This study traces the links between William Blake's ideas and radical Christian cultures in late eighteenth-century England. Drawing on a significant number of historical sources, Robert W. Rix examines how Blake and his contemporaries re-appropriated the sources they read within new cultural and political frameworks. By unravelling their strategies, the book opens up a new perspective on what has often been seen as Blake's individual and idiosyncratic ideas. We are also presented with the...

Considering the fact that Charles Pigott's satirical A Political Dictionary (1795) is regularly quoted and referred to in analyses of late eighteenth-century radical culture, it is surprising that until now it has remained unavailable to readers outside of a few specialised research libraries. Until his death on the 24th of June 1794, Pigott was one of England's most prolific satirists in the decade of revolutionary unrest following the French Revolution, writing a number of pamphlets and ...

This bookexamines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts from all over Europe, with a focus on the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The pagan North was an imaginative region, which attracted a number of conflicting interpretations. To Christian Europe, the pagan North was an abject Other, but it also symbolized a place from which ances...

The Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller celebrating 400 years of the King James Bible.The King James Bible has often been called the Book of Books both in itself and in what it stands for. Since its publication in 1611 it has been the best selling book in the world, and many believe, had the greatest impact. The King James Bible has spread the Protestant faith. It has also been the greatest influence on the enrichment of the English language and its literature...

Peter Ackroyd has been praised as one of the greatest living chroniclers of Britain and its people. In Rebellion, he continues his dazzling account of the history of England, beginning with the progress south of the Scottish king, James VI, who on the death of Elizabeth I became the first Stuart king of England, and ending with the deposition and flight into exile of his grandson, James II.The Stuart monarchy brought together the two nations of England and Scotland into on...

A captivating journey through the transformative years of late Stuart and Georgian England, marked by political upheaval, cultural renaissance, and the birth of a mighty empire.In Revolution, Peter Ackroyd takes readers from William of Orange's accession following the Glorious Revolution to the Regency, when the flamboyant Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of his mad father, George III, and England was—again—at war with France, a war that would e...

Charles I waged civil wars that cost one in ten Englishmen their lives. But in 1649 parliament was hard put to find a lawyer with the skill and daring to prosecute a King who was above the law: in the end the man they briefed was the radical barrister, John Cooke.Cooke was a plebeian, son of a poor farmer, but he had the courage to bring the King's trial to its dramatic conclusion: the English republic. Cromwell appointed him as a reforming Chief Justice in Ireland, but in 1660 he ...

"John Piper's succinct and superbly perceptive study of William Wilberforce deserves to become an acclaimed bestseller. It not only tells the story of a great man's life-it also tells us how to understand the ultimate source of his greatness and happiness. Moreover, that understanding goes far deeper than the abolitionist achievements for which Wilberforce is honored, astounding though they were. William Wilberforce's secret, as revealed in this book, was that he made the journey from self...

Almost a quarter of a million lives were lost as King and Parliament battled for their religious and political ideals in the English Civil War. England was divided between Cavaliers and Roundheads engaged in bitter struggles from Preston to Lostwithiel, Pembroke to York. Armies were on the march, villages were decimated and great dynasties destroyed: fathers and sons, uncles and cousins were pitted against each other in defence of their loyalties. The civil war led to the execution of a ki...

The Devil, like the poor, is always with us. Evil has been personified in every religion and culture, and Christianity in particular developed a highly graphic view of him from its earliest period. Sometimes grotesque, sometimes beautiful, sometimes threatening, sometimes seductively helpful, sometimes comical, Satan has played a variety of roles in human existence.Feared and frightening adversary of humankind during the Middle Ages, supposed master and friend of witches during the...

The British historian and Whig politician, Baron Macaulay was a celebrated essayist and reviewer, whose poetry and works on British history have been hailed as literary masterpieces. Wedded to the Idea of Progress, especially in terms of liberal freedoms, Macaulay opposed radicalism, while idealising historic British culture and traditions. This comprehensive eBook presents Macaulay’s complete works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts appearing in digital print for the first t...