August Book News

I Love You Madly: The Secret Letters of Marie-Antoinette and Count Fersen

Hardcover – 7 July 2016 (UK ) & 1 August 2016 (US)

The doubts which still remain about the exact nature of the relationship between Marie-Antoinette and Count Axel Fersen have largely been fostered by redacted editions of their correspondence in which only political letters have been included. In preparing the first complete and unexpurgated collection of these historically important letters, Evelyn Farr has tapped previously unpublished sources discovered in French, Swedish and English archives. She has undertaken rigorous and painstaking analysis of original documents to present the truth about this relationship through the words of the protagonists themselves. The secret nature of the relationship led to the letters being transmitted via intermediaries, sometimes in code or using invisible ink, with secret seals, double envelopes and code names, and meetings in clandestine lodgings. All of this is revealed at last in riveting detail. Meticulous cross-referencing with other unpublished documents provides a vivid context for the letters of the revolutionary period, and Farr’s important discoveries leave no doubt at all about Fersen’s status as the love of Marie-Antoinette’s life.

Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain Mup)

Paperback – 1 August 2016 (US) & 1 July 2016 (UK)

Doubtful and dangerous examines the pivotal influence of the succession question on the politics, religion and culture of the post-Armada years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Although the earlier Elizabethan succession controversy has long commanded scholarly attention, the later period has suffered from relative obscurity. This book remedies the situation. Taking a thematic and interdisciplinary approach, individual essays demonstrate that key late Elizabethan texts – literary, political and polemical – cannot be understood without reference to the succession. The essays also reveal how the issue affected court politics, lay at the heart of religious disputes, stimulated constitutional innovation, and shaped foreign relations. By situating the topic within its historiographical and chronological contexts, the editors offer a novel account of the whole reign.

Hincmar of Rheims: On the divorce of King Lothar and Queen Theutberga (Manchester Medieval Sources) 1st Edition

Hardcover -1 July 2016 (UK) & 1 August 2016 (US)

In the mid-ninth century, Francia was rocked by the first royal divorce scandal of the Middle Ages: the attempt by King Lothar II of Lotharingia to rid himself of his queen, Theutberga, and replace her with Waldrada, the mother of his children. Lothar, however, faced opposition to his actions; kings and bishops from neighbouring kingdoms, and eventually the pope himself, were gradually drawn into a crisis affecting the fate of an entire kingdom and which helped durably shape European politics and culture.

This is the first professionally published translation of a key source for this extraordinary episode: Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims’s De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae. Surviving in a single manuscript produced under Hincmar’s own guidance, On the divorce of King Lothar and Queen Theutberga offers eye-opening insight not only on the political wrangling of the time (in which Hincmar was a major participant), but also on early medieval attitudes towards a host of issues including magic, penance, gender, the ordeal, marriage, sodomy, the role of bishops, and kingship. The translation is cross-referenced to Letha Böhringer’s MGH edition and includes a substantial introduction and annotations which put the case into its early medieval context and explain Hincmar’s sometimes-dubious methods of argument.

The text provides fascinating insights into Carolingian society and will make an ideal source text for many undergraduate courses on medieval gender and sexuality, magic or kingship. It will also appeal to all academics and non-specialists interested in this most lurid of cases.

Victoria

Hardcover – 11 Aug 2016 (UK) & 4 October 2016 (US)

Queen of Great Britain and ruler of an empire on which the sun never set, Victoria gave her name to an age that came to represent progress, expansion and industrialization. She ruled for an unprecedented 64 years, coming to the throne in 1837 at the young age of 19 and dying in 1901. This book is an illuminating and incisive overview of Victoria’s life and reign, revealing her happy marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, her subsequent friendship with the ghillie John Brown, and showing how she went on to celebrate both her Gold and Diamond Jubilees. Deborah Jaffe looks at every aspect of a remarkable era, including its politics, art, science and society and shows why, over a century after her death, Victoria’s influence endures today. Accompanied with over 200 glorious images, this is a fascinating tribute to one of the greatest British monarchs.

[no image yet]

Renaissance Queens of France (Queenship and Power) 

Hardcover – 15 August 2016 (US & UK)

Scourge of Henry VIII: The Life of Marie de Guise

Hardcover – 30 August 2016 (UK) & 3 December 2016 (US)

Although Mary, Queen of Scots continues to fascinate both historians and the general public alike, the story of her mother, Marie de Guise, is much less well known. A political power in her own right, she was born into the powerful and ambitious Lorraine family, spending her formative years at the dazzling and licentious court of Francois I. Although briefly courted by Henry VIII, she instead married his nephew, James V of Scotland, in 1538. James’ premature death four years later left their six day old daughter, Mary, as Queen and presented Marie with the formidable challenge of winning the support of the Scottish people and protecting her daughter’s threatened birthright. Content until now to remain in the background and play the part of the obedient wife, Marie spent the next eighteen years effectively governing Scotland, devoting her considerable intellect, courage and energy to safeguarding her daughter’s inheritance by using a deft mixture of cunning, charm, determination and tolerance.The last serious biography of Marie de Guise was published in 1977 and whereas plenty of attention has been paid to the mistakes of her daughter’s eventful but brief reign, the time has come for a fresh assessment of this most fascinating and under appreciated of sixteenth century female rulers.

Queens of England (Uncommon Women)

Library Binding – 1 August 2016 (UK & US) 

Throughout the centuries, there have been many queens of England, but none stand out more than Mary I, Elizabeth I, and Elizabeth II. Learn what set these rulers apart in Uncommon Women: Queens of England.

Of the many executions ordered by Henry VIII, surely the most horrifying was that of sixty-seven-year-old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, hacked to pieces on the scaffold by a blundering headsman.

From the start, Margaret’s life had been marred by tragedy and violence: her father, George, Duke of Clarence, had been executed at the order of his own brother, Edward IV, and her naive young brother, Edward, Earl of Warwick, had spent most of his life in the Tower before being executed on the orders of Henry VII.

Yet Margaret, friend to Katherine of Aragon and the beloved governess of her daughter Mary, had seemed destined for a happier fate until religious upheaval and rebellion caused Margaret and her family to fall from grace. From Margaret’s birth as the daughter of a royal duke to her beatification centuries after her death, Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower tells the story of one of the fortress’s most unlikely prisoners.

ALL DESCRIPTIONS ARE FROM AMAZON.