Books to Look out for in December 2022

As the year draws to a close and December is upon us, you will find new releases from Boydell & Brewer! It’s an extra long list this month, so don’t forget to scroll to the bottom for a special discount on any of these books. Until next time!

The Mysterious Death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey

by Andrea McKenzie

On a cold October afternoon in 1678, the Westminster justice of the peace Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey left his home in Charing Cross and never returned. Five days later, wild speculation morphed into a moral panic after Godfrey’s body was discovered in a ditch, impaled on his own sword in an apparent clumsily staged suicide. Speculation about Godfrey’s death dovetailed with suspicions about secret diplomacy at the court of Charles II, contributing to the emergence of a partisan press and an oppositional political culture in which the most fantastical claims were not only believable but plausible. This book presents an anatomy of a conspiratorial crisis that shook the foundations of late Stuart England, eroding public faith in authority and official sources of information.

Volume 4: Nos. 32 to 43 (May 1823 to September 1823)

Edited and translated by Theodore Albrecht

A complete new edition of Beethoven’s conversation books, in 12 volumes, 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 lively and compelling conversations are now finally accessible in English for the scholar and Beethoven-lover.

by Margaret R Greer

A pioneer of early modern feminism, María de Zayas y Sotomayor wrote poetry, drama and prose but is best known for two page-turning collections of short stories: Exemplary Tales of Love (1637) and Tales of Disillusion (1647). This book provides an engaging introduction to Zayas and her work. It begins by relating what we know of her life, placing Zayas in her socio-political and economic context and addressing the issue of women’s literacy. Following chapters examine her depiction of sexual desire, violence and humour in her tales; her narrative structures; and her oral style. The book then turns to identity construction in her tales and in society, analysing questions of gender, class, family and ‘race’, and to her treatment of religion, magic and the supernatural. The final chapters explore Zayas’s status as a proto-feminist; her early modern reception in Spain and elsewhere; and various critical readings of her work.

Edited by Christopher Dyer

Published to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the Dugdale Society, this collection analyses the ways in which writing of local history has changed over the last hundred years. With chapters that cover a range of political, social, economic, cultural, architectural and religious subjects from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries, this book will appeal not just to those interested in the local history of Warwickshire, but also to those concerned with how local history is researched and written.

Edited by Laura Watson, Ita Beausang and Jennifer O’Connor-Madsen

Spanning several centuries, the book highlights composers and performers in classical music, Irish traditional music, and contemporary art music whose contributions have previously been marginalised. This collection shines a spotlight on women who engaged with music in a variety of settings, and who built infrastructures such as festivals and educational institutions which remain at the heart of the country’s musical life today. Thus, the book reconsiders the intersections of music, gender, and Irish society, including how the national emblem of the harp was recast as a symbol of Irish womanhood.

The Politics of Knowledge & Public Life

Edited by Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, Jonathon L. Earle, Nakanyike B. Musisi and Edgar C. Taylor

Decolonization of knowledge has become a major issue in African Studies, brought to the fore by social movements from #RhodesMustFall to #BlackLivesMatter. This timely book explores the politics and disputed character of knowledge production in colonial and postcolonial Uganda, where efforts to generate forms of knowledge and solidarity that transcend colonial epistemologies draw on long histories of resistance and refusal. Bringing together scholars from Africa, Europe and North America, the contributors in this volume analyse how knowledge has been created, mobilized, and contested across a wide range of Ugandan contexts. In so doing, they reveal how Ugandans have built, disputed, and reimagined institutions of authority and knowledge production in ways that disrupt the colonial frames that continue to shape scholarly analyses and state structures.

by Steven D. Martinson

The name Friedrich Nietzsche resonates around the world. Although known primarily as a philosopher, Nietzsche began his writing career while still a boy with literary texts: poetry, prose, and dramas. This is the first extensive study in English of those works. It understands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia up through the publication of The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music in 1872. It makes available in both German and in English translation, and with commentary, almost all of Nietzsche’s early poetry and extensive excerpts from the early prose and dramas.

The World Keeps Changing to Remain the Same

by Mario Higa

Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is a world-class writer and arguably the greatest of Brazilian literature. Susan Sontag deemed him “the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America,” and Harold Bloom, “the supreme black literary artist to date.” This book guides the reader through Machado’s biography, times, and critical reception. It examines his various personas – the translator, poet, playwright, critic, cronista, short story writer, and novelist – paying particular attention to his fictional prose, which most clearly conveys his acerbic criticism of Brazilian society and his deft view of the human condition. The book closes with an updated list of Machado’s works available in English translation and a selection of further critical studies.


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