Kingsford's Stonor Letters and Papers 1290-1483


Book Description

The Stonor letters and papers form one of only three surviving archives of gentry correspondence from late medieval England. The collection - which includes documents ranging from love letters to household accounts - provides us with a wealth of otherwise unobtainable detail about the lives and careers of a gentry family, their servants and their friends. Much of the material comes from the period of the Wars of the Roses, and allows us an insider's view on national events and the people involved in them. Originally edited by the historian C. L. Kingsford at the beginning of the century, the complete collection is reissued here, with a new introduction and annotation by Christine Carpenter. In many ways more representative of gentry life than the Paston letters, the Stonor letters and papers will be invaluable to scholars of late medieval England, and will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Wars of the Roses or life in medieval England.
















A Companion to Middle English Prose


Book Description

The essays in this volume provide an up-to-date and authoritative guide to the major prose Middle English authors and genres. Each chapter is written by a leading authority on the subject and offers a succinct account of all relevant literary, history and cultural factors that need to considered, together with bibliographical references. Authors examined include the writers of the Ancrene Wisse, the Katherine Group and the Wohunge Group; Richard Rolle; Walter Hilton; Nicholas Love; Julian of Norwich; Margery Kempe; "Sir John Mandeville"; John Trevisa, Reginald Pecock; and John Fortescue. Genres discussed include romances, saints' lives, letters, sermon literature, historical prose, anonymous devotional writings, Wycliffite prose, and various forms of technical writing. The final chapter examines the treatment of Middle English prose in the first age of print. Contributors: BELLA MILLETT, RALPH HANNA III, AD PUTTER, KANTIK GHOSH, BARRY A. WINDEATT, A.C. SPEARING, IAN HIGGINS, A.S.G. EDWARDS, VINCENT GILLESPIE, HELEN L. SPENCER, ALFRED HIATT, FIONA SOMERSET, HELEN COOPER, GEORGE KEISER, OLIVER S. PICKERING, JAMES SIMPSON, RICHARD BEADLE, ALEXANDRA GILLESPIE.




Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD 800


Book Description

The private letters of ancient women in Egypt from Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest




Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century


Book Description

The Paston family papers provide an incomparable picture of life in fifteenth-century England, and richly illustrate the resources of the language at an important period. This is a reissue, with corrections, of the volume originally published by the Clarendon Press in 1971.




Richard III


Book Description

Richard III ruled England for a mere twenty-six months, yet few English monarchs remain as compulsively fascinating, and none has been more persistently vilified. In his absorbing and universally praised account, Charles Ross assesses the king within the context of his violent age and explores the critical questions of the reign: why and how Richard Plantagenet usurped the throne; the belief that he ordered the murder of "the Princes in the Tower"; the events leading to the battle of Bosworth in 1485; and the death of the Yorkist dynasty with Richard himself. In a new foreword, Professor Richard A. Griffiths identifies the attributes that have made Ross's account the leading biography in the field, and assesses the impact of the research published since the book first appeared in 1981. "A fascinating study on a perennially fascinating topic… the base against which will be measured any future research."--Times Higher Education Supplement




Richard III: The Maligned King


Book Description

Richard III, King of England from 1483 to 1485, made good laws that still protect ordinary people today. Yet history concentrates on the fictional hunchback as depicted by Shakespeare: the wicked uncle who stole the throne and killed his nephews in the Tower of London. Voices have protested during the intervening years, some of them eminent and scholarly, urging a more reasoned view to replace the traditional black portrait. But historians, whether as authors or presenters of popular TV history, still trot out the old pronouncements about ruthless ambition, usurpation and murder. After centuries of misinformation, the truth about Richard III has been overdue a fair hearing. Annette Carson seeks to redress the balance by examining the events of his reign as they actually happened, based on reports in the original sources. She traces the actions and activities of the principal characters, investigating facts and timelines revealed in documentary evidence. She also dares to investigate areas where historians fear to tread, and raises some controversial questions. In 2012 Carson was a member of Philippa Langley's Looking For Richard Project, which provided important new answers from the DNA-confirmed discovery of the king's remains. Her involvement in Langley's Missing Princes Project, with its international research initiative on the 'princes in the Tower', has now informed her revelatory extra chapter.