Best of
16th-Century

1968

The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee and The Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts


John Dee - 1968
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The Sultan's Admiral: Barbarossa: Pirate and Empire Builder


Ernle Bradford - 1968
    Admiral, naval hero, pirate, warrior and empire-builder, Kheir ed-Din or Barbarossa, as he was known in the West, was a legendary figure. Born on Lesbos in Greece he rose to become High Admiral of the Ottoman Navy, Sultan of Algiers and friend and advisor to Suleiman the Magnificent. His life dominated the history of the Mediterranean in the 16th century. From the moment that he and his brother, Aruj, established themselves on the North African coast, the pattern of life and trade in the Mediterranean changed forever and for nearly 300 years after it was affected by the activities of raiders from what came to be called the Barbary Coast. His achievements in reorganizing the Ottoman Navy and his command of it helped the expansion of the Turkish Empire that threatened all of Europe.

The Selected Poems


Fulke Greville - 1968
    Although his poems, long out of print, are today less well known than those of Sidney, Spenser, or Shakespeare, Greville left an indelible mark on the world of Renaissance poetry, both in his love poems, which ably work within the English Petrarchan tradition, and in his religious meditations, which, along with the work of Donne and Herbert, stand as a highpoint of early Protestant poetics. Back in print for a new generation of scholars and readers, Thom Gunn’s selection of Greville’s short poems includes the whole of Greville’s lyric sequence, Caelica, along with choruses from some of Greville’s verse dramas. Gunn’s introduction places Greville’s thought in historical context and in relation to the existential anxieties that came to preoccupy writers in the twentieth century. It is as revealing about Gunn himself, and the reading of earlier English verse in the 1960s, as it is about Greville’s own poetic achievement. This reissue of Selected Poems of Fulke Greville is an event of the first order both for students of early British literature and for readers of Thom Gunn and English poetry generally.

The Description of England


William Harrison - 1968
    A cleric and historian, William Harrison (1535-93) compiled detailed accounts of nearly every aspect of English life: food and diet, laws, clothing, punishments for criminals, castles and palaces, antiquities, metals and minerals, dogs, fish, cattle, languages, inns and thoroughfares, rivers, the appearance of the people, and much more.Brimming with fascinating information, enlivened by the author's wide-ranging curiosity, keen-eyed observation of his country and country men, and unabashed nationalism, the book is a monumental reference that ranks today as a classic of social description. As the editor, Georges Edelen, points out in his Introduction, "No other work of the age gives so compendious and readable an account of life in Shakespeare's England, and no similar book has been so deeply quarried by later writers on the period."Now students, historians, Anglophiles — all who are interested in Renaissance England — can immerse themselves in this richly detailed study and enjoy a colorful, realistic picture of English life four centuries ago.