1940-2020

$29.99

Providing a survey of Anglophone African detective fiction, from the late 1940s to the present day, this study traces its history both as a literary form and a mode of critical exploration of the fraught sovereignties of the African state and its citizens.

Since the late 1940s, African writers including Cyprian Ekwensi, Arthur Maimane, Adaora Lily Ulasi, Hilary Ng'weno, Unity Dow, Parker Bilal, and Angela Makholwa have published over 200 murder mysteries, police procedurals, spy thrillers, and other fictional narratives of investigation and discovery in English-language newspapers, magazines, and novels. Distributed widely across the continent's diverse cultural and political geographies, these texts share aesthetic characteristics and thematic preoccupations that reflect transnational networks of production, circulation, and influence.
Anglophone African Detective Fiction, 1940-2020 surveys this literary history and examines how African writers have repeatedly harnessed the detective story to interrogate postcolonial realities of selfhood and the state. It argues that African writers have turned the detective story into a highly productive, while at the same time suspense-filled and entertaining, mode of social and political critique, first of colonialism and the independence era and latterly of neoliberal governance. Offering an overview of paradigmatic texts, from Ghana to Kenya and Sudan to South Africa, the book traces the contours of the history of Anglophone African detective fiction that is at once a cultural history of a uniquely African assessment of the ongoing problematics of sovereignty and decolonization.

Cover image for Anglophone African Detective Fiction 1940-2020, isbn: 9781847013958

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

The Telemann Compendium

$36.95

The first guide to research on Telemann in any language.

The 'Telemann Renaissance' is now more than half-century old. The veritable explosion of performances, both live and recorded, of the composer's music in recent decades has won him an ever-increasing following among musicians and concert-goers worldwide. This book presents a much-needed gateway for further study. As with other books in the Composer Compendia series, the book includes a brief biography, dictionary, works-list, and selective bibliography.

Cover image for The Telemann Compendium, isbn: 9781837653218

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

Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Duke of Ireland (1362-1392)

$36.95

The first full-length study of one of the most controversial figures of later fourteenth century England.

Robert de Vere was a close friend of the young King Richard II. He was accused of a wide range of political crimes and private vices by his opponents, the Lords Appellant. Defeated by them at the battle of Radcot Bridge in 1387, he died abroad in exile aged only 30. He was, in the eyes of many contemporaries - most notably the hostile chroniclers Walsingham and Froissart - and modern historians, a typical royal favourite: unmartial, immoral, self-seeking, and promoted and enriched far beyond what he deserved.

But what was a royal favourite, and what were the accusations made against them? This book investigates these questions across late medieval England, and assesses de Vere against contemporary criteria. Based on extensive archival research, this book shows there was more to de Vere than a grasping courtier. He had been Earl of Oxford since the age of nine, heir to a large landed estate, and had twice served in foreign wars. He also made a serious attempt to govern the English lordship in Ireland given to him by Richard. The findings here show him to be a far more rounded and complex figure than previously assumed.

Cover image for Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Duke of Ireland (1362-1392), isbn: 9781837653782

The Janácek Compendium

$36.95

Leos Janácek (1854-1928) occupied a pre-eminent position in Moravian (and wider Czech) culture, not only as a composer but also as a folksong collector, journalist, educator and nationalist.

One of the greatest and most original composers of the early twentieth century, Leos Janácek (1854-1928) occupied a pre-eminent position in Moravian culture, not only as a composer but also as a folksong collector, journalist, educator and nationalist. His friends and associates included artists, writers, ethnographers and politicians, as well as conductors, singers and instrumentalists. Janácek's many pupils included the conductor Bretislav Bakala and thecomposer Pavel Haas. He had important associations with publishers in Vienna and Prague and with the earliest years of Czech Radio. Janácek was strongly attached to particular places - Hukvaldy, Brno, Luhacovice - and had professional links with Prague, Berlin, London and beyond. The Janácek Compendium includes nearly 300 entries on every aspect of Janácek's life and works, with detailed notes on all his significant compositions - above all the operas - providing the latest information to emerge about some of his most famous pieces. An extensive bibliography supports the entries, which are cross-referenced to enable wider exploration of particular topics.

Cover image for The Janácek Compendium, isbn: 9781837653225

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

A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre

$45.95

A comprehensive guide to a crucial aspect of Old Norse literature.

We cannot read literary works without making use of the concept of genre. In Old Norse studies, genre has been central to the categorisation, evaluation and understanding of medieval prose and poetry alike; yet its definition has been elusive and its implications often left unexplored.
This volume opens up fundamental questions about Old Norse genre in theory and in practice. It offers an extensive range of theoretical approaches, investigating and critiquing current terms and situating its arguments within early Scandinavian and Icelandic oral-literary and manuscript contexts. It maps the ways in which genre and form engage with key thematic areas within the literary corpus,noting the different kinds of impact upon the genre system brought about by conversion to Christianity, the gradual adoption of European literary models, and social and cultural changes occurring in Scandinavian society. A case-study section probes both prototypical and hard-to-define cases, demonstrating the challenges that actual texts pose to genre theory in terms of hybridity, evolution and innovation. With an annotated taxonomy of Old Norse genres and an extensive bibliography, it is an indispensable resource for contemporary Old Norse-Icelandic literary studies.

Cover image for A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre, isbn: 9781843847656

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.

Cover image for Miscellany XVII, isbn: 9780906245514

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

$54.95

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: 9781837653041

The Experimental Sutton Hoo Ship

$29.95

Unearthed from its burial mound, the Sutton Hoo ship offers a profound window into the political, cultural and technological world of seventh-century East Anglia.

On the eve of war in 1939 the remains of a wooden ship nearly 90 feet long were excavated beneath a mound at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Only the lines of iron rivets that secured the planking were still in place. This is the largest ship so far recovered from north-eastern Europe in the pre-Viking period. Now this great vessel is being reconstructed by the Sutton Hoo Ship's Company on the Woodbridge waterfront.

In this book - the first of three - Martin Carver pictures the people that created the ship in the seventh century, and explores their world of beliefs, burial, ornamental metalwork, clothes, and carpentry. The treasure found in the ship marks the high point of the kingdom of East Anglia, a realm linked with continental Europe, the Mediterranean and the Byzantine empire. This coincided with the creation of great timber halls and great clinker-built wooden ships. In order to see what influenced the design and construction of the Sutton Hoo ships, we have to look at the surviving evidence for seventh century boats from a wide variety of countries.

This roll-call of broadly contemporary boats is followed by a description of how our ship came to be reconstructed today, through the initiatives of Sutton Hoo's researchers and custodians and the people of Woodbridge, how it was designed and made a reality, concluding with an overview of what we can learn from this kind of recreation of a major archaeological discovery.

Cover image for The Experimental Sutton Hoo Ship, isbn: 9781837653676

ALT 38 Environmental Transformations

$24.99

Investigates what literary strategies African writers adopt to convey the impact of climate transformation and environmental change.

This special issue examines the ways fiction and poetry engage with environmental consciousness, and how African literary criticism addresses the implications of global environmental transformations. Does environmentalist literature offer new possibilities for critical thinking about the future? What constitutes environmentalist fiction and poetry? What kind of texts, themes and topics does climate writing include? Does any text in which the environment features become available to environmentalist criticism? In their engagement with the diverse genres, themes and frameworks through which contemporary African writers address topics including urbanisation, cross-species communication, nature and climate change, contributors to this special issue help to define African environmental writing. They look at the literary strategies adopted by creative writers to convey the impact of environmental transformationin narratives that are historically informed by a century of colonialism, nationalist political activism, urbanisation and postcolonial migration. How does environmental literature intervene in these histories? Can creative writers, with their powerfully post-human and cross-species imaginations, carry out the ethical work demanded by contemporary climate science? From Tanure Ojaide's and Helon Habila's attention to environmental decimation in the Niger Delta through to Nnedi Okorafor's and Kofi Anyidoho's imaginative cross-species encounters, the special issue asks how literature mediates the specificities of climate change in an era of global capitalism and technological transformation, and what the limits of creative writing and literary criticism are as tools for discussing environmental issues.

Guest Editors: Cajetan Iheka (Associate Professor of English, Yale University) and Stephanie Newell (Professor of English, Yale University)
Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint)
Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English University of Central Florida)

Cover image for ALT 38 Environmental Transformations, isbn: 9781847012609

Local Place and the Arthurian Tradition in England and Wales, 1400-1700

$36.95

The first in-depth study of Arthurian places in late medieval and early modern England and Wales.

Winner of the 2024 Dhira B. Mahoney Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book in Arthurian Studies

Places have the power to suspend disbelief, even concerning unbelievable subjects. The many locations associated with King Arthur show this to be true, from Tintagel in Cornwall to Caerleon in Wales. But how and why did Arthurian sites come to proliferate across the English and Welsh landscape? What role did the medieval custodians of Arthurian abbeys, churches, cathedrals, and castles play in "placing" Arthur? How did visitors experience Arthur in situ, and how did their experiences permeate into wider Arthurian tradition? And why, in history and even today, have particular places proven so powerful in defending the impression of Arthur's reality?

This book, the first in-depth study of Arthurian places in late medieval and early modern England and Wales, provides an answer to these questions. Beginning with an examination of on-site experiences of Arthur, at locations including Glastonbury, York, Dover, and Cirencester, it traces the impact that they had on visitors, among them John Hardyng, John Leland, William Camden, who subsequently used them as justification for the existence of Arthur in their writings. It shows how the local Arthur was manifested through textual and material culture: in chronicles, notebooks, and antiquarian works; in stained glass windows, earthworks, and display tablets. Via a careful piecing together of the evidence, the volume argues that a new history of Arthur begins to emerge: a local history.

Cover image for Local Place and the Arthurian Tradition in England and Wales, 1400-1700, isbn: 9781843847700

A Political Ecology of Kenya’s Mau Forest

$45.95

A timely and important examination of the forest's environmental crises, investigating their biophysical, political, economic, and socio-cultural aspects, that reveals why previous conservation efforts failed.

The eastern part of the Mau Forest, the most important closed-canopy forest in East Africa, has come under severe threat since the 1990s. In this political ecology Lisa Fuchs exploring the failure of the government-led forest restoration and rehabilitation initiative to 'Save the Mau', launched in 2009, the author examines two of the most contentious issues in Kenya since colonial times: land and the environment. She sheds light on the structural factors and the role of individuals in the forest's destruction and of non-protection and traces the colonial legacy of post-independent environmental conservation policies and practices. In doing so, Fuchs demonstrates that the Mau crisis is more than an environmental crisis: it is also a political, an economic, and a socio-cultural crisis.
Though a detailed empirical analysis, the author shows that the 'Mau crisis' led to the near collapse of landscapes and livelihoods in the Mau Forest ecosystem. She traces the implementation of insufficient conservation programmes, which resulted from historical path-dependency and the adoption of global environmental governance blueprints, forest allocation and benefits, and exposes a forest management system that prioritises commercial forest production over biodiversity conservation. Access and entitlements to the highly fertile forest land, and the amalgamation of forest rehabilitation with the reclamation of grabbed public forest are emphasised as a further core contributor to the crisis. The socio-cultural dynamics within and among various forest-dwelling communities, including the indigenous hunting and gathering Ogiek and 'in-migrant' groups, are also analysed. The book highlights that local types of environmentalism are caught between the 'invention of traditions' and 'perverse modernisation' and shows the contradictory effects of the celebrated, highly anticipated but poorly executed 'Save the Mau' initiative, and how the presence of political will to maintain the crisis conditioned its perseverance. Finally, the book proposes realistic alternatives to sustainable forest management in politicised environments, whose relevance and applicability are considerable in this age of anthropogenic 'environmental' crises and conflicts.

Published in association with IFRA/AFRICAE

Cover image for A Political Ecology of Kenya’s Mau Forest, isbn: 9781847013552

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

The Growth of Law in Medieval Wales, c.1100-c.1500

$36.95

2022 Hywel Dda Award (University of Wales Literary Awards)

A ground-breaking study of the lawbooks which were created in the changing social and political climate of post-conquest Wales.

The Middle Ages in Wales were turbulent, with society and culture in constant flux. Edward I of England's 1282 conquest brought with it major changes to society, governance, power and identity, and thereby to the traditional system of the law. Despite this, in the post-conquest period the development of law in Wales and the March flourished, and many manuscripts and lawbooks were created to meet the needs of those who practised law.
This study, the first to fully reappraise the entire corpus of law manuscripts since Aneurin Owen's seminal 1841 edition, begins by considering the background to the creation of the law from the earliest period, particularly from c.1100 onwards, before turning to the "golden age" of lawmaking in thirteenth-century Gwynedd. The nature of the law in south Wales is also examined in full, with a particular focus on later developments, including the different use of legal texts in that region and its fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts. The author approaches medieval Welsh law, its practice, texts and redactions, in their own contexts, rather than through the lens of later historiography. In particular, she shows that much manuscript material previously considered "additional" or "anomalous" in fact incorporates new legal material and texts written for a particular purpose: thanks to their flexible accommodation of change, adjustment and addition, Welsh lawbooks were not just shaped by, but indeed shaped, medieval Welsh law.

Cover image for The Growth of Law in Medieval Wales, c.1100-c.1500, isbn: 9781837653591

Keorapetse Kgositsile & the Black Arts Movement

$29.99

Key study on writer and activist Kgositsile that presents a new approach to studying the radicalism of Africa and its diaspora and makes a major contribution to the histories of Black lives, gender studies, jazz studies, politics, and creativity.

The cultural configurations of the Black Atlantic cannot be fully understood without recognising the significant presence of writers and artists from the African continent itself. Among the most influential was South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile, or 'Bra Willie', as he was affectionately known. Yet, until now, there has been no full-length study of his work.

Uhuru Phalafala's wide-ranging book reveals the foundational influence of Kgositsile's mother and grandmother on his craft and unveils the importance of the oral/aural traditions, indigenous knowledge systems, and cosmologies he carried with him into and after exile. It illuminates a southern African modernity that was strongly gendered and deployed in anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-apartheid, and civil rights struggles. Using the original concept of 'elsewhere', the author maps the sources of Kgositsile's transformative verse, which in turn generated 'poetics of possibility' for his contemporaries in the Black Arts and Black Power Movements and beyond - among them Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tom Dent, members of The Last Poets, Otabenga Jones & Associates, and rapper Earl Sweatshirt - who all looked to his work to model their identities, cultural movements and radical traditions.

Cover image for Keorapetse Kgositsile & the Black Arts Movement, isbn: 9781847014672

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