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'The Family Shakspeare: in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family.' These words on the title pages of this edition gave rise to the verb 'to bowdlerise' - to remove or modify text considered vulgar or objectionable. Although the first edition was in fact created by Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750-1830) and published in 1807, the many subsequent editions were published under the name of her brother Thomas (1754-1825), who devoted his time to prison reform and chess, as well as the sanitising of Shakespeare. The Bowdlers' work became enormously popular as the scandal-ridden Regency gave way to Victorian respectability. This volume, from the 1853 edition, contains King Henry VI, Part 1, King Henry VI, Part 2, King Henry VI, Part 3, King Richard III, King Henry VIII and Timon of Athens.
Lay Activism and the High Church Movement of the Late Eighteenth Century: The Life and Thought of William Stevens, 1732-1807, by Robert M. Andrews, is the first full-length study of Stevens’ life and thought. Historiographically revisionist and contextualised within a neglected history of lay High Church activism, Andrews presents Stevens as an influential High Church layman who brought to Anglicanism not only his piety and theological learning, but his wealth and business acumen. With extensive social links to numerous High Church figures in late Georgian Britain, Stevens’ lay activism is shown to be central to the achievements and effectiveness of the wider High Church movement during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
With an introduction by Simon Callow Judgements about the quality of works of art begin in opinion. But for the last two hundred years only the wilfully perverse (and Tolstoy) have denied the validity of the opinion that Shakespeare was a genius. Who was Shakespeare? Why has his writing endured? And what makes it so endlessly adaptable to different times and cultures? Exploring Shakespeare's life, including questions of authorship and autobiography, and charting how his legacy has grown over the centuries, this extraordinary book asks how Shakespeare has come to be such a powerful symbol of genius. Written with lively passion and wit, The Genius of Shakespeare is a fascinating biography of the life - and afterlife - of our greatest poet. Jonathan Bate, one of the world's leading Shakespearean scholars, has shown how the legend of Shakespeare's genius was created and sustained, and how the man himself became a truly global phenomenon. 'The best modern book on Shakespeare' Sir Peter Hall
Using Britannia as a central figure, this book explores the neglected relationship between women, church, and nation. Drawing on a wealth of manuscript, printed, and graphic material, Emma Major argues that Britannia became established as an emblem of nation from 1688 and gained in importance over the following century.
Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language.