University of Chicago Press: New Titles in History: British and Irish History

Monastic Wales

Janet Burton; Karen Stöber — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Monastic Wales brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, working in the areas of history, archaeology, literature, and material culture, to investigate the importance of medieval monasteries in the shaping of Welsh culture, politics, society, and economy. It demonstrates the importance of Welsh monasteries and nunneries, chronicling the many and diverse ways in which religious men and women and their communities contributed to the shaping of the equally diverse regions we now call Wales.

Disturbing Practices

Laura Doan — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

For decades, the history of sexuality has been a multidisciplinary project serving competing agendas. Lesbian, gay, and queer scholars have produced powerful narratives by tracing the homosexual or queer subject as continuous or discontinuous. Yet organizing historical work around categories of identity as normal or abnormal often obscures how sexual matters were known or talked about in the past. Set against the backdrop of women’s work experiences, friendships, and communities during World War I, Disturbing Practices draws on a substantial body of new archival material to expose the roadblocks still present in current practices and imagine new alternatives.

In this landmark book, Laura Doan clarifies the ethical value and political purpose of identity history—and indeed its very capacity to give rise to innovative practices borne of sustained exchange between queer studies and critical history. Disturbing Practices insists on taking seriously the imperative to step outside the logic of identity to address questions as yet unasked about the modern sexual past.

English-Language Poetry from Wales, 1789-1806

Elizabeth Edwards — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This anthology presents a selection of poetry from Wales written in English in the years following the French Revolution of 1789. Arranged chronologically, it brings together a wide selection of little-known texts, some of which are published here for the first time. A comprehensive introduction sets the poems in their cultural and historical contexts, while detailed endnotes give concise biographies of the writers—where known—and explain specific references within the texts.

Manuscript and Print in London c.1475-1530

Julia Boffey — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

What perceptions did people have of printed material after its introduction into England? How did these perceptions determine their own practices in dealing with books and documents—both as producers and consumers? In Manuscript and Print in London c.1475–1530, Julia Boffey explores the evolving relationship of Londoners with handwritten manuscripts and printed material after William Caxton’s establishment of a printing business at Westminster in 1476. Drawing from a wide range of surviving materials from the period, Boffey approaches textual production from the points of view of readers and writers, investigating the choices they made and shedding light on the different ways that both adapted to the availability of the new technology. Copiously illustrated with images from manuscripts and printed books, this volume will break new ground in the growing area of scholarship on print culture and the history of the book.

Belfast 400

S. J. Connolly — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Marking the four-hundredth anniversary of Belfast’s foundation, Belfast 400 offers a new history of one of the world’s most fascinating—and misunderstood—cities. Drawing on a wide range of research by several scholars, S. J. Connolly shows how Belfast grew to become a place of contested identity and economics and why it would become one of the main theaters of Irish independence and the many violent events that would define it.

Belfast and its history are full of contradictions. It was a significant part of Great Britain’s rise to industrial greatness, but it is located not on the island of Great Britain, but in Ireland. While it was central to the establishment of a unique Irish identity, its politics and industrial character set it wholly apart from other Irish cities. An important part of the history of Ireland and the United Kingdom both, Belfast has never fit neatly into the accepted narrative of either.

Belfast 400 gets beneath these complexities by raising crucial questions at every post along its history. Why, with its seemingly unfavorable position—a waterlogged river mouth—did it become one of the first human settlements in the area? How did it evolve from a minor outpost to a major city, and how did it expand into one of the world’s largest centers of shipbuilding and textile manufacturing? What did this industrial development and the eventual decline of manufacturing mean for the people who lived there? Finally, how can Belfast—still managing fraught political relationships between its own citizens—redefine its identity and face the new challenges of the twenty-first century? By raising these and many other questions, Belfast 400 sheds new light on one of the most complex cities in northern Europe.

From Books to Bezoars

Michael Hunter; Alison Walker; Arthur MacGregor — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This well-illustrated volume offers fresh perspectives on the great eighteenth-century physician, naturalist, and collector Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), whose extensive holdings formed the basis of the British Museum and its offspring, the Natural History Museum and the British Library. The colonial milieu within which Sloane operated gets prominence here, particularly the time he spent in Jamaica. Attention is paid to his enormous network of acquaintances and correspondents throughout the world as well as to the way his collecting activities permeated every aspect of his life. Other essays consider the museum specimens accumulated by Sloane—both natural and man-made—shedding new light on his aims for acquiring and organizing them. A fascinating look at the man behind three of the United Kingdom’s most famous museums, From Books to Bezoars will appeal to students and scholars of eighteenth century studies, early modern science, and the history of the book.

Fragments and Assemblages

Arthur Bahr — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 06:00:00 GMT

In Fragments and Assemblages, Arthur Bahr expands the ways in which we interpret medieval manuscripts, examining the formal characteristics of both physical manuscripts and literary works. Specifically, Bahr argues that manuscript compilations from fourteenth-century London reward interpretation as both assemblages and fragments: as meaningfully constructed objects whose forms and textual contents shed light on the city’s literary, social, and political cultures, but also as artifacts whose physical fragmentation invites forms of literary criticism that were unintended by their medieval makers. Such compilations are not simply repositories of data to be used for the reconstruction of the distant past; their physical forms reward literary and aesthetic analysis in their own right. The compilations analyzed reflect the full vibrancy of fourteenth-century London’s literary cultures: the multilingual codices of Edwardian civil servant Andrew Horn and Ricardian poet John Gower, the famous Auchinleck manuscript of texts in Middle English, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. By reading these compilations as both formal shapes and historical occurrences, Bahr uncovers neglected literary histories specific to the time and place of their production. The book offers a less empiricist way of interpreting the relationship between textual and physical form that will be of interest to a wide range of literary critics and manuscript scholars.

Statesmanship and Party Government

Harvey C. Mansfield — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

In this incisive look at early modern views of party politics, Harvey C. Mansfield examines the pamphlet war between Edmund Burke and the followers of Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke during the mid-eighteenth century. In response to works by Bolingbroke published posthumously, Burke created his most eloquent advocacy of the party system. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the material, Mansfield shows that present-day parties must be understood in the light of the history of party government. The complicated organization and the public actions of modern parties are the result, he contends, and not the cause of a great change in opinion about parties.

Mansfield points out that while parties have always existed, the party government that we know today is possible only because parties are now considered respectable. In Burke’s day, however, they were thought by detractors to be a cancer in a free polity. Even many supporters of the parties viewed them as a dangerous instrument, only to be used cautiously by statesmen in dire times. Burke, however, was an early champion of the party system in Britain and made his arguments with a clear-eyed realism. In Statesmanship and Party Government, Mansfield provides a skillful evaluation of Burke’s writings and sheds light present-day party politics through a profound understanding of the historical background of the their inception.