An English Tradition

Old English Tradition contains eighteen new essays by leading scholars in the field of Old English literary studies. The collection is centered around five key areas of research--Old English poetics, Anglo-Saxon Christianity, Beowulf, codicology, and early Anglo-Saxon studies--on which the work of scholar J. R. Hall, the volume's honorand, has been influential over the course of his career. The volume's contents range from fresh insights on individual Old English poems such as The Wife's Lament and Beowulf; new studies in Old English metrics and linguistics; codicological examinations of individual manuscripts; fresh editions of understudied texts; and innovative examinations of the role of early antiquarians in shaping the field of Old English literary studies as we know it today.

Britpop and the English Music Tradition is the first study devoted exclusively to the Britpop phenomenon and its contexts. The genre of Britpop, with its assertion of Englishness, evolved at the same time that devolution was striking deep into the hegemonic claims of English culture to represent Britain. It is usually argued that Britpop, with its strident declarations of Englishness, was a response to the dominance of grunge. The contributors in this volume take a different point of view: that Britpop celebrated Englishness at a time when British culture, with its English hegemonic core, was being challenged and dismantled. It is now timely to look back on Britpop as a cultural phenomenon of the 1990s that can be set into the political context of its time, and into the cultural context of the last fifty years – a time of fundamental revision of what it means to be British and English. The book examines issues such as the historical antecedents of Britpop, the subjectivities governing the performative conventions of Britpop, the cultural context within which Britpop unfolded, and its influence on the post-Britpop music scene in the UK. While Britpop is central to the volume, discussion of this phenomenon is used as an opportunity to examine the particularities of English popular music since the turn of the twentieth century.

A reissue in hardback under the National Trust imprint of a classic, superbly illustrated book tracing Sir Edwin Lutyens's formidable achievements of both grand public buildings and his many beautiful country houses. Through his architecture of New Delhi, Lutyens had the unofficial status of Britain's 'architect laureate', but it is in his wonderful country houses that his creative genius can most fully be appreciated. Elizabeth Wilhide traces the development of the Lutyens style and illustrates his remarkable blend of function and artistry, from the imposing granite of Castle Drogo and Lindisfarne to the restful appeal of Munstead Wood, which he designed for his long-term collaborator and friend, Gertrude Jekyll. Wilhide also devotes a large section of the book to Lutyens's wonderful interiors. With a foreword by Sir Edwin's granddaughter Candia Lutyens and specially commissioned photographs showing interiors and gardens, as well as original designs for furniture, this elegant monograph provides a fresh insight into a rich and enduring heritage of design.

Formerly a no-man's land between literature and the fine arts, the emblem is currently being re-mapped bibliographically, making accessible tracts of this lost terrain. This volume is the second in a sub-series of the Index Emblematicus dedicated to the English Emblem Tradition, providing a uniform and systematic set of indexes to all emblematic works published in English from 1569 to 1700. Volume One contained the first four books of emblems and imprese that appeared in English. Volume Two contains the next four: P.S. (Paradin), P.S. (Simeoni), Willet, and Combe. Includes facsimile reproductions of the title pages and of the emblems. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Charles Wright identifies the characteristic features of Irish Christian literature which influenced Anglo-Saxon vernacular authors. As a full-length study of Irish influence on Old English religious literature, the book will appeal to scholars in Old English literature, Anglo-Saxon studies, and Old and Middle Irish literature.

This engaging book provides a gateway to larger themes in modern British history through a set of fascinating portraits of individuals that explore important events and movements from the perspective of the people involved. As a rich and humanized supplement to traditional survey texts, this book offers readers a deeper understanding of key facets of British life in the early modern and modern periods.