The author has tried to bridge the gap between historical research and popular perception of this controversial phase in Indian history.

    It will be of immeasurable help to students in history, art history, literature, and religious studies who are encountering medieval manuscripts for the first time, while also appealing to advanced scholars and general readers interested in the history of the book before the age of print.Introduction to Manuscript Studies features three sections:- Part 1, Making the Medieval Manuscript, offers an in-depth examination of the process of manuscript production, from the preparation of the writing surface through the stages of copying the text, rubrication, decoration, glossing, and annotation to the binding and storage of the completed codex.- Part 2, Reading the Medieval Manuscript, focuses on the skills necessary for the successful study of manuscripts, with chapters on transcribing and editing; reading texts damaged by fire, water, insects, and other factors; assessing evidence for origin and provenance; and describing and cataloguing manuscripts. This part ends with a survey of sixteen medieval scripts dating from the eighth to the fifteenth century.- Part 3, Some Manuscript Genres, provides an analysis of several of the most frequently encountered types of medieval manuscripts, including Bibles and biblical concordances, liturgical service books, Books of Hours, charters and cartularies, maps, and rolls and scrolls. The book concludes with an extensive glossary, a guide to dictionaries of medieval Latin, and a bibliography subdivided and keyed to the subsections of the volume's chapters.Every chapter in this magisterial guidebook features numerous color plates that exemplify each aspect described in the text and are drawn primarily from the collections of the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

    This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Gayeties in Paris. Poverty of the court. Chapter IIL Matrimonial Projects. r I EERE is nothing so successful as sue J- cess." The young king returned to Paris from his coronation and his brief campaign a hero and a conqueror. The courage he had displayed won universal admiration. The excitable populace were half frenzied with enthusiasm. The city resounded with shouts of gladness, and the streets were resplendent with the display of gorgeous pageants. The few nobles who still rallied around the court endeavored to compensate by the magnificence of their equipages, the elegance of their attire, and the splendor of their festivities, for their diminished numbers. There were balls and tournaments, where the dress and customs of the by-gone ages of chivalry were revived. Ladies of illustrious birth, glit tering in jewels, and proud in conscious beauty, contributed to the gorgeousness of the spectacle. Still, in the midst of all this splendor, the impoverished court was greatly embarrassed by straitened circumstances. Death of the Archbishop of Paris. Murmnringfl. Cardinal Mazarin, eager to retain his hold upon the king, did every thing he could to gratify the love of pleasure which his royal master developed, and strove to multiply seductive amusements to engross his time and thoughts. But a few days after Cardinal de Retz had been conducted a prisoner to Yincennes, his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris, died. The cardinal could legally claim the succession. The metropolitan clergy, who had been almost roused to rebellion by his arrest, were now still more deeply moved, since he had become their archbishop. They regarded his captivity as political martyrdom, and their murmurs were deep and prolonged. The pope also addressed several letters to the court, soliciting the ...

    Pattie’s Personal Narrative is a prime source for the history of the Southwest during the 1820s. He, and a group of fur trappers, set out on a journey from St. Louis to California and back. After Jed Smith’s trip this journey, which began in 1824, is the second known expedition to California. This remarkable book records an eyewitness account of what the West was like before the great swathes of migration occurred. Pattie’s book fully explores the dangers of life as a trapper in the wilderness of the far west, including during one episode after Pattie and a group of French trappers were attacked and only three of them survived. Personal Narrative provides fascinating insight into the earliest clashes that were beginning to occur between citizens of the travelers from the east, Native Americans and Mexicans as United States began its great westward expansion. Yet, Pattie also demonstrates how there was great cooperation between groups, for example when he aided Mexicans, Native Americans, missionaries and settlers with smallpox vaccinations. It is essential reading for anyone interested in finding out more about the Old West and life of this fascinating American frontiersman. James O. Pattie first published his account The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of Kentucky in 1831 and he passed away in 1851.

    Napoleon. Louis XVI. Robespierre, Danton, Mirabeau, Marat. Madame Roland's salon. A passionate throng of Parisian artisans storming the Bastille. A tide of ebullient social change through wars, riots, beheadings, betrayal, conspiracy, and murder.CHRISTOPHER HIBBERT was born in Leicester in 1924 and educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. Described by the New Statesman as "a pearl of biographers," he has established himself as a leading popular historian whose works reflect meticulous scholarship and has written more than twenty-five histories and biographies. Married with three children, he lives in Oxfordshire.

    By 1900, Paris had recovered and the Belle Epoque was in full flower, but the decades between were difficult, marked by struggles between republicans and monarchists, the Republic and the Church, and an ongoing economic malaise, darkened by a rising tide of virulent anti-Semitism. Yet these same years also witnessed an extraordinary blossoming, in art, literature, poetry, and music, with the Parisian cultural scene dramatically upended by revolutionaries such as Monet, Zola, Rodin, and Debussy, even while Gustave Eiffel was challenging architectural tradition with his iconic tower. Through the eyes of these pioneers and others, including Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Clemenceau, Marie Curie, and Cesar Ritz, we witness their struggles with the forces of tradition during the final years of a century hurtling towards its close. Through rich illustrations and evocative narrative, McAuliffe brings this vibrant and seminal era to life."

    It didn’t stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe’s livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives—one eighth of Europe’s total population. William Rosen draws on a wide array of disciplines, from military history to feudal law to agricultural economics and climatology, to trace the succession of traumas that caused the Great Famine. With dramatic appearances by Scotland’s William Wallace, and the luckless Edward II and his treacherous Queen Isabella, history’s best documented episode of catastrophic climate change comes alive, with powerful implications for future calamities.

    When the reign of Louis XIV began, his nation had no particular association with elegance, yet by its end, the French had become accepted all over the world as the arbiters in matters of taste and style and had established a dominance in the luxury trade that continues to this day. DeJean takes us back to the birth of haute cuisine, the first appearance of celebrity hairdressers, chic cafes, nightlife, and fashion in elegant dress that extended well beyond the limited confines of court circles. And Paris was the magical center -- the destination of travelers all across Europe.As the author observes, without the Sun King's program for redefining France as the land of luxury and glamour, there might never have been a Stork Club, a Bergdorf Goodman, a ChezPanisse, or a Cristophe of Beverly Hills -- and President Clinton would never have dreamed of holding Air Force One on the tarmac of LAX for an hour while Cristophe worked his styling genius on the president's hair.Written with wit, dash, and elan by an author who knows this astonishing true story better than virtually anyone, "The Essence of Style" will delight fans of history and everybody who wonders about the elusive definition of good taste.

    In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl, struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour (twelve-foot-wide hoopskirts, whalebone corsets that crushed her organs). As queen, Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power and wage war against her enemies. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt "unqueenly" outfits (the provocative chemise) that, surprisingly, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her. Weber's queen is sublime, human, and surprising: a sometimes courageous monarch unwilling to allow others to determine her destiny. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion--the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs--was also the means of her undoing. Weber's book is not only a stylish and original addition to Marie Antoinette scholarship, but also a moving, revelatory reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.

    * Tom Holland, author of RUBICON and PERSIAN FIRE, gives a thrilling panoramic account of the birth of the new Western Europe in the year 1000

    High Art Lite provides a sustained analysis of the phenomenal success of YBA, young British artists obsessed with commerce, mass media and the cult of personality Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marcus Harvey, Sarah Lucas, among others. In this fully revised and expanded edition, Julian Stallabrass explores how YBA lost its critical immunity in the new millennium, and looks at the ways in which figures such as Hirst, Emin, Wearing and Landy have altered their work in recent years.

    Alabama was the terror of the Atlantic Ocean. Built in secrecy in Liverpool, England, through the arrangement of Confederate agent Commander James Bulloch, it was built for the fledgling Confederate States Navy which was sorely in need of ships. Under the command of Raphael Semmes it would spend the next two years terrorising and attacking Union shipping to help the Confederacy break the stranglehold which it found itself in. Through these two years it completed seven highly successful expeditionary raids, and it had been at sea for 534 days out of 657, never visiting a single Confederate port. They boarded nearly 450 vessels, captured or burned 65 Union merchant ships, and took more than 2,000 prisoners without a single loss of life from either prisoners or their own crew. Fifth Lieutenant Arthur Sinclair, who served under Semmes on the Alabama for the entirety of its existence, documents a fascinating first-person account of life on board this Confederate raider. As they crisscrossed over the oceans Sinclair notes the ships they attacked, prisoners they took and various places they visited, from Brazil to South Africa. Powered by both sail and steam, the Alabama was one of the quickest ships of its era, reaching speeds of over 13 knots. But in the quest for speed there had been sacrifices, notably the lack of heavy armor-cladding and larger guns, which were to prove fatal during the Battle of Cherbourg in 1864 against the U.S.S. Kearsage. Two Years on the Alabama is an excellent account of naval operations of the confederacy during the American Civil War. It provides brilliant details into the revolutionary changes that were occurring in late-nineteenth century maritime developments. After the Alabama was sunk Sinclair was rescued by the English yacht Deerhound and taken to Southampton. He later served as an officer of the inactive cruiser CSS Rappahannock at Calais, France. Following the Civil War, he primarily lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was a merchant. In 1896 he published Two Years on the Alabama. Arthur Sinclair died in Baltimore in November 1925.

    Now the critically acclaimed Michael Pye reveals the cultural transformation sparked by those men and women: the ideas, technology, science, law, and moral codes that helped create our modern world. This is the magnificent lost history of a thousand years. It was on the shores of the North Sea where experimental science was born, where women first had the right to choose whom they married; there was the beginning of contemporary business transactions and the advent of the printed book. In The Edge of the World, Michael Pye draws on an astounding breadth of original source material to illuminate this fascinating region during a pivotal era in world history.

    This bilingual edition, a parallel text in Old French and English, is based on a reexamination of the Old French manuscript, and makes Silence available to specialists and students in various fields of literature and women's studies.     The Roman de Silence, an Arthurian romance of the thirteenth century, tells of a girl raised as a boy, equally accomplished as a minstrel and knight, whose final task, the capture of Merlin, leads to her unmasking.

    The result is nothing less than an archaeology of the sciences that unearths old patterns of meaning and reveals the shocking arbitrariness of our received truths.In the work that established him as the most important French thinker since Sartre, Michel Foucault offers startling evidence that “man”—man as a subject of scientific knowledge—is at best a recent invention, the result of a fundamental mutation in our culture.