History / Renaissance

The Borgias (Celebrated Crimes, Vol. 1)

by Alexandre Dumas

There are many dreadful -- and perhaps scurrilous -- rumors about the Borgia family of renaissance Italy, and Alexandre Dumas (author of "The Three Musketeers" and many other period classics) reveals one possible...

History of King Charles II of England

by Jacob Abbott

Despite some political turmoil and upheaval linked to ongoing conflict in the clash between Protestantism and Catholicism, the rule of Charles II, who reigned from 1660-1685, was largely a happy time for the...

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction 2012, National Book Award for Non-Fiction 2011

by Stephen Greenblatt

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction 

Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-Fiction One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work...

Between Utopia and Dystopia: Erasmus, Thomas More, and the Humanist Republic of Letters

by Hanan Yoran

Between Utopia and Dystopia offers a new interpretation of Erasmian humanism. It argues that Erasmian humanism created the identity of the universal and critical intellectual, but that this identity undermined...

The European Renaissance 1400-1600

by Robin Kirkpatrick

With Italy at its centre, but encompassing the whole of Renaissance Europe, this evocative history challenges some of the popularly-held views on the Renaissance period. In particular, whilst always acknowledging...

Social Change and Continuity: England 1550-1750

by Barry Coward

Barry Coward has revised his wide-ranging text which outlines the major social changes that occurred in England in the two hundred years after the Reformation. He examines the religious and intellectual changes...

The Restoration and the England of Charles II

by John Miller

This key Seminar Study was first published as Restoration England: The Reign of Charles II in 1985. Unavailable for several years, the book has now been heavily revised, and expanded, to take account of over...

Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy

by Judith C. Brown & Robert C. Davis

This major new collection of essays by leading scholars of Renaissance Italy transforms many of our existing notions about Renaissance politics, economy, social life, religion, medicine, and art. All the essays...

The English Republic 1649-1660

by Tony Barnard

The book begins by introducing the complicated events leading to the execution of Charles I in 1649 and then offers a detailed analysis of the political experimentation which followed. Toby Barnard argues that...

Renaissance Fancies and Studies: Being a Sequel to Euphorion

by Vernon Lee

A groundbreaking critic who also made a name for herself as a writer of supernatural fiction, Violet Paget, writing under the name Vernon Lee, applied her unique analytical lens to the aesthetic and cultural...

Euphorion: Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance

by Vernon Lee

The female writer and critic born Violet Paget rose to prominence using the pen name Vernon Lee. Over time, she came to be regarded as one of the foremost experts on the Italian Renaissance, and the engaging...

Robert Estienne's Influence on Lexicography

by DeWitt T. Starnes

Towering above printers of his time and their successors for many years afterward was the figure of Robert Estienne, the great French lexicographer of the sixteenth century, whose contribution to knowledge and...

French Renaissance Monarchy: Francis I & Henry II

by R. J. Knecht

First published in 1984, Professor Knecht's study quickly established itself as the best short account of the period. The reigns of Francis I and Henry II, spanning the first half of the sixteenth century, are...

English Masculinities, 1660-1800

by Tim Hitchcock & Michelle Cohen

This collection of specially commissioned essays provides the first social history of masculinity in the 'long eighteenth century'. Drawing on diaries, court records and prescriptive literature, it explores...

The Reign of Mary I

by Robert Tittler & Judith Richards

Until recently, the reign of Mary Tudor was generally seen as a 'sterile interlude' in the Tudor century, with Mary herself dismissed as 'Bloody Mary'. Extensive research in the past several decades has overturned...

Charles I 1625-1640

by Brian Quintrell

Draws on recent interpretations of the period to re-evaluate Charles I's reign. This work analyses the reign of Charles I against the background of his father's legacy and the problems he inherited. The study...

The Nature of the English Revolution

by John Morrill

John Morrill has been at the forefront of modern attempts to explain the origins, nature and consequences of the English Revolution. These twenty essays -- seven either specially written or reproduced from generally...

The British in the Americas 1480-1815

by Anthony McFarlane

Of northern European nations, the British had the greatest impact on the Americas. Their history there embraces far more than the colonies that became the United States: England had been in the New World for...

Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England

by John F. Pound

First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Radical Puritans in England 1550 - 1660

by R.J. Acheson

This study of religious tensions in Early Modern England explores the different religious separatist movements between 1550-1660. It describes the development of radical sectarianism during the reign of Charles...