This volume examines private libraries and book ownership in seventeenth-century England, with particular focus on how libraries developed over this period and the social impact that they had.

This volume examines private libraries and book ownership in seventeenth-century England, with particular focus on how libraries developed over this period and the social impact that they had.

Studies conformity to the Church of England after the Reformation.

With this original study, Melissa Mowry makes a strong contribution to a provocative interdisciplinary conversation about an important and influential sub genre: seventeenth-century political pornography. Mowry argues that Stuart partisans cultivated representations of bawds and prostitutes because polemicists saw the public sale of sex as republicanism's ideological apotheosis. This book further advances our understanding of pornography's importance in seventeenth-century England by extending its investigation beyond the realm of cultural rhetoric into the realm of cultural practice. It includes substantial archival evidence of prostitution from the Middlesex Sessions and the Bridewell Courtbooks. Carefully grounded in original research, The Bawdy Politic is a cultural study with broad implications for the way we understand the historical constructions and legal deployments of women's sexuality.

Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 A Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England… They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like any other Tudors. The untold stories of the Black Tudors, dazzlingly brought to life by Kaufmann, will transform how we see this most intriguing period of history.

A richly illustrated study of the interplay of word and image in representations of the English countryside, built environment, and domestic space during the interwar period. During the 1920s and 30s, words and pictures in print were the main way in which people received ideas and entertainment, the two working together in a great variety of forms. Many books of the twenties argued against the loss of the countryside because of suburban building. But the demand for post-war building was great and, following the lead of a government report, many books appeared that showed house designs, allowing readers to design or imagine their ownership. Book designs became attractive, helped by colourful dust jackets and internal pictures. Magazines developed individual talents and special interests for both men and women. And, at the periods close, word and image were combined to publicise the growing RAF and give advice about protecting houses from bombing. In all these, words and images worked together as a complex form of art, communication, and entertainment.