Book to look out for in May 2019

Shades of the Prison House

A History of Incarceration in the British Isles

Shades of the Prison House explores the history of imprisonment in the British Isles from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. Drawing on letters, treatises, personal accounts, histories, legal and official reports and studies of prison architecture and design, this book tells the story of prisons, prison life and those who experienced it, be they prisoners, governors, chaplains, warders, reformers or advocates. As entertaining as it is informative, the book examines the nature and quality of imprisonment over the last fifteen hundred years, before surveying present problems and concluding with thoughts on future directions.

Widor on Organ Performance Practice and Technique

Renowned organist, composer, and Paris Conservatory professor Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) was a leading figure of the French Romantic organ school. In Widor on Organ Performance Practice and Technique, John Near translates for the first time all the statements from Widor’s Bach Preface that reflect his distinctive and influential approach to performance style and artistic awareness. Correlative source material that clarifies and augments these passages is included after the translations.

Music and Faith

Conversations in a Post-Secular Age

How do contemporary audiences engage with sacred music and what are its effects? Music and Faith is centred on those who, by-and-large, are not professional musicians, philosophers or theologians, but who find that music and faith are bound up with each other and with their own lives. Very often, as the conversations reveal, the results of this ‘binding’ are transformative, whether it be in outpourings of artistic expression of another kind, or greater involvement with issues of social justice, or becoming ordained to serve within the Church. Even those who do not have a Christian faith find that sacred music has a transformative effect on the mind and the body and even, to use a word deliberately employed by Richard Dawkins, the ‘soul’.

General Labour History of Africa

Workers, Employers and Governments, 20th-21st Centuries

The contributors – eminent historians, anthropologists and social scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States – examine African labour in the context of labour and social issues worldwide: mobility and colonial and postcolonial migration, forced labour, security, the growth of entrepreneurial labour, the informal sector and self-employment, and the impact of trade unionism, welfare and state relations. The book discusses key sectors such as mining, agriculture, industry, transport, domestic work, and sport, tourism and entertainment, as well as the international dimension and the history and impact of the International Labour Organization itself.

Fontane in the Twenty-First Century

Theodor Fontane remains a canonical figure in German literature, the most important representative of poetic realism, and likely the best German-language novelist between Goethe and Mann, yet scholarly attention to his works often lags behind his stature, at least in the English-speaking academy. This volume, coinciding with Fontane’s 200th birthday in 2019, assesses the relevance of his works for us today and also draws attention to the most current English-language research. The volume’s contributors draw on literary and cultural studies approaches including gender and sexuality studies, emotion studies, transnationalism and globalization, media and visual studies, rhetorical criticism, paratextual criticism, and digital humanities.

Dedicating Music, 1785-1850

Dedicating Music considers dedications issued in print between 1785 and 1850 in sets of overlapping corpuses: offerings to peers (as in Mozart’s string quartets dedicated to Haydn); to patrons (as in Ignaz Pleyel’s string quartets for Count Erdödy); to friends (as in Ferdinand Ries’s offerings for Beethoven); and dedications issued by publishers (as in Beethoven’s song “In questa tomba oscura,” included in publisher Tranquillo Mollo’s collection offered to Prince Lobkowitz). The result is a synchronic study that highlights the importance of printed packaging, rather than notes on the page, to the complex relationship between composers, publishers, and consumers of music.

Roman Warships

Drawing upon archaeological evidence, documentary accounts and visual representations, Roman Warships charts the development and evolution of the Roman warship over eight centuries of naval activity, showing how ships were evolved to meet the circumstances of the different areas in which they had to operate, the different functions they needed to fulfil, and the changing nature of their enemies.

Widor

A Life beyond the Toccata

Widor: A Life beyond the Toccata brings to light the life and work of one of France’s most distinguished musicians in the most complete biography in any language of Charles-Marie Widor. He is considered one of the greatest organists of his time, a prolific composer in nearly every genre, professor of organ and composition at the Paris Conservatory, academician and administrator at the Institute of France, journalist, conductor, music editor, scholar, correspondent, inspired visionary, and man of deep culture.

China and the Globalization of Biomedicine

Today China is a major player in advancing the frontiers of biomedicine, yet previous accounts have examined only whether medical ideas and institutions created in the West were successfully transferred to China. This is the first book to demonstrate the role China played in creating a globalized biomedicine between 1850 and 1950. Scholars based in China, the United States, and the United Kingdom make the case that developments in biomedicine in China such as the discovery of new diseases, the opening of the medical profession to women, the mass production of vaccines, and the delivery of healthcare to poor rural areas should be at the center of our understanding of biomedicine, not at the periphery.

Beethoven’s Conversation Books

Volume 2: Nos. 9 to 16 (March 1820 to September 1820)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is recognized the world over as a composer of musical masterpieces exhibiting heroic strength, particularly in the face of his increasing deafness from ca. 1798. By 1818, the Viennese composer had begun carrying blank booklets with him, for his acquaintances to jot their sides of conversations, while he answered aloud. A complete new edition of Beethoven’s conversation books, now translated into English in their entirety for the first time. Covering a period associated with the revolutionary style of what we call “late Beethoven”, these often lively and compelling conversations are now finally accessible in English for the scholar and Beethoven-lover.