Queen Victoria: This Thorny Crown (Spiritual Lives)
Hardcover – 8 June 2021 (US) & 8 April 2021 (UK)
This biography evokes the pervasive importance of religion to Queen Victoria’s life but also that life’s centrality to the religion of Victorians around the globe. The first comprehensive exploration of Victoria’s religiosity, it shows how moments in her life–from her accession to her marriage and her successive bereavements–enlarged how she defined and lived her faith. It portrays a woman who had simple convictions but a complex identity that suited her multinational Kingdom: a determined Anglican who preferred Presbyterian Scotland; an ardent Protestant who revered her husband’s Lutheran homeland but became sympathetic towards Roman Catholicism and Islam; a moralizing believer in the religion of the home who scorned Sabbatarianism.
The Creation of the French Royal Mistress: From Agnès Sorel to Madame Du Barry
Paperback – 1 June 2021 (US & UK)
Thoroughly researched and compellingly narrated, this important study explains why the tradition of a politically powerful royal mistress materialized at the French court, but nowhere else in Europe. It will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the French monarchy, women and royalty, and gender studies.
The Making of the Tudor Dynasty
Paperback – 1 June 2021 (US) & 22 March 2021 (UK)
The peculiar origins of the Tudor family and the improbable saga of their rise and fall and rise again in the centuries before the Battle of Bosworth have been largely overlooked. Based on both published and manuscript sources from Britain and France, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty sets the record straight by providing the only coherant and authoritative account of the ancestors of the Tudor royal family from their beginnings in North Wales at the start of the thirteenth century, through royal English and French connections in the fifteenth century, to Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth Field in 1485.
Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661–1257 (Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture)
Paperback – 30 June 2021 (US) & 31 May 2021 (UK)
Based on original and previously unexamined sources, this book provides a critical and systematic analysis of the role of women, mothers, wives, eunuchs, concubines, qahramans and atabegs in the dynamics and manipulation of medieval Islamic politics. Spanning over 600 years, Taef El-Azhari explores gender and sexual politics and power: from the time of the Prophet Muhammad through the Umayyad and Abbasid periods to the Mamluks in the 15th century, and from Iran and Central Asia to North Africa and Spain.
The Imperial Women of Rome: Power, Gender, Context
Hardcover – 1 June 2021 (US) & 22 July 2021 (UK)
The Imperial Women of Rome explores the constraints and activities of the women who were part of Rome’s imperial families from 35 BCE to 235 CE, the Roman principate. Boatwright uses coins, inscriptions, papyri, material culture, and archaeology, as well as the more familiar but biased ancient authors, to depict change and continuity in imperial women’s pursuits and representations over time. Focused vignettes open each thematic chapter, emphasizing imperial women as individuals and their central yet marginalized position in the principate.
The Queen
Hardcover – 3 June 2021 (UK) & 1 September 2021 (US)
In this brand-new biography of the longest-reigning sovereign in British history, Matthew Dennison traces her life and reign across an era of unprecedented and often seismic social change. Stylish in its writing and nuanced in its judgements, The Queen charts the joys and triumphs as well as the disappointments and vicissitudes of a remarkable royal life; it also assesses the achievement of a woman regarded as the champion of a handful of ‘British’ values endorsed – if no longer practised – by the bulk of the nation: service, duty, steadfastness, charity and stoicism.
Palaces of Stone: Uncovering ancient southern African kingdoms
Paperback – 26 May 2021 (US) & 19 June 2021 (UK)
Palaces of Stone brings to life the story of these early African societies, from AD 900 to approximately 1850. Some, such as Great Zimbabwe and Khami in Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe in South Africa, are famous world heritage sites, but the majority are unknown to the general public, unsung and unappreciated. Yet, the stone ruins that have survived tell a common story of innovative architecture and intricate stonework; flourishing local economies; long-distance travel; global trade; and emerging forms of political organisation.
Be the first to comment