Annotated edition of erudite letters from the eighteenth-century sheds light on intellectual life at the time.

This lively collection makes a compelling case for the importance of institutions in the production, reception, and meaning of literature.

England is remarkable for the wealth and variety of its archival heritage – the records created and preserved by institutions, organisations and individuals. This is the first book to treat the history of English records creation and record-keeping from the perspective of the archives themselves. Beginning in the early Middle Ages and ending in modern times, it draws on the author’s extensive knowledge and experience as both archivist and historian, and presents the subject in a very readable and lively way. Some archives, notably those of government and the Established Church, have remarkably continuous histories. But all have suffered over time from periods of neglect and decay, and some have come to sudden and violent ends. Among the destructive episodes discussed in the book are the Viking raids of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Norman Conquest, the Peasants’ Revolt, the dissolution of the monasteries and the bombing raids of the Second World War. Archivists and historians have a shared interest in the protection and study of the country’s surviving records. This book has been written for members of both professions, but also for every reader who cares about the preservation of England’s past.

Explores 50 of Lincolnshire's most fascinating finds.

Author, astrologer, journalist, satirist, and 'well-willer to the mathematics', Poor Robin of Saffron Walden was a fantastic, yet invented, figure of British popular culture from the Restoration to the end of the Georgian period. Poor Robin's Almanac first appeared in 1662, developing an enthusiastic following and long outliving its original creator to last until 1828. Benjamin Wardhaugh tells the great story of Georgian popular mathematics - through Poor Robin's remarkable life, from his humble beginnings as an almanac-writer through to best-selling stardom, controversy, and decline. Using the character, wit, and columns of Poor Robin, Wardhaugh explores the mathematics of ordinary people, from learning sums to using mathematics in weighing and measuring, in business, agriculture, map-making, and navigation. This is a history of mathematics that is rarely thought about — creative, popular, and led by practical and social needs. It is centered on the ordinary people that used it. Their names remain little-known; their solutions have vanished along with the situations that required them; but their energy and ideas - as captured by Poor Robin - create a wonderfully rich picture of what mathematics can be, and has been.

A little star -- Hail, welcome prince -- Pray for the peace of Jerusalem -- She reigns without a crown -- Sweet remembrance shall Remain -- Entirely English -- Dominion over the mighty -- What fruits from our divisions spring -- The breath of our nostrils -- To fix a lasting peace on earth -- All a nation could require.

From New York Times bestselling historian and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Charles King, the moving untold story of the eighteenth-century men and women behind the making of Handel’s Messiah "A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure."—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World "A book of power and glory, brimming with emotion and dazzling in its reach."—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra and The Revolutionary George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones. But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope. Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience’s attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.

Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World is the first book to focus on the individualized portrayal of enslaved people from the time of Europe's full engagement with plantation slavery in the late sixteenth century to its final official abolition in Brazil in 1888. While this period saw the emergence of portraiture as a major field of representation in Western art, 'slave' and 'portraiture' as categories appear to be mutually exclusive. On the one hand, the logic of chattel slavery sought to render the slave's body as an instrument for production, as the site of a non-subject. Portraiture, on the contrary, privileged the face as the primary visual matrix for the representation of a distinct individuality. Essays address this apparent paradox of 'slave portraits' from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, probing the historical conditions that made the creation of such rare and enigmatic objects possible and exploring their implications for a more complex understanding of power relations under slavery.

This is the latest in an important series of reviews going back to 1928. The book contains 28 chapters, written by experts in their field, and reviews developments in the principal aspects of British librarianship and information work in the years 2011-2015.