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

$36.95

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.

Cover image for Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England, isbn: 9781783272457

Law, Liberty and the Constitution

$29.95

A new approach to the telling of legal history, devoid of jargon and replete with good stories, which will be of interest to anyone wishing to know more about the common law - the spinal cord of the English body politic.

Throughout English history the rule of law and the preservation of liberty have been inseparable, and both are intrinsic to England's constitution. This accessible and entertaining history traces the growth of the law from its beginnings in Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. It shows how the law evolved from a means of ensuring order and limiting feuds to become a supremely sophisticated dispenser of justice and the primary guardian of civil liberties.This development owed much to the English kings and their judiciary, who, in the twelfth century, forged a unified system of law - predating that of any other European country - from almost wholly Anglo-Saxon elements. Yet by theseventeenth century this royal offspring - Oedipus Lex it could be called - was capable of regicide. Since then the law has had a somewhat fractious relationship with that institution upon which the regal mantle of supreme power descended, Parliament.
This book tells the story of the common law not merely by describing major developments but by concentrating on prominent personalities and decisive cases relating to the constitution, criminal jurisprudence, and civil liberties. It investigates the great constitutional conflicts, the rise of advocacy, and curious and important cases relating to slavery, insanity, obscenity, cannibalism, the death penalty, and miscarriages of justice. The book concludes by examining the extension of the law into the prosecution of war criminals and protection of universal human rights and the threats posed by over-reaction to national emergencies and terrorism. Devoid ofjargon and replete with good stories, Law, Liberty and the Constitution represents a new approach to the telling of legal history and will be of interest to anyone wishing to know more about the common law - the spinal cordof the English body politic.

Harry Potter is a former fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge and a practising barrister specialising in criminal defence. He has authored books on the death penalty and Scottish history andwrote and presented an award-winning series on the history of the common law for the BBC.

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.

Wings of Desire

$24.95

A guide through the many aspects of Wenders's groundbreaking film, employing archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings.

Filmed in 1986/87 in still-divided Berlin, Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire is both a utopian fairy tale and a fascinating time capsule of that late Cold War moment. Together with legendary French cinematographer Henri Alekan(who had worked on Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête of 1946, among many other films) and Austrian author Peter Handke (with whom he had collaborated before), Wenders created a multilayered filmic poem of dazzling complexity: the skies over Berlin are populated with angels bearing witness to its inhabitants' everyday concerns. One falls in love with a beautiful young woman, a trapeze artist in a traveling circus, and decides to forfeit his immortality. Wenders's groundbreaking film has been hailed as a paean to love, a rumination on the continued presence in Berlin of the troubled German history, as well as an homage to the life-affirming power of the cinematic imagination.Christian Rogowski guides the reader through the film's many aspects, using archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings.

Christian Rogowski is G. Armour Craig Professor in Language andLiterature in the Department of German at Amherst College.

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.

The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd [2 Volume Set]

$410.00

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.

This two volume set presents all the extant writings attributed to Kyd by Sir Brian Vickers, supported by Darren Freebury-Jones and the contributors to this ambitious, landmark project.

Cover image for The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd [2 Volume Set], isbn: 9781843846994

El activismo literario de las escritoras latinoamericanas actuales

$130.00

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

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

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

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

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

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

$120.00

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

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

Cover image for Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, isbn: 9781855663619

Prize Money in Nelson's Navy

$130.00

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

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

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

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

The Angevin World, 1154-1204

$130.00

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

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

Cover image for The Angevin World, 1154-1204, isbn: 9781837654406

Islands and Insularity in the Post-East German Novel

$120.00

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

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

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

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

$130.00

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

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

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

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

Environment, Knowledge, and Injustice in Lesotho

$36.95

Shows that a fraught historical process was at work in which Basotho drew on local and global sources of knowledge and how this small nation surrounded by South Africa can serve as a valuable case-study for wider conversations about 'progress' and 'modernization' in the Global South.

Both place-based environmental history and global intellectual history, this book explores the politics of environment, agriculture, poverty, development, and science in Lesotho. Drawing on diverse experiences with this landlocked, mountainous nation, and based on bilingual archival and oral history research in Sesotho and English, the book examines how Basotho intellectuals, farmers, migrant workers, chiefs, experts, and politicians formed vernacular ideas of tsoelopele (progress) amid the structural violence of colonialism and capitalism in southern Africa. Rather than a unidirectional flow of 'enlightened' knowledge from Europe to Africa, the study shows that a fraught historical process was at work in which Basotho drew on local and global sources of knowledge, from ancestral agricultural practices to colonial soil science and from African American missionaries to African nationalists in Ghana. Basotho ideas about tsoelopele, it is argued, informed the many political, social, and environmental innovations that enabled survival within a sea of white supremacy and that underpin approaches to development in independent Lesotho. Throughout, the book shows how this small nation surrounded by South Africa can serve as a valuable case-study for wider conversations about 'progress' and 'modernization' in the Global South.

Cover image for Environment, Knowledge, and Injustice in Lesotho, isbn: 9781847013996

Forest Politics in Kenya's Tugen Hills

$36.95

Explores the ways in which human and forest futures are interdependent, and the need to recognize its multiple meanings equally with its wealth of natural resources.

Forests are a changing environment, impacted as much by people and politics as by the species-rich diversity they contain. This book explores human-sylvan relations in the Katimok forest, Baringo highlands, Kenya, and asks us to rethink the forest beyond questions of access and control of natural resources, as a habitat where forest politics and human lives are inextricably intertwined.

Tracing the development of the Katimok forest from colonial times to the present day, the author shows how - as with many forests in Africa - it has become constructed as a category and territory of nature under state control: an area both to be protected and turned into exploitable resources. For those living within and on the boundaries of the forest, this social-ecological transformation has had a significant impact. Despite now being settled outside Katimok itself, dispossessed by administrators heedless of local management practices, many former residents continue to maintain a close connection with the forest, not only to sustain their livelihoods, but also to maintain their intimate links with ancestral lands, where their stories and memories are materially inscribed and powerfully invoked. Intimate connections to the forest are revealed to be as political as the use of its resources, culminating in local claims for redress of historical dispossessions.

Cover image for Forest Politics in Kenya's Tugen Hills, isbn: 9781847014085

A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies

$36.95

An exploration of how writers, artists, and filmmakers expose the costs and contest the assumptions of the Capitalocene era that guides readers through the rapidly developing field of Spanish environmental cultural studies.

From the scars left by Franco's dams and mines to the toxic waste dumped in Equatorial Guinea, from the cruelty of the modern pork industry to the ravages of mass tourism in the Balearic Islands, this book delves into the power relations, material practices and social imaginaries underpinning the global economic system to uncover its unaffordable human and non-human costs. Guiding the reader through the rapidly emerging field of Spanish environmental cultural studies, with chapters on such topics as extractivism, animal studies, food studies, ecofeminism, decoloniality, critical race studies, tourism, and waste studies, an international team of US and European scholars show how Spanish writers, artists, and filmmakers have illuminated and contested the growth-oriented and neo-colonialist assumptions of the current Capitalocene era. Focussed on Spain, the volume also provides models for exploring the socioecological implications of cultural manifestations in other parts of the world.

CONTRIBUTORS: Eugenia Afinoguénova, Samuel Amago, Daniel Ares-López, Kata Beilin, John Beusterien, Miguel Caballero Vázquez, Jorge Catalá, Glen S. Close, Jeffrey K. Coleman, Jamie de Moya-Cotter, Ana Fernández-Cebrián, Ofelia Ferrán, Tatjana Gajic , Pedro García-Caro, Santiago Gorostiza, Germán Labrador Méndez, Maryanne L. Leone, Shanna Lino, Jorge Marí, José Manuel Marrero Henríquez, Maria Antònia Martí Escayol, Christine Martínez, Cristina Martínez Tejero, Micah McKay, Pamela F. Phillips, Mercè Picornell, Luis I. Prádanos, Cécile Stehrenberger, John H. Trevathan, Joaquín Valdivielso, William Viestenz, Maite Zubiaurre

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Mystical Power and Politics on the Swahili Coast

$36.95

Traces changing visions of mystical power and authority on the island of Pemba, whose people's reputed resistance to outside rule has shaped the national narratives of both Zanzibar and Tanzania.

For two centuries, Pemba, the second largest island of Zanzibar, has been known by East Africans and outsiders alike as rich in dangerous knowledge. Despite Pembans' reputation for piety and deep Islamic knowledge,uchawi- 'mystical work and power', sometimes termed 'magic', 'witchcraft', or 'sorcery' - has long featured in diverse visions of their identity and as key to worldly power. Today, as traditional methods of securing agency are called into question and new ways proliferate, the mystical world is an intensely conflicted realm where the nature of power, ethical action, and reality itself is continually reframed.

This luminous ethnography follows Pemban notions of invisible and worldly power through the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, the trials of multiparty democracy, the rise of Islamic revival, and intensifying neoliberalism. Through an exploration of rural imaginings of power, it argues that nations and the grammars that underwrite them are made in and by their peripheries, which give 'the centre' shape.  Highlighting the intersections of mystical practices, religion, and politics-as-such on the Swahili Coast, the book contributes new perspectives to studies of the imagination, power, and religious transformation in Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the larger Islamic world.

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A Critical Companion to John Skelton

$29.99

Introduces Skelton and his work to readers unfamiliar with the poet, gathers together the vibrant strands of existing research, and opens up new avenues for future studies.

John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences.

This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception.

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A Companion to the Spanish Picaresque Novel

$29.99

Written by an international group of scholars, this edited collection provides an overview of the Spanish picaresque from its origins in tales of lowborn adventurers to its importance for the modern novel, along with consideration of the debates that the picaresque has inspired.

The term picaresque describes a specific set of early modern Spanish narratives relating the life story of a lowborn adventurer in a realist, ironic, and often humorous manner. The protagonist, the picaro or pícara (rascal), seeks upward mobility in a resolutely hierarchical society determined to prevent his - or her - ascent, and both are rich targets of satire. Spanish pícaros inspired Anglo-French rogues including Gil Blas and Tom Jones and paved the way for the modern novel.

Written by an international group of scholars, this edited collection provides an overview of the Spanish picaresque novel from its origins to the present day, along with a treatment of the debates that the picaresque has inspired. After introductory chapters on the picaresque genre and the origin of the phenomenon, the book analyses canonical texts and their role in the picaresque spectrum. Further chapters then turn to critical approaches to the genre and manifestations of the picaresque in Hispanic America, France, England, and modern Spain. Overall, the book affords readers a broad sense of the range of this rich tradition and an in-depth view of the field and its major texts.

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Medieval Welsh Genealogy

$69.95

First in-depth investigation of the genealogies of medieval Wales, bringing out their full significance.

Genealogy was a central element of life in medieval Wales. It was the force that held society together and the framework for all political action. For these reasons, genealogical writing in medieval Wales, as elsewhere in Europe, became a fundamental tool for representing and manipulating perceptions of the socio-political order across historical and literary time. From its beginnings within an early medieval Insular genre of genealogical writing, Welsh genealogy developed across the Middle Ages as a unique and pervasive phenomenon.

This book provides the first integrated study of and comprehensive introduction to genealogy in medieval Wales, setting it in the context of genealogical writing from Ireland, England and beyond and tracing its evolution from the eighth to the sixteenth century. The three most important collections of secular genealogies are carefully analysed and their composition is considered in relation to medieval Welsh politics. Particular attention is devoted to the pedigrees of the kings and princes of Gwynedd, which were subject to many intricate alterations over time. The book also includes fresh critical editions of the most significant extant collections of secular genealogy.

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A Companion to Calderón de la Barca

$45.95

The first comprehensive study of Calderón in English

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) is one of the most important dramatists - many would say the single most important dramatist - of the Spanish Golden Age. Spain's dominant and most prestigious playwright for much of the seventeenth century, his work is still regularly staged and translated, influential in more recent times on writers as diverse as Schiller, Shelley and Lorca. The author of around 120 plays (not counting his numerous Corpus Christi autos) in a variety of styles, Calderón is most famous for his stirring dramas, characterized by rhetorically powerful poetry, dramatic structures carefully calibrated to produce poignant echoes, and the fizzing intellectual energy they apply to the age's ontological, eschatological and political preoccupations. His plays succeed in combining these perennial concerns with compelling plots subtle enough to defy definitive interpretation. As this volume seeks to show, however, Calderón's comedies deserve equal recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright's comic works are as amusing as they are clever.

This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.

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Observations on Modern Gardening, by Thomas Whately

$36.95

Edition, with commentary, of the first comprehensive attempt to describe the landscape garden.

Thomas Whately's Observations on Modern Gardening (1770) is the first and most comprehensive study of what has come to be known as the English landscape garden, often claimed to be this country's greatest original contribution to the fine arts. It became the standard text on the subject; its authority was accepted at home and abroad, and the book was read widely across Europe, mainly in a French translation. It influenced taste and design; taught visitors how to respond to gardens; analysed natural and built elements of the garden; suggested principles of design; and provided descriptions of major gardens of the day, such as those at Blenheim and Piercefield (Monmouthshire), together with the author's responses, aesthetic, mental and emotional. It indicates a taste for the natural and the "picturesque", foreshadowing romanticism.

This first modern edition of the text is accompanied by an introduction and full commentary, covering both general considerations and specific points and topics. Contemporary illustrations have been chosen to illuminate further the gardens and places discussed.

Cover image for <I>Observations on Modern Gardening</I>, by Thomas Whately, isbn: 9781837653836

Ransoming Prisoners in Precolonial Muslim Western Africa

$29.99

Examines African debates on captivity, legal and illegal enslavement, and religious and ethnic identity in the era of West African jihads.

In this pioneering study—the first to cover ransoming, or the release of a prisoner prior to enslavement for cash or kind, in African regions south of the Sahara—Jennifer Lofkrantz focuses on a broad temporal and geographical area ranging from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries and including present-day Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Morocco. The work concentrates particularly on the nineteenth-century jihad era and on the Sokoto Caliphate and the Umarian States. The overall period was a time of intense intellectual debate over the questions of who was and who was not a Muslim, how Islamic law could and should be implemented, what rights and protections recognized freeborn Muslims should have, and what role governments should play in ensuring those rights especially during a time when slavery was legal.

Ransoming discourses and procedures expose Muslim West African answers to these questions as well as providing a lens on broader issues and ideas on slavery, freedom, and religious and ethnic identity. Based on research conducted mostly in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and France and on Arabic-, French-, and English-language archival sources, treatises, personal correspondence, oral sources and testimony, biographical data, travel reports, and early colonial documents, this study approaches the question of ransoming of captives through an examination, first, of intellectual debates among pre-nineteenth-century West African scholars on issues of ransoming; second, of nineteenth-century policies based on understandings of those intellectual debates in the context of the jihads; and, finally, of West African practices of ransoming in the nineteenth century.

Cover image for Ransoming Prisoners in Precolonial Muslim Western Africa, isbn: 9781648251467

Trees as Symbol and Metaphor in the Middle Ages

$41.95

WINNER: AFCEMS Prize 2024

Highlights human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning.

Forests, with their interlacing networks of trees and secret patterns of communication, are powerful entities for thinking-with. A majestic terrestrial community of arboreal others, their presence echoes, entangles, and resonates deeply with the human world. The essays collected here aim to highlight human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when, whether symbol and metaphor, or actual and real, their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning.

The chapters interrogate the pre-Anthropocene environment, reflecting on trees as metaphors for kinship and knowledge as they appear in literary, historical, art-historical, and philosophical sources. They examine images of trees and trees in-themselves across a range of environmental, material, and intellectual contexts, and consider how humans used arboreal and rhizomatic forms to negotiate bodies of knowledge and processes of transition. Looking beyond medieval Europe, they include discussion of parallel developments in the Islamic world and that of the Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand.

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Medieval English Theatre 47

$49.95

Newest research into drama and performance from the Middle Ages and the Tudor period.

Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic religious plays, and also includes contributions on European, Latin and other cognate drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays.

This volume explores issues of performance and audience-engagement across a wide range of theatrical texts and genres. It opens with a question of sensibilities. An analysis of the French blindman farces examines their now deeply unsettling scenarios of slapstick violence against the vulnerable. Rather than simple callousness, did their staging rely on diverting the audience's attention from the action performed to the skills of the performer?
Two essays arise from performances as research. One production, of the Dutch Rhetoricians' play Man's Desire and Fleeting Beauty, drew on its audiencesto evaluate how far prologues, epilogues, and theatrical frames might affect responses to the "message" of a play. Another explored how the implicit performativity of a fifteenth-century narrative poem, The Life of Job, might be realised through the astonishing skills of acrobats. A review of a third production, of the Tudor interlude of Godly Queen Hester, further attests to the current vitality of research through performance.
Three new play translations, from Europe and beyond, introduce English speakers to richly varied, and highly actable, performance practices. Two are of 1530s Rhetoricians' plays from Bruges which directly address the economic woes of their home city. The first, censored by the authorities, was replaced by the superficially less critical second; but both address the plight of workers in a recession, in disarmingly comic detail with disconcertingly present-day resonances. The third introduces readers to how the Iranian Taʿziyeh drama movingly stages the struggle between Satan and the prophet Ayoub (Job), presenting an unfamiliarly sympathetic view of the sufferings of Job's Wife.

Cover image for Medieval English Theatre 47, isbn: 9781843848011

Shostakovich in France

$130.00

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

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

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

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

Cover image for Shostakovich in France, isbn: 9781837652891

Borders and the Norman World

$45.95

Study of the Norman World's borders, frontiers, and boundaries in Europe, shedding fresh light on their nature and extent.

The Normans exerted great influence across Christendom and beyond in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Figures like William the Conqueror and Robert Guiscard subdued vast territories, their feats recorded for posterity by chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis and Geoffrey Malaterra. Through travel and conquest, the Normans encountered, created, and conceptualised many borders, with the areas of Europe that they ruled and most affected often being grouped together as the "Norman World".

This volume examines the nature, forms, and function of borders in and around this "Norman World", looking at Normandy, the British-Irish Isles, and Southern Italy. Three sections frame the collection. The first concerns physical features, from broad frontier expanses, to rivers and walls that were both literally and metaphorically lines of division. The second shows how borders were established, contested, and negotiated between the papacy and lay rulers and senior churchmen. Finally, the third highlights the utility of conceptual frontiers for both medieval authors and modern historians. Among the subjects covered are Archbishop Anselm's travels across Christendom; the portrayal of borders in the writings of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Gerald of Wales; and the limits of Norman seigneurial and papal power at the edges of Europe. Overall, the essays demonstrate the role that the manipulation of borders played in the creation of the "Norman World", and address what these borders did and whom they benefited.

Cover image for Borders and the Norman World, isbn: 9781837653867

Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature

$120.00

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

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

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

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

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

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 1824-1897

$130.00

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

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

Cover image for The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 1824-1897, isbn: 9781837653058

Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature

$29.99

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

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

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

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

Cover image for Transformation and Identity in Old Norse Literature, isbn: 9781843848080

Writing St Guthlac

$120.00

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

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

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

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

$190.00

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

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

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

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

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

The Life and Music of Charles Wood

$170.00

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

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

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

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

The Postwar Fleet

$180.00

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

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

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

Cover image for The Postwar Fleet, isbn: 9781916931213

The Medieval Welsh Englynion y Beddau

$45.95

There is no question that this book is one of the most important studies of early Welsh literature published in this generation.

The "Stanzas of the Graves" or "Graves of the Warriors of the Island of Britain", attributed to the legendary poet Taliesin, describe ancient heroes' burial places. Like the "Triads of the Island of Britain", they are an indispensable key to the narrative literature of medieval Wales. The heroes come from the whole of Britain, including Mercia and present-day Scotland, as well as many from Wales and a few from Ireland. Many characters known from the Mabinogion appear, often with additional information, as do some from romance and early Welsh saga, such as Arthur, Bedwyr, Gawain, Owain son of Urien, Merlin, and Vortigern. The seventh-century grave of Penda of Mercia, beneath the river Winwæd in Yorkshire, is the latest grave to be included. The poems testify to the interest aroused by megaliths, tumuli, and other apparently man-made monuments, some of which can be identified with known prehistoric remains.

This volume offers a full edition and translation of the poems, mapped with reference to all the manuscripts, starting with the Black Book of Carmarthen, the oldest extant book of Welsh poetry. There is also a detailed commentary on their linguistic, literary, historical, and archaeological aspects.

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Print and Catholic Persistence in the Dutch Golden Age

$130.00

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

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

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

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Arthurian Literature XLI

$120.00

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

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

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Translating Swiss Theatre in Apartheid South Africa

$29.99

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

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

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

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

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

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Forgeries and Historical Writing in England, France, and Flanders, 900-1200

$36.95

A close analysis of forgeries and historical writings at Saint Peter's, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury, offering valuable access to why medieval people often rewrote their pasts.

What modern scholars call "forgeries" (be they texts, seals, coins, or relics) flourished in the central Middle Ages. Although lying was considered wrong throughout the period, such condemnation apparently did not extend to forgeries. Rewriting documents was especially common among monks, who exploited their mastery of writing to reshape their records.

Monastic scribes frequently rewrote their archives, using charters, letters, and narratives, to create new usable pasts for claiming lands and privileges in their present or future. Such imagined histories could also be deployed to "reform" their community or reshape its relationship with lay and ecclesiastical authorities. Although these creative rewritings were forgeries, they still can be valuable evidence of medieval mentalities. While forgeries cannot easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts.

This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter's, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks' interests in their present or future.

Cover image for Forgeries and Historical Writing in England, France, and Flanders, 900-1200, isbn: 9781837653904

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

$170.00

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

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

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

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

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

Translating Swiss Theatre in Apartheid South Africa

$120.00

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

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

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

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

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

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

A History of the County of Wiltshire

$140.00

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

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

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

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

Cover image for A History of the County of Wiltshire, isbn: 9781904356608

The Politics of Religious Toleration in Scotland, 1689-1714

$120.00

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

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

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

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Little Malvern Letters II

$65.00

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

Cover image for Little Malvern Letters II, isbn: 9780902832374

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

$49.95

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

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

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

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

The Visitations of Horace Salusbury Cotton, Ordinary of Newgate

$105.00

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

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

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

$180.00

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

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

Bedrich Smetana

$130.00

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

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

Cover image for Bedrich Smetana, isbn: 9781648251214

Holst and the Winds

$130.00

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

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

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

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

Cover image for Holst and the Winds, isbn: 9781648251313

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Nineteenth-Century America

$120.00

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

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

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

Companion to the Hispanic Romances of Chivalry

$130.00

The first comprehensive overview of Hispanic chivalric romance in English.

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

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British Statecraft and the Baltic Sea Region

$120.00

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

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

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

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

Historical Performance in Baroque Music

$190.00

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

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

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

Women, Money and Markets, 1770–1914

$130.00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Constructing Polish Musical Identities outside Poland since 1880

$120.00

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

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

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

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

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]

$295.00

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.

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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.

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

Decoding Ambedkar

$120.00

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

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

Cover image for Decoding Ambedkar, isbn: 9781837654284

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.

Cover image for Elizabeth Sweeting: The Best and Happiest Days, isbn: 9780957167230

Studies in Medievalism XXXV

$120.00

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

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

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

Cover image for Studies in Medievalism XXXV, isbn: 9781843847823

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.

Cover image for Rewriting the First Crusade, isbn: 9781837653874

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.

Cover image for Christ the Physician in Late-Medieval Religious Controversy, isbn: 9781914049354

Conflict, Peace and Human Security in South Asia

$120.00

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

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

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

The 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.

Cover image for The British Country House Revival, isbn: 9781837652020

The East German Novel of Socialist Construction

$120.00

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

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

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

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).

Cover image for The Crisis of Democratization in the Greater Horn of Africa, isbn: 9781847012487

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

Cover image for ALT 36: Queer Theory in Film & Fiction, isbn: 9781847011855

New Medieval Literatures 26

$120.00

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

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

Cover image for New Medieval Literatures 26, isbn: 9781843847922

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.

Cover image for Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy, isbn: 9781843847786

The Church of England’s Western Schism

$130.00

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

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

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

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.

Cover image for The Importance of Elgar, isbn: 9781837653522

FGM/C in Africa and the Diaspora

$170.00

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

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

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

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

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

$130.00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janáček'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 Janáček'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 1983, remains problematical. Until this day, no edition published in any language has risen to the challenge of providing adequate annotation. This new scholarly edition and translation by Stewart Spencer is the first edition to do so.

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

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

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

$120.00

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

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

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

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.