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77399 results in Boydell & Brewer

Page 31 of 3870

NLW MS Brogyntyn ii.1
  • Understanding a Multi-Scribe Manuscript Miscellany
  • Edited by Nancy P. Pope
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • The first full examination of a fascinating manuscript, Brogyntyn ii.1, a Middle English miscellany with a little Latin, compiled in the 1460s for an audience of low-ranking gentry.

    Its 57 texts include the romance Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle, practical information, almost every genre of verse, and many items in prose, two of which were adapted from poetic versions by their scribes. More than half of these items are either unique to this manuscript or have been uniquely altered from their sources and analogues.

    The essays here offer both a comprehensive and foundational understanding of the manuscript. They consider the intended readers' social class, analyse the scribal handwriting, and for the first time identify the dialectal provenance of all the scribes who wrote in English. Further chapters consider specific texts (The Siege of Jerusalem in Prose and a life of St. Katherine of Alexandria), while four others look closely at the variety of lyrics, different kinds of practical texts and their parodies, and sequences of poems with thematic connections. It also includes editions of four previously unpublished items.

South Africa’s Constitution and the Law of the Township
  • Looting from Below
  • David Dickinson
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • How are residents of South Africa's townships responding to socio-economic inequality and a pervasive sense that the country's democratic transition has not delivered on its constitutional promises of social justice?

    Based on extensive fieldwork, this book challenges beliefs that the agency of township residents is limited to waiting for handouts or demanding delivery from the state, showing how they are instead assisting themselves by taking advantage of the opportunities, menyetla, available. In the kasi, or urban townships, where almost half of the urban population lives, there is limited state-enforced order; while the lex constitutional may be the law of the land, the lex lokasi governs day-to-day life in the township. The book opens with a description of life in townships and the interconnected crises facing the country before examining commonly practiced township menyetla to illustrate how the lex lokasi operates: stealing electricity, informal charges to access the Social Relief of Distress grant, fare evasion on the Metrorail, the illicit sale of alcohol during COVID-19 prohibition, medical aid scams, and looting.

    Exploring how this looting from below protects those looting from above, it provides a different perspective to the view that state capture is the primary cause of the country's current entropic trajectory and that the application of the much-vaunted constitution can bring South Africa back on track.

Goethe Yearbook 32
  • Edited by Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge, Eleanor ter Horst
  • With Joseph D. O'Neil
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • This year's volume features special sections on gambling in the Age of Goethe and on Goethe and music, as well as book reviews, a translation of Lenz's "Zerbin" and other essays on the period.

    The Goethe Yearbook is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, showcasing North American and international scholarship on Goethe and other authors and aspects of German literature and culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In volume 32, Joanna Raisbeck analyzes two recently discovered sonnets by Karoline von Günderrode, uncovering an a priori pessimism that anticipates nineteenth-century thinkers. This is followed by Brian Donarski's scholarly introduction to and translation of Lenz's Zerbin, or Recent Philosophy-the first time this text has appeared in English. Ethan Blass reads surprising similarities in staging and visual language between Goethe's Die natürliche Tochter and Hitchcock's film Marnie, arguing that Goethe's theatrical innovations are protocinematic. The next four articles, by Claire Baldwin, Austen Hinkley, Jürgen Overhoff, and William H. Carter, offer an exploration of the theme "Gambling in the Age of Goethe." These essays touch on both canonical and forgotten figures to illuminate a rich discourse around chance, coincidence, risk management, and play that connects with key aspects of historical discourse and literary representation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The final two pieces, by Jonathan Guez and Matthew Poon, treat musical responses to Goethe's works by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann. A collection of book reviews that offer a comprehensive view of new work in the wider field closes the volume.

Financing Queenship in Late Fifteenth Century England
  • Michele L C Seah
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • "Seah's important book richly documents and deftly analyzes the complex household economies of three fifteenth-century queens consort of England who lived during a period of political and economic upheaval. This book, based on impressive meticulous research, is more than just a much-needed methodological model for studying queenly finances that fills a gap in the historiography of queenship. It is a powerful study of the intrinsic worth of a queen." Theresa Earenfight, Professor Emerita of History, Seattle University.

    Late medieval queens required considerable economic and financial resources, to enable them to dispense patronage, exercise power and influence, and establish and maintain political and social networks. This book examines the nature and usage of these resources, via an in-depth study of the reigns of three queens consort from the second half of the fifteenth century in England - Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth of York - considering how the queens were supported in material terms, and their impact on the economic landscape of the period. It surveys in detail the economic assets available to these queens, including dower lands, monetary and non-monetary grants, and queens' gold, before moving on to a discussion of two major entities - households and affinities - which they needed to maintain. It both sheds light on individual queens and on broader questions of authority and agency in late-medieval English queenship.

Bartolomé de las Casas
  • Voice of Justice in the Americas
  • Lawrence A Clayton
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • A deep look at the impact of Christian scripture on Bartolomé de las Casas, one of the first and strongest critics against Spanish colonialism of the New World and for Indigenous rights.

    Theologian, activist, reformer, political philosopher, historian and anthropologist Bartolomé de las Casas, OP (1484-1566) was a polarising figure in his own time and continues to provoke debate today. Arriving in Hispaniola as a settler and friend of conquistadors, in time las Casas became the official "Protector of the Indians" and a zealous advocate for their rights. His writings, in particular the History of the Indies and Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies, today constitute the best source for the first three decades of Spanish exploration and conquest in the Americas.

    This book provides an accessible account of las Casas's life, achievements, teachings and legacy. Importantly, it underscores the tremendous influence of Christian scripture on las Casas, a surprisingly overlooked aspect in previous biographies, considering his status as a churchman and missionary. The book places him in his socio-political and religious context and traces the evolution of his thought, showing how his ideas on freedom, just war, natural law, social justice, and evangelisation frequently put him at odds with most of his contemporaries and especially the secular and ecclesiastical elites. Two centuries before Thomas Jefferson announced that "all men are created equal," las Casas proclaimed that "all mankind is one" and wielded the principle of government by consent in defence of Indigenous rights.

Conduct Literature and the Politics of the Stage Controversy
  • 1689–1728
  • Chih-Hsin Huang
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Examines the struggle between factions debating the morality and impact on public behaviour of the theatre following the Glorious Revolution, and the political significance of public feeling around this controversy.

    In 1698 the Jacobite clergyman Jeremy Collier published his famous pamphlet in which he attacked a number of prominent playwrights on the grounds that their work contained profanity, blasphemy and indecency, and therefore was undermining public morality. He called for the closure of the stage, and in so doing sparked vigorous public debates that lasted for three decades. This book investigates the relationship between this Stage Controversy and the period of political instability evident in Britain in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution.

    Instead of adopting the definition of the Stage Controversy as a pamphlet war and as a literary or moral event, Huang argues that in both pamphlets and plays, especially reform comedies, the discussions of conduct were employed to make political points. The book characterizes this controversy as a competition for public opinion and support, in which the stage controversialists sought to convince the audiences of the rightness of their interpretations of behaviour in drama. Contributing to debates about the nature of post-revolutionary political thinking and action, this work will be of great interest and use to scholars and students of the political, social and cultural history of late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century England.

Studies in Arthurian and Chronicle Traditions in Memory of Fiona Tolhurst
  • Quondam et Futurus
  • Edited by Dorsey Armstrong, K S Whetter
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Essays examining Arthurian and Chronicle texts, contexts, and reception, in honour of Fiona Tolhurst's contributions to Arthurian Studies.

    In her all-too-short but ground-breaking academic career, Fiona Tolhurst made significant contributions to the discipline of Arthurian Studies, advancing, amongst much else, understanding of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthurian Women, the English Mortes, and modern Arthuriana, including cinematic versions of the legend. The essays assembled here reflect her commitment to explication of Arthurian and Chronicle texts and contexts. Several engage with Geoffrey of Monmouth, examining, among other topics, the depiction of women in his narrative of British origins; the function of giants and significance of landscape and geography in his writings; the contrast between Geoffrey's Trojan-British empire and the Graeco-Egyptian foundation narratives of Scottish and Irish chronicles; and the reception and use of his writing from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Other contributors consider characterization and politics in the Brut tradition and Malory; the puzzling dualities of the alliterative Morte; the reception of Malory's "Trystram"; continuities between medieval and modern readings of the Morte Darthur; and the uses, adaptation, and appropriation of Arthurian themes and ideals in the twenty-first century.

Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707-1819
  • True Britons and Celtic Empires
  • Rhys Kaminski-Jones
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Reframes the study of Welsh cultural revivalism, highlighting transnational and imperial contexts.

    In the long eighteenth century, as Britain grappled with the aftermath of the 1707 Acts of Union and consolidated a global empire, Welsh 'Cambro-Britons' developed a movement of cultural awakening, reinventing their traditions for a new age. Amid profound local, national and imperial transformations, Welsh authors and activists sought to reimagine their history, language and literature, claiming a place for Wales and the Welsh diaspora in the British imperial order. Far from being an insular phenomenon, this revival intersected with key debates of the era, from enlightenment science and radical politics to colonial expansion, transatlantic abolitionism and metropolitan sociability.

    This study reframes Welsh cultural revivalism, revealing its fundamentally international and archipelagic dimensions. Nationally significant Welsh authors like Lewis Morris, David Samwell, Thomas Pennant, and Iolo Morganwg are placed in their transnational, imperial, and global contexts. Examined alongside Thomas Gray's British bardism, William Jones's Orientalism, and the imperialism of Cook's voyages, their writings demonstrate how Welsh thinkers engaged with - and shaped - shifting ideas of Britishness, empire, race, and identity. Drawing on new archival research, and giving equal attention to Welsh and English language texts, Rhys Kaminski-Jones challenges traditional narratives of Welsh cultural nationalism as a simple precursor to modern Welsh nationhood, instead positioning the revival as central to transatlantic intellectual currents. With its pathbreaking bilingual and interdisciplinary approach, this book offers fresh insights into the complexities of nationhood, empire, and cultural memory.

Popularising the Middle Ages in Modern Fantasy
  • Neomedievalism, Video Games, and Vikings
  • Edited by Carolyne Larrington, Hans Rudolf Velten, Helen Young
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Examines the development, nature, and significance of gritty (neo)medievalism in popular culture, from Assassins Creed: Valhalla Berserk to Robert Eggers' The Northman.

    Twenty-first-century popular culture has a fascination for the medieval. Its imagery, tropes and settings have become an integral part of the epic fantasy genre across different media, demonstrated by and following the success of such globally acclaimed television shows as Game of Thrones and Vikings. This volume studies this phenomenon, aiming to establish a broader understanding of why the Middle Ages have become so popular in an era of transmedia productions; it argues that concepts of accuracy and "authenticity" are key to this popularity, alongside engagement with contemporary debates about identity, race and gender, and agile responses to fan-community and media critiques.

    The essays address a variety of topics, from worldbuilding and narrative structures to female agency and the reception of Vikings, across a wide range of media, including film, television, literature, video games and manga. It also explores how contemporary fantasy engages with both academic knowledge and developments in imagination more widely, responding to ever-changing ideas about how an "authentic" Middle Ages may be created.

Jewish-Christian Dialogue in Medieval French Literature
  • Inscribing Biblical Encounters in the Vernacular
  • Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Examines a range of vernacular works within the context of Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions.

    Just as Jews and Christians encounter each other in unequal power relations in the "contact zones" of medieval cities, so the Hebrew Bible meets two Christian Testaments in dynamic tension. Vernacular literature mirrors that confrontation whenever it integrates biblical material, whether quotations and images, translation and paraphrase, people, events or practices. In whatever shape or form, the use of biblical matter introduces vital questions, as competing claims to possession and authority are enmeshed with new approaches to interpretation. Christians and Jews, Judaism and Christianity, meet each other figuratively around the reinvention of their shared sacred texts to define and dispute their identities.

    This study examines how biblical material enters into a variety of twelfth- and thirteenth- century French works by following the way literal and spiritual meanings are intimately entwined. In examples ranging from the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and bestiaries to theatre and moralized bibles, biblical citation serves as an expression of belief, a tool of persuasion, and a weapon of aggression. As current debates on antisemitism intensify, a brief epilogue considers what this study can contribute to Jewish-Christian dialogue when medieval and modern, past and present, challenge each other to deepen knowledge and expand possibilities.

Diary of W. G. Footitt
  • Architectural Draughtsman of Durham, 1897-1914
  • Edited by Michael Johnson
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • W. G. Footitt was an architectural draughtsman in the office of Charles Hodgson Fowler, architect to Durham, Lincoln and Rochester Cathedrals. Recently discovered in a private collection, his personal diary illuminates the professional practice and daily life of an individual immersed in the design and restoration of ecclesiastical architecture during the last years of the Gothic Revival. Significantly, it highlights the important contribution made by draughtsmen, whose names rarely appear in published histories of architecture. Their meticulous work, translating design concepts into detailed plans and drawings, is essential to the realisation of architectural visions.

    A talented artist with a passion for antiquities, Footitt also produced many drawings to illustrate the publications of leading archaeologists in County Durham and Northumberland, thus playing a crucial role in bringing their discoveries to a wider audience.

    Spanning nearly two decades, this unique primary source is a fascinating record of social history during a transitional era. Footitt was a keen observer of the world around him, travelling widely across Britain and recording holidays in Ireland and Switzerland. His first-hand impressions of social, cultural and technological change make the diary a vivid chronicle of modernity.

Rewriting the Past in Scottish Literature, 1350-1550
  • Kate Ash-Irisarri
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Considers how Anglo-Scottish conflict was memorialised, reimagined and embedded by later writers.

    The Anglo-Scottish Wars of Independence are often treated in historical and poetical works produced in Scotland between the fourteenth and sixteenth century, from chronicles and hagiographical romances to advisory and commemorative poems. Through an examination of such texts, this book explores how late-medieval writers drew on the memory of the wars to articulate a collective identity; and how literary and historical frameworks were deeply influenced by shifting Anglo-Scottish relations. It covers a range of topics: how borders - textual, geographic, and cultural - became a focus for articulations of national memory; the utilisation of origin myths and royal genealogy; anxieties around failures of memory or deliberate acts of forgetting; and the impact of the Battle of Flodden (1513) on writing about Scottish nationhood. Dealing in particular with Bower's Scotichronicon, Hary's Wallace, The Complaynt of Scotland and Lyndsay's Dreme, this study argues that these writers drew on understandings of the arts of memory to shape selective, and collective, recollections of the past as a response to contemporary concerns, providing an emotive memorialisation of Scotland's history.

Forests and the Power of Marginalised People in Southern Africa
  • Politics of Chronic Liminality
  • Frank Matose
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Decades after independence and the end of apartheid, why have forest communities in Zimbabwe and South Africa not been able to recover the land and resource rights they lost under colonialism?

    This book explores the politics of conservation in southern Africa through the lens of chronic liminality, a 'state of in-betweenness' or 'waiting', to explain the status quo in local people-state forest relationships and why progress has been so slow. Using the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve, the Gwayi Forest and Mafungabusi Forest as cases studies, it examines the consequences on people living in and around protected areas of neoliberal approaches to conservation and of the legacy of colonial property relations.

    The book asks why local communities have not engaged in collective or rebellious action against the government and how they have instead found themselves in a liminal position, caught between waiting for conditions to change and advancing their rights through collective action. It also asks why states have likewise pursued a politics of liminality and continue to prevaricate about whether to restore local rights or maintain the status quo around forest reserves. Overall, the book advances scholarship around conservation in Africa and other postcolonial regions by providing a different perspective on the continued marginalisation of local people and arguing for a need to rethink forest ownership and management.

    Published in association with the Collaborative Research Centre FUTURE RURAL AFRICA, funded by the German Research Council (DFG).

Reading Jaume Roig’s Espill
  • Misogyny, Religion, and Readers’ Annotations in Early Modern Print
  • Jean Dangler
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • What lessons did readers take from the Espill (The Mirror)?

    This book examines key marginalia in sixteenth-century printed copies of the fictional, pedagogic tale about the alleged dangers of earthly women composed by Valencian physician Jaume Roig. Written in Catalan verse in approximately 1460, the Espill focuses on two main themes, misogyny and religious material, including the critique of religious personnel but also absolute praise of the Virgin Mary. More than 50 printed copies of the work exist today, an extraordinary number for the period.

    The book argues that readers seemed to interpret contrasting secular misogyny and holy topics as harmonious, with the Espill's misogyny synchronizing with its religious message and materials. Readers appear to have considered the Espill as a guide, whether with regard to biblical stories and lessons, women's menstruation, or women's shameful character, and did not demonstrate outrage or perplexity about women's portrayal. The annotative evidence, previously overlooked, sheds light on misogyny's relationship to larger systems of power and on the broader connection between women's depiction in the Espill and in Isabel de Villena's proto-feminist Vita Christi, both of which derived from Valencia's same late fifteenth-century social and professional milieu.

Bad Poetry? New Perspectives on the Value of Sixteenth-Century Literature
  • Edited by Richard Danson Brown, Andrew Hadfield
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • An examination of the messy, often contradictory processes of poetic production and reception. The volume offers an invitation to read widely, question deeply and think critically.

    In the wake of C. S. Lewis's still-contested taxonomy of 'drab' and 'golden' poetic ages, this volume rethinks the critical and aesthetic stakes of bad poetry in early modern England-not to dismiss it, but to ask what it meant, how it functioned, and why it mattered.

    Revisiting poets like Arthur Gorges, Walter Ralegh, Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Churchyard, contributors interrogate the literary marketplace, aesthetic judgment, and evolving generic conventions between 1520 and 1609. Through close readings of works by Spenser, Shakespeare, Skelton, and others-alongside notorious outliers like Richard Stanyhurst-the collection considers poetic failure as both historical artifact and interpretive opportunity. From the clumsy excess of hexameters to the ideological weight of neo-Latin verse, from scribal emendations of Mother Hubberds Tale to the uncertain metrical charge of the lengthy fourteener, these essays reveal how poets and readers alike navigated shifting ideas of taste, style, and literary value.

    Grounded in close reading, textual scholarship, and formal analysis, this collection offers a model of sustained, comparative literary criticism that is both theoretically engaged and deeply historicised. It foregrounds the interpretive value of stylistic awkwardness and aesthetic resistance while charting the long afterlives of poetic judgment from Lewis to the present.

Coastal Policing in Eighteenth-Century Britain
  • The Riddle of the Coast, c.1660-1822
  • Hannes Ziegler
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • The first comprehensive study of Britain's coastal policing and administration across the long eighteenth century.

    Throughout Britain's past its coast has presented security concerns. Despite this long history of raids, smugglers and warfare, consistent, designated and permanent coastal enforcement bodies were only established in England in the 1690s. Initially a reaction to the threats of the Nine Years' Wars, their creation spoke to a new understanding of "The Coast" as a politically distinct and liminal space - a region neither land nor sea - with its own issues and social dynamics that had to be controlled through new, more sophisticated, methods.

    This study explores the circumstances that both necessitated a formalised policing of coastal areas and influenced the subsequent development of these enforcement bodies, showing how their missions and practices fluctuated in relation to key political events and economic policies across the century. In doing so, the book encompasses a long eighteenth century, starting with political developments in the run-up to the Glorious Revolution and ending with the overhaul of coastal bureaucracies in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars.

    In conjunction with this larger historical sweep, through extensive archival research, the book reveals the failures in coastal policing, arguing that these shortcomings stemmed not from the cunning of smugglers or bureaucratic inefficiency but from inherent contradictions in Britain's imperial ambitions. In highlighting the complexities of this watery borderland, Hannes Ziegler sheds new light on the inner workings of Britain's fiscal-military enterprises and state-building challenges of its evolving imperial identity.

Music and Desire among the Austro-German Romantics
  • Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, and the Schumanns
  • Chris Walton
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Investigates the composition and reception of works by key Romantics such as Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner and the Schumanns with attention to the role of sexual desire in the composers' lives and music.

    Scholars have for several decades been devoting increasing attention to aspects of sexuality and desire in the music of the Austro-German Romantics. Undertaking a close analysis of the sources, the four chapters of this book show how our assumptions about what those composers desired are often in fact contingent on what we, their commentators, have wanted them to desire over the course of reception history. Beethoven's Fidelio and Schubert's Winterreise tend to be regarded as a hymn to freedom, on the one hand, and an interior monologue of an alienated lover, on the other, though in neither case does such a view correspond to what the composer intended. In contrast, Richard Wagner dismissed his own opera The Ban on Love as a youthful indiscretion extolling the "free love" of the Young German movement; but he was reinterpreting an early work to align it with his later aesthetic.

    The final chapter examines the chronology of the friendship of Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms in order to discern the likely truths about their triangular relationship before and after Robert Schumann's incarceration in a mental asylum. By adhering to the sources and placing them in the social, linguistic, and geographical contexts of their time, author Chris Walton grants all these protagonists a greater agency of desire than has hitherto been the case.

In the Realm of Tones
  • A Composer's Memoir
  • Allen Shawn
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • A poignant, compelling and clear-eyed memoir of a life in music, with the dogged pursuit of composing at its center.

    Perhaps no art form has ever splintered into as many factions, genres, languages, philosophies, and mutually exclusive audiences as the art of music did in the mid-twentieth century.

    Allen Shawn's memoir fascinatingly evokes this tumultuous time, while weaving together his art and his life, hinting at their unexpected and sometimes paradoxical interconnections.

    Shawn grew up in an atmosphere of cultural privilege in New York City, the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn. An instinctive composing prodigy at age ten, it took him until the age of thirty to compose music he was proud of.

    Shawn sketches his childhood and long apprenticeship, his experiences composing for theater, dance, and concert hall, his forty years as a teacher at Bennington College, and his unexpected emergence as a writer. The book balances an account of his musical evolution, ups and downs, and life choices, offering glimpses into family life and of the many people with whom he interacted, including Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Petit, Jacques-Louis Monod, J. D. Salinger, John Updike, Benny Goodman, Louis Malle, and Vivian Fine.

    Along the way, Shawn offers reflections on such issues as social class, aging, loneliness, politics, and music education. In the Realm of Tones: A Composer's Memoir is a unique and touching account of one individual's internal search for self-expression and self-understanding, and of his effort to construct a life around it.

Work and its Representations in Early Medieval Saints' Lives
  • Christina M Heckman
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • Explores the dynamics of saints' work as represented by their hagiographers.

    The lives of many early medieval saints show them working with their hands. Radegund cooks in the kitchen, carries firewood, and cleans privies; Fiacre cultivates a garden; Brigid milks cows and makes cheese; Dunstan shapes metal and constructs buildings. Other saints raise crops, herd cattle, write books, or weave cloth. Equally at home in garden, workshop, and scriptorium, these saints work alongside other people, interacting regularly with livestock, materials, and the land: miracles and other supernatural events are embedded in the habitual, everyday routines of the saints' own communities. Saints exemplify the balance between productive, creative work and the toil or effort required to accompany it, sometimes aligned with penitential labour. But more often, the saints celebrate work as a rewarding result of divine gift, human ingenuity and communal cooperation.

    This book examines the representation of work - from arable and pastoral agriculture to textile arts and caretaking - in the vitae of saints who lived in Ireland, Britain, and Francia between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Bringing together close readings of these texts, evidence from archaeology, and anthropological approaches to material culture, it argues that through such work, saints showed others how to survive, thrive, and build a world that promised both physical security and spiritual rewards.

The Brewers’ Book, Part 2, 1429-40
  • An Edition of the Minute Book of William Porlond, Clerk of the Brewers’ Company
  • Edited by Caroline Anne Metcalfe
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 June 2026
  • This book presents the second part of William Porlond's Brewers' Book, 1429-40. It provides a fascinating glimpse of this craft and fraternity, and the gaining of the company's Royal charter in 1438.

    This is the second part of William Porlond's Brewers' Book, for the years 1429-40, until the clerk's death. After a gap, his records resumed, listing income, expenditure, entries to the freedom of the craft, to the fraternity and matters concerning the Brewers of London. Many payments were recorded in pursuit of the Brewers' Royal charter, which King Henry VI granted in 1438. Costs for making the commonalty seal were also recorded. At this time of change, when beer, rather than ale, was being made and sold in London, the clerk questioned the virtue of beer. He recorded the annual feasts, some important guests, and the purchase and distribution of livery cloth. The clerk gave insight into national events, with lists of the Brewers' contributions towards waging soldiers in Calais. Inventories of the goods of three Brewers' almsmen give glimpses of their lives. Porlond's records, kept mostly in English in this part of the book, illustrate the developing role of the company clerk.

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