Thomas Dekker (c.1572-1632) was a prolific playwright and pamphleteer chiefly remembered for his vivid and witty portrayals of everyday London life. This book uses Dekker’s prose pamphlets (published between 1613 and 1628) as a way in to a crucial and relatively neglected period of the history of pamphleteering. Under James I, after the aggressive Elizabethan exploitation of the new media, pamphleteers carved out a discursive space in which claims about truth and authority could be deconst...

A startling new history of the Campbell massacre of the McDonald Clan, one the most emotive episodes in Scottish history. In the early hours of 13 February 1692, English Redcoats under the command of Campbell of Glenlyon, who for the past week had been peacefully quartered on the inhabitants of Glencoe, fell upon their MacDonald hosts. In the ensuing hours 38 defenceless men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood. The massacre, sanctioned by the new king of England, William of Or...

Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy is the most thorough and detailed life of Marlowe since John Bakeless's in 1942. It has new material on Marlowe in relation to Canterbury, also on his home life, schooling, and six and a half years at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and includes fresh data on his reading, teachers, and early achievements, including a new letter with a new date for the famous 'putative portrait' of Marlowe at Cambridge. The biography uses for the first time the La...

A historian of the English Civil Wars shares a fascinating study of the seventeenth century New Model Army, examining its formation, tactics, and significance.The New Model Army was one of the best-known and most effective armies ever raised in England. Oliver Cromwell was both its greatest battlefield commander and the political leader whose position depended on its support. In this meticulously researched and accessible new study, Keith Roberts describes how Cromw...

Keen to learn but short on time? Get to grips with the life and career of Isaac Newton in next to no time with this concise guide.50Minutes.com provides a clear and engaging analysis of the life and work of Isaac Newton. Although this English scientist and mathematician is best known for his theory of universal gravitation, he worked in a variety of domains and made major discoveries that revolutionised the way we see the world. Newton remains one of history’s grea...

In the first book systematically to give evidence of conjugal co-rule at an Italian Renaissance court, and the first full length scholarly study of Isabella d'Este and Francesco Gonzaga, Sarah Cockram shows their relationship in an entirely new light. The book draws on (and presents) a large amount of unpublished archival material, including almost unprecedented surviving correspondence between and around these Renaissance princely rulers. Using these sources, Cockram shows Isabella and Fr...

'The Damned Fraternitie': Constructing Gypsy Identity in Early Modern England, 1500–1700 examines the construction of gypsy identity in England between the early sixteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century. Drawing upon previous historiography, a wealth of printed primary sources (including government documents, pamphlets, rogue literature, and plays), and archival material (quarter sessions and assize cases, parish records and constables's accounts), the book argues ...

Composed in a period of religious and political upheaval, Culverwell's Discourse of the Light of Nature is an imaginative statement of the teachings of Christian humanism concerning the nature and limits of human reason and the related concepts of natural and divine law. The lengthy introduction to this new critical edition throws light on the evolution of English rationalism in the seventeenth century, and the annotation establishes for the first time the full range of Culverwell...

Focusing on early Renaissance Franco-Ottoman relations, this book fills a gap in studies of Ottoman representations by early modern European powers by addressing the Franco-Ottoman bond. In French Encounters with the Ottomans, Pascale Barthe examines the birth of the Franco-Ottoman rapprochement and the enthusiasm with which, before the age of absolutism, French kings and their subjects pursued exchanges-real or imagined-with those they referred to as the 'Turks.' Barthe calls into questio...

The emblem was big business in early-modern Europe, used extensively not only in printed books and broadsheets, but also to decorate pottery, metalware, furniture, glass and windows and numerous other domestic, devotional and political objects. At its most basic level simply a combination of symbolic visual image and texts, an emblem is a hybrid composed of words and picture. However, as this book demonstrates, understanding the precise and often multiple meaning, intention and message emb...

On the night of November 4th 1605, the English authorities uncovered an alleged plot by a group of discontented Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament with the lords, princes, queen and king in attendance. The failure of the plot is celebrated to this day and is known as Guy Fawkes Day.In Poets, Players and Preachers, Anne James explores the literary responses to the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in poetry, drama, and sermons. This book is the first full-length st...

Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France engages the question of remembering from a number of different perspectives. It examines the formation of communities within diverse cultural, religious, and geographical contexts, especially in relation to the material conditions for producing texts and discourses that were the foundations for collective practices of memory. The Wars of Religion in France gave rise to numerous narrative and graphic representations of bodies remembered as ic...