Following the execution of Charles I in January 1649, England's fledgling republic was faced with a dilemma: which parts of the nation's bloody recent past should be remembered, and how, and which were best consigned to oblivion? Across the country, the state's opponents, local communities, and individual citizens were grappling with many of the same questions, as calls for remembrance vied with the competing goals of reconciliation, security, and the peaceful settlement of the state. Recollection in the Republics provides the first comprehensive study of the ways Britain's Civil Wars were remembered in the decade between the regicide and the restoration. Drawing on a wide-ranging and innovative source base, it places the national authorities' attempts to shape the meaning of the recent past alongside evidence of what the English people - lords and labourers, men and women, veterans and civilians - actually were remembering. Recollection in the Replublics demonstrates that memories of the domestic conflicts were central to the politics and society of England's republican interval, inflecting national and local discourses, complicating and transforming inter-personal relationships, and infusing and forging individual and collective identities. In so doing, it enhances our understanding of the nature of early modern memory and the experience of post-civil war states more broadly. Memory was a multifaceted, dynamic resource, and this book emphasises its fecundity, the manifold meanings it possessed, and the creativity of those who deployed it. Further, by situating 1650s England in relation to other post-conflict societies, both within and beyond early modernity, it points to a consistency in some of the challenges that have confronted post-civil war states across time and space.

The story of how the country house, historically a site of violent disruption, came to symbolize English stability during the eighteenth century. Country houses are quintessentially English, not only architecturally but also in that they embody national values of continuity and insularity. The English country house, however, has more often been the site of violent disruption than continuous peace. So how is it that the country how came to represent an uncomplicated, nostalgic vision of English history? This book explores the evolution of the country house, beginning with the Reformation and Civil War, and shows how the political events of the eighteenth century, which culminated in the reaction against the French Revolution, led to country houses being recast as symbols of England’s political stability.

Remembering the English Civil Wars is the first collection of essays to explore how the bloody struggle which took place between the supporters of king and parliament during the 1640s was viewed in retrospect. The English Civil Wars were perhaps the most calamitous series of conflicts in the country’s recorded history. Over the past twenty years there has been a surge of interest in the way that the Civil Wars were remembered by the men, women and children who were unfortunate enough to live through them. The essays brought together in this book not only provide a clear and accessible introduction to this fast-developing field of study but also bring together the voices of a diverse group of scholars who are working at its cutting edge. Through the investigation of a broad, but closely interrelated, range of topics – including elite, popular, urban and local memories of the wars, as well as the relationships between civil war memory and ceremony, material culture and concepts of space and place – the essays contained in this volume demonstrate, with exceptional vividness and clarity, how the people of England and Wales continued to be haunted by the ghosts of the mid-century conflict throughout the decades which followed. The book will be essential reading for all students of the English Civil Wars, Stuart Britain and the history of memory.

The Blackwell Guide to Plato’s Republic consists ofthirteen new essays written by both established scholars andyounger researchers with the specific aim of helping readers tounderstand Plato’s masterwork. This guide to Plato’s Republic is designed to helpreaders understand this foundational work of the Westerncanon. Sheds new light on many central features and themes of theRepublic. Covers the literary and philosophical style of theRepublic; Plato’s theories of justice and knowledge;his educational theories; and his treatment of the divine. Will be of interest to readers who are new to theRepublic, and those who already have some familiarity withthe book.

Two centuries ago, native New Yorker Washington Irving exploded onto the literary scene of Europe with the publication of his breakout collection of stories, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Published in England and America in 1819–1820, and universally praised for its inventive characters and soul-searching qualities, including the immortal tales “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the volume enjoyed remarkable transatlantic success, allowing Irving to become the first of his nation to support himself as a professional author. In this distinctive collection, historians and literary scholars come together to reassess Irving’s imaginative world and complex cultural legacy. Alternately a satirist and a nostalgia merchant, Irving was ever absorbed in reconstituting a lost past, which the volume dubs “Rip Van Winkle’s Republic.” The assembled scholars explore issues of Anglo-American culture, the power of imagery, race, and the treatment of time and history in Irving’s vast body of literature, as well as his status as a bibliophile, an antiquarian, and a prominent figure in an age of literary celebrity. Edited by acclaimed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Rip Van Winkle’s Republic marks a rediscovery of this marvelous author of social satire and fabled tales of the past.