The Expansion of England, Essays on Race, Ethnicity and Cultural History

Confronting the contemporary poststructuralist debate from the perspective of cultural historiography, The Expansion of England presents an historical study of race and ethnicity.

Imagining a Medieval English Nation

During the late Middle Ages, the increasing expansion of administrative, legal, and military systems by a central government, together with the greater involvement of the commons in national life, brought England closer than ever to political nationhood. Examining a diverse array of texts-ranging from Latin and vernacular historiography to Lollard tracts, Ricardian poetry, and chivalric treatises-this volume reveals the variety of forms "England" assumed when it was imagined in the medieval West.

Plague Writing in Early Modern

During the seventeenth century, England was beset by three epidemics of the bubonic plague, each outbreak claiming between a quarter and a third of the population of London and other urban centers. Surveying a wide range of responses to these epidemics—sermons, medical tracts, pious exhortations, satirical pamphlets, and political commentary—Plague Writing in Early Modern England brings to life the many and complex ways Londoners made sense of such unspeakable devastation.

Examines recent developments in historical fiction, with particular attention to the way contemporary writers have portrayed Shakespearean England.

Taking its title from Umberto Eco's postscript to The Name of the Rose, the novel that inaugurated the New Historical Fiction in the early 1980s, Constructing the World provides a guide to the genre's defining characteristics. It also serves as a lively account of the way Shakespeare, Marlowe, Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth I, and their contemporaries have been depicted by such writers as Anthony Burgess, George Garrett, Patricia Finney, Barry Unsworth.

This is an electronic version of the novel.

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively 'comedy of manners' among her characters.