Best of
17th-Century

1994

The Vizard Mask


Diana Norman - 1994
    When she discovers her aunt is running a brothel in St Giles-in-the-Fields, Penitence has no option but to point out the wickedness.The Plague releases its horror over London's stress and rookeries and, one by one, the inhabitants of Dog Yard die - many with a wild, rollicking bravery - forcing Penitence to acknowledge that courage and a paradoxical decency are to be found among the wicked as much as the saintly. Her former morality shaken, she meets Aphra Behn, playwright and spy for Charles II, who introduces her to the wicked Restoration stage, where nearly all England's first actresses are somebody's mistress, and Penitence is changed forever.

The Oracle Glass


Judith Merkle Riley - 1994
    Spinning actual police records from the reign of Louis XIV into a darkly captivating story, it follows the fortunes of Genevieve Pasquier, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been transformed into an imperious, seemingly infallible fortune-teller... Genevieve is a skinny, precocious little monkey with a mind full of philosophy and the power to read the swirling waters of an oracle glass - for a demimonde who will believe anything. Left for dead by her family, Genevieve is taken in by La Voisin, an ingenious occultist and omnipotent society fortune-teller. La Voisin also rules a secret society of witches - abortionists and poisoners - who manipulate the lives of the rich and scandalous all the way up to the throne. Tutored by La Voison, Genevieve creates a new identity for herself - as the mysterious Madame de Morville, complete with an antique black dress, a powdered face, a cane, and a wickedly sarcastic streak who is supposedly nearly one hundred fifty years old. Even the reigning mistress of the Sun King himself consults Madame de Morville on what the future holds for her. And as Madame de Morville, Genevieve can revel in what women are usually denied power, an independent income, and the opportunity to speak her mind. Beneath her intelligence and wit, what drives Genevieve is a private revenge - but what she doesn't expect is for love to come in the bargain.

The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne : An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey (Virginia Bookshelf)


Ivor Noël Hume - 1994
    Combining information gathered through excavations of the sites with contemporary accounts from journals, letters, and official records of the period, the author illuminates the exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain John Smith, and Powhatan; the life and death of Pocahontas; and the dissapearance of the Roanoke colony.

A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England


Steven Shapin - 1994
    Steven Shapin paints a vivid picture of the relations between gentlemanly culture and scientific practice. He argues that problems of credibility in science were practically solved through the codes and conventions of genteel conduct: trust, civility, honor, and integrity. These codes formed, and arguably still form, an important basis for securing reliable knowledge about the natural world.Shapin uses detailed historical narrative to argue about the establishment of factual knowledge both in science and in everyday practice. Accounts of the mores and manners of gentlemen-philosophers are used to illustrate Shapin's broad claim that trust is imperative for constituting every kind of knowledge. Knowledge-making is always a collective enterprise: people have to know whom to trust in order to know something about the natural world.

A Sip Through Time: A Collection Of Old Brewing Recipes


Cindy Renfrow - 1994
    to modern times.

The Bourgeois Gentleman / The Doctor In Spite of Himself / The Affected Damsels / The Miser (Regular Edition) / The Miser: Four Plays


Molière - 1994
    Pergolizzi translates a French master of the theater in fluent and modern English ready for performance on any American stage.As an actor and playwright, Moliere played a key role in the transition away from the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte to the ever popular la Comédie Française. Moliere broke away from the impromptu, formula-mask type presentations which were rooted in the Italian Renaissance theater, and introduced live, written dialogue based on the people and costumes of the day—real people whose characters acceded the stage, and the audience made its connection with each foible enacted by the performing protagonists. Thus, the satire in the Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme became poignant and entertaining. In L’Avare, Moliere gave the miser a physical body that was believable and real.

Seven Centuries of English Cooking: A Collection of Recipes


Maxime De La Falaise - 1994
    Rich with the historical sense of taste, this book allows you to cook the rudiments of a medieval royal banquet, an Elizabethan nursery breakfast, or an eighteenth-century tavern lunch.The recipes are divided into five chronological sections, each preceded by an introduction recounting the fashions and the changes in the food and drink of the period; together they provide an overview of the evolution of English cookery. The earliest recipes, dating from the thirteenth century, are presented in their original language (“Take faire Mutton that hath ben roste . . .”) as well as in a modern translation, and all measures and quantities have been updated throughout. Many of the dishes are quite simple to make; others are, quite literally, fit for a king. All together they constitute a delectable, sensual cele­bration of the development of English cuisine.

Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond


Sergey A. Ivanov - 1994
    

Highland Warrior


David Stevenson - 1994
    What emerges is a story of a warrior who fought for his clan, his Catholic religion and his Highland world - against the supremacy of Clan Campbell, The Lowlands and England.

The Works of The Earl of Rochester


John Wilmot - 1994
    Much of Rochester's verse remained unpublished for many years, as it was considered too sexually bold and outrageous, but his work is much more than that of a Restoration profligate and libertine. His perceptive scepticism produced poems of great insight and satirical wit, and he could be a tender lyricist.David Vieth's edition of his work is scholarly and thorough, with an historical introduction and extensive bibliography and notes.

First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism


H. Larry Ingle - 1994
    Larry Ingle examines the fascinating life of the reformation leader and founding organizer of the Religious Society of Friends, more popularly known today as the Quakers. Ingle places Fox within the upheavals of the English Civil Wars, Revolution, and Restoration, showing him and his band of rude disciples challenging the status quo, particularly during the Cromwellian Interregnum. Unlike leaders of similar groups, Fox responded to the conservatism of the Stuart restoration by facing down challenges from internal dissidents, and leading his followers to persevere until the 1689 Act of Toleration. It was this same sense of perseverance that helped the Quakers to survive and remain the only religious sect of the era still existing today. This insightful study uses broad research in contemporary manuscripts and pamphlets, many never examined systematically before. Firmly grounded in primary sources and enriched with gripping detail, this well-written and original study reveals unknown sides of one who was clearly First Among Friends.

Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England


Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos - 1994
    It concentrates on young people from the middle or lower groups of society, who, between 1500 and 1800, left home to work as apprentices, agricultural labourers or in domestic service. Drawing on municipal, ecclesiastical and parish records, and over 70 autobiographies, Ben-Amos focusses on aspects of youth as they related to maturation: the separation of adolescents from their parents; their working lives and relationships with their employers or masters and mistresses; the relative independence and autonomy exercised by younger women; the role of the young in religious affairs; and the question of whether there was such as thing as a youth subculture.

An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England


Susan Dwyer Amussen - 1994
    A people on the cusp of a major socio-economic transformation.

From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, and Estates


J. Russell Major - 1994
    In From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy, eminent historian J. Russell Major draws on forty-five years of research to dispute this view, offering both a masterful synthesis of existing scholarship and new information concerning the role of the nobility in these changes.Renaissance monarchs, Major contends, had neither the army nor the bureaucracy to create an absolute monarchy; they were strong only if they won the support of the nobility and other vocal elements of the population. At first they enjoyed this support, but the Wars of Religion revealed their inherent weakness. Major describes the struggle between such statesmen as Bellièvre, Sully, Marillac, and Richelieu to impose their concept of reform and includes an account of how Louis XIV created an absolute monarchy by catering to the interests of the nobility and other provincial leaders. It was this "carrot" approach, accompanied by the threat of the "stick," that undergirded his absolutism.Major concludes that the rise of absolutism was not accompanied, as has often been asserted, by the decline of the nobility. Rather, nobles were able to adapt to changing conditions that included the decline of feudalism, the invention of gunpowder, and inflation. In doing so, they remained the dominant class, whose support kings found it necessary to seek.