William B. Robison – författare

A ready reference for general readers, undergraduate and graduate students, teachers, and scholars, this volume contains 320 entries by 80 experts, covering a broad range of topics, plus a lengthy chronology and extensive bibliography. The entries are based on current scholarship and are followed by pertinent references. Among the items included are biographies of kings and queens, ministers, opposition leaders, ecclesiastics, and literary figures; entries on the army, navy, courts, and other institutions; local government and officials; important court cases and documents, such as the Great Contract, Petition of Right, and Bill of Rights; and controversial examples of the Royal prerogative, such as the dispensing and suspending of powers.The volume also covers the Civil Wars, Glorious Revolution, and other rebellions; the Dutch, French, and Spanish Wars; and diplomatic events. Anglicanism, Puritanism, and other religious topics are included as well as political groups, such as the Cavaliers and Roundheads, and radicals like the Diggers and Fifth Monarchists. Social and economic topics include agriculture, mercantilism, poor laws, population, and taxation. The dictionary also covers cultural topics, conceptual topics such as divine right, and topics on women. Although the book focuses on England, it also includes entries on Ireland, Scotland, and Wales and topics relating to those areas.

Providing the chronological setting for many of Shakespeare's plays, various swashbuckling novels from Sir Walter Scott's to Robert Louis Stevenson's, and such Hollywood films as Braveheart, late Medieval England is superficially well known. Yet its true complexity remains elusive, locked in the covers of specialized monographs and journal articles. In over 300 entries written by 80 scholars, this book makes the factual information and historical interpretations of the era readily available. Covering political, military, religious, and constitutional subjects as well as social and economic topics, the volume is easy to use, comprehensive, and authoritative. It provides a useful resource for undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and educated laymen.Rightly characterized as an age of crisis, the 14th century saw the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the Avignon Papacy, and the Great Schism of the Western Church. All placed great stresses on English society, aggravating old problems and creating new ones. In the late Middle Ages, parliament became an important element in English government; Cambridge and Oxford universities attained European-wide reputations; and general literacy increased. The Church remained a paramount religious, political, and social institution, but its independence and intellectual monopoly slipped. The entries in this book synthesize recent scholarship on these and other historical events. While emphasizing political, religious, constitutional and military topics, the book also provides brief introductions to social, economic, cultural, and intellectual topics. It is a valuable guide for those wishing to understand this complex, tumultuous, and until recently, poorly understood era.

In this volume twenty distinguished scholars separate documented history, plausible invention, and outright fantasy in a lively series of scholarly, but accessible and engaging essays.

In this volume twenty distinguished scholars separate documented history, plausible invention, and outright fantasy in a lively series of scholarly, but accessible and engaging essays.

This book gathers contributions from experts on the Tudors that analyze and debunk common misconceptions and often repeated myths about the dynasty. Few historical periods match the popularity of the Tudor era - a fact evident in the proliferation of books (from fiction to scholarly works), films, television shows, plays, and exhibitions on the topic. As part of this interest, however, many misconceptions have become part of conventional wisdom about the Tudors: for example, the fat, jolly, and syphilitic Henry VIII; or Anne Boleyn as a sixteenth-century femme fatale. While often entertaining, these myths are not history and, in fact, impede modern understanding of the Tudors and their era. This book, therefore, reveals the real Tudors, and draws on the deep knowledge of its contributors to show what really happened, and how these misconceptions proliferated.