Search results

Shakespeare's plays were immensely popular in their own day - so why do we refuse to think of them as mass entertainment? In Pleasing Everyone, author Jeffrey Knapp opens our eyes to the uncanny resemblance between Renaissance drama and the incontrovertibly mass medium of Golden-Age Hollywood cinema. Through fascinating explorations of such famous plays as Hamlet, The Roaring Girl, and The Alchemist, and such celebrated films as Citizen Kane, The Jazz Singer, and City Lights, Knapp challenges...

A Tudor voyage of exploration - an extraordinary story of daring, discovery, tragedy and pioneering achievement.In the spring of 1553 three ships sailed north-east from London into uncharted waters. The scale of their ambition was breathtaking. Drawing on the latest navigational science and the new spirit of enterprise and discovery sweeping the Tudor capital, they sought a northern passage to Asia and its riches.The success of the expedition depended on its two leaders: Sir Hugh Willoughby, a b...

This is a critical edition of John Fisher's Treatise on the Penitential Psalms, sermons delivered in 1507-1508 to the household of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of King Henry VII, who caused them to be published as the first English sermon collection ever printed. Also included is Bishop Fisher's funeral sermon for King Henry and his "month's mind" sermon for Lady Margaret herself, who died shortly after her son. Lady Margaret Beaufort was Fisher's patron and a notable benefactor to the Uni...

The King's men are despoiling the monasteries and dividing church wealth among the royal favourites and a rebellion is brewing in the north. H.F.M. Prescott's novel tells the story of one of the most tumultuous events in British history. In 1536 Henry VIII was almost toppled from his throne when Northern England rose to oppose the Dissolution of the Monasteries. For a few weeks Robert Aske, the leader of the rebels, held the fate of the entire nation in his hand. THE MAN ON A DONKEY is an enthra...

'This brilliant book is a bombshell! Jane Seymour the shy mouse type? Think again!' Kate WilliamsAlison Weir, historian and author of the Sunday Times bestsellers Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen and Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession, draws an enthralling portrait of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's third queen, as you've never seen her before. Essential reading for fans of Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick.'This six-book series looks likely to become a landmark in historical fiction' The Times...

Part of the Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers in a collectible format Henry VII was one of England's unlikeliest monarchs. An exile and outsider with barely a claim to the throne, his victory over Richard III at Bosworth Field seemed to many in 1485 only the latest in the sequence of violent convulsions among England's nobility that would come to be known as the Wars of the Roses - with little to suggest that the obscure Henry would last any longer than...

A SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, FINANCIAL TIMES, GUARDIAN, BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR'This is the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years' Hilary Mantel'A masterpiece' Dan Jones, Sunday TimesThomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey's fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, and by the end of the...

This volume discusses the development of governmental proto-bureaucracy, which led to and was influenced by the inclusion of professional agents and spies in the early modern English government. In the government's attempts to control religious practices, wage war, and expand their mercantile reach both east and west, spies and agents became essential figures of empire, but their presence also fundamentally altered the old hierarchies of class and power. The job of the spy or agent required fl...

An engaging, accessible introduction to reading and understanding early modern English manuscripts This engaging book provides an essential introduction to the manuscript in early modern England. From birth to death, parish record to probate inventory, writing framed the lives of the early modern English. The book offers a detailed technical introduction to the handwriting of the period, from "secretary hand" through the "copperplate" that defined the early British Empire. Case studies trace t...

The essays in this collection investigate the ways in which the past was exploited to meet the concerns of the present in early modern England. The understanding of the past in this period was characterized by a deepening and more fully articulated conception of time and history, with its roots in impassioned religious and political controversies. The discourses that arose from this dialogue informed and drew together a range of genres and activities: prose accounts, polemical tracts, poems, pla...

Drawing on documentary evidence dating between 1382 and 1522, this volume examines a single manor parish that was dominated by the powerful Mowbray family, the Dukes of Norfolk, and by Katherine Neville, widow of the second Duke,as part of her dower 1432-c.1482. Numerous documents relating to the manor are extant including 101 manor court rolls, bailiffs' accounts and receiver's accounts; taken together they provide an insight into local administration and justice in a rural settlement on the so...

Imprisoning Mary Queen of Scots covers the lives and careers of the men and women who �kept' Mary Queen of Scots when she was a political prisoner in England, circa 1568/9-1587. Mary's troubled claim to the English throne - much to the consternation of her �dear cousin' Elizabeth I - made her a mortal enemy of the aforementioned Virgin Queen and set them on a collision course from which only one would walk away. Mary's calamitous personal life, encompassing assassinations, kidnaps and abdication...

The Wolsey's of Suffolk date to Anglo-Saxon times. The earliest notice of a Wolsey as inhabitant of Ipswich is Thomas Wolsey's father, Robert. He was a successful small businessman and married a Joan Daundy. Thomas was probably born in 1471 in an Inn and was almost certainly baptised in St Mary at the Elms church, Ipswich. Wolsey graduated from university and then his climb to power was extremely fast. He entered the Royal Household as the chaplain to King Henry VII. When King Henry VIII ascend...

To Gain at Harvest celebrates the courage, intellect, humility and passion displayed by figures of all shades of opinion and belief during the English Reformation. Offering insights into the turbulent period of the English Reformation and its ideas, Jonathan Dean demonstrates the qualities of mind and heart, and the gifts of faith and character, which some of its leading proponents possessed. Including chapters on Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Harpsfield, Elizabeth I, Matthew Parker, and Katherin...

What did it mean to be a 'go-between' in the early modern world? How were such figures perceived in sixteenth and seventeenth century England? And what effect did their movement between languages, countries, religions and social spaces – whether enforced or voluntary – have on the ways in which people navigated questions of identity and belonging? Lives in Transit in Early Modern England is a work of interdisciplinary scholarship which examines how questions of mobility and transculturality were...

A deeply researched, analytically rich, and vivid account of England's early maritime empire Drawing on a wealth of understudied sources, historian Eleanor Hubbard explores the labor conflicts behind the rise of the English maritime empire. Freewheeling Elizabethan privateering attracted thousands of young men to the sea, where they acquired valuable skills and a reputation for ruthlessness. Peace in 1603 forced these predatory seamen to adapt to a radically changed world, one in which they we...

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009 Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012 Winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2012 A boxed set of hardback editions of the bestselling and award winning trilogy: Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall Trilogy - Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light - traces the life of Thomas Cromwell,...

This volume presents the surveys and valuations of all the monastic lands in Devon which were disposed of by the Crown after the dissolution of the monasteries, a redistribution of land which had major social and economic implications. It is a valuable source for historians of society and economy in the sixteenth century and includes a detailed introduction by the editor, a leading expert in the history of Devon.

In a 1572 visit to Warwick, Queen Elizabeth looked out the window of her lodgings and saw local people dancing in the courtyard, a seemingly spontaneous performance meant to entertain her. During her travels, she was treated to fireworks, theatrical performances, and lavish banquets. Reconstructing the formal and informal events that took place throughout Elizabeth's progress visits, events rich in pageantry and ceremony, John M. Adrian demonstrates how communities communicated their character,...