Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources


Book Description

Provides primary sources on Great Britain's history taken from works such as those by Tacitus, excerpts from Beowulf, Froissart, legal statutes, love letters, Fox's book of martyrs, diaries, personal letters etc.







Reading History in Early Modern England


Book Description

A study of writing, publishing and marketing history books in the early modern period.




Anatomy of a Nation


Book Description

From an obscure, misty archipelago on the fringes of the Roman world to history's largest empire and originator of the world's mongrel, magpie language - this is Britain's past. But, today, Britain is experiencing an acute trauma of identity, pulled simultaneously towards its European, Atlantic and wider heritages. To understand the dislocation and collapse, we must look back: to Britain's evolution, achievements, complexities and tensions. In a ground-breaking new take on British identity, historian and barrister Dominic Selwood explores over 950,000 years of British history by examining 50 documents that tell the story of what makes Britain unique. Some of these documents are well-known. Most are not. Each reveal something important about Britain and its people. From Anglo-Saxon poetry, medieval folk music and the first Valentine's Day letter to the origin of computer code, Hitler's kill list of prominent Britons, the Sex Pistols' graphic art and the Brexit referendum ballot paper, Anatomy of a Nation reveals a Britain we have never seen before. People are at the heart of the story: a female charioteer queen from Wetwang, a plague surviving graffiti artist, a drunken Bible translator, outlandish Restoration rakehells, canting criminals, the eccentric fathers of modern typography and the bankers who caused the finance crisis. Selwood vividly blends human stories with the selected 50 documents to bring out the startling variety and complexity of Britain's achievements and failures in a fresh and incisive insight into the British psyche. This is history the way it is supposed to be told: a captivating and entertaining account of the people that built Britain.




Readings in English History Drawn From the Original Sources, Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England


Book Description

Excerpt from Readings in English History Drawn From the Original Sources, Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England All intelligent teachers of history realize the desirability of having their students do more reading of history than is contained in the text-book, and most of them agree that this is best found in records and writings contemporary with the events being studied. But the practical problem of providing such readings for classes is by no means easy to solve. Those who have tried to procure the necessary number of copies of books, to discover English translations, to find applicable passages, and to make practicable requirements best know the difficulties of the task. I hope this book of readings from the original sources of English history will help to overcome these obstacles. It provides in easily accessible form a body of such material as large as can be actually utilized by most classes. It is intended to be used as a close companion to my Short History of England. The matter contained in it is arranged in the same order as the subjects taken up in the text-book, and is selected with a view to the further explanation and illustration of the principal points there discussed. It differs also from previous collections in drawing on a somewhat greater variety of historical material, and in being, it is believed, the result of a more extensive and prolonged search for suitable illustrative passages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.







Anglo-Saxon History


Book Description

First published in 2000, Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England (BRASE) is a series of volumes that collect classic, exemplary, or ground-breaking essays in the fields of Anglo-Saxon studies generally written in the 1960s or later, or commissioned by a volume editor to fulfill the purpose of the given volume. This, the sixth volume in the series, is the first devoted to history and the first edited by a scholar outside the field of literary study. David Pelteret has collected fifteen previously published essays: the first nine of his essays present a conspectus of Anglo-Saxon history; the other seven are spread among seven "Special Approaches": Anthropology, Archaeology, Art History, Economic and Comparative History, Geography and Geology, Place-Names, and Topography and Archaeology.




Reading History in Children's Books


Book Description

This book offers a critical account of historical books about Britain written for children, including realist novels, non-fiction, fantasy and alternative histories. It also investigates the literary, ideological and philosophical challenges involved in writing about the past, especially for an audience whose knowledge of history is often limited.




The Social Life of Books


Book Description

“A lively survey…her research and insights make us conscious of how we, today, use books.”—John Sutherland, The New York Times Book Review Two centuries before the advent of radio, television, and motion pictures, books were a cherished form of popular entertainment and an integral component of domestic social life. In this fascinating and vivid history, Abigail Williams explores the ways in which shared reading shaped the lives and literary culture of the eighteenth century, offering new perspectives on how books have been used by their readers, and the part they have played in middle-class homes and families. Drawing on marginalia, letters and diaries, library catalogues, elocution manuals, subscription lists, and more, Williams offers fresh and fascinating insights into reading, performance, and the history of middle-class home life. “Williams’s charming pageant of anecdotes…conjures a world strikingly different from our own but surprisingly similar in many ways, a time when reading was on the rise and whole worlds sprang up around it.”—TheWashington Post




A History of Reading


Book Description

On history of reading