Books to Look out for in May 2022

A memoir with a ‘double heartbeat’, a three-volume edition providing translations of the Goldsmiths’ Company Register of Deeds, the memoirs of the pioneering Danish silent film star Asta Nielsen in English translation for the first time; these are just a few of the new titles published this month from Boydell & Brewer. Enjoy this preview and don’t forget that you can find a full list of forthcoming paperbacks when visiting this page.

They Called You Dambudzo

A Memoir
by Flora Veit-Wild

After reading such an intense and passionate memoir so masterfully crafted and narrated by an accomplished literary critic, one can only recommend it most strongly to every lover of literature.” 
IFE: Journal of the Institute of Cultural Studies

Compelling memoir of Flora Veit-Wild and her relationship with the Zimbabwean novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist Dambudzo Marechera, one of Africa’s most innovative and subversive writers and a significant voice in contemporary world literature.

Jacana: Southern Africa.

The Register of the Goldsmiths’ Company: Deeds and Documents, c. 1190 to c. 1666

Edited and translated by Lisa Jefferson

The Goldsmiths’ Company Register of Deeds has never been fully utilised by historians but reveals much about much about the precise location of properties and their inhabitants. Wills, often appearing in the Register, help to piece together a social history of the medieval and early modern period. Many documents also concern women, either acting solely in their own name or jointly with a husband, sometimes also appearing as daughters or sisters, providing evidence regarding their legal position during the medieval and early modern period. The editing and translation of these documents (from Latin and French into modern day English) will be of great use to historians interested in the buildings of medieval and Tudor London and their use as personal or business premises. But beyond these obvious confines, these so far hidden sources will help to rewrite a social, legal, and economic history of medieval and Tudor London.

PRE-PUBLICATION PRICE: £395/$575. Rises to full price £450/$650 upon publication.

The Silent Muse

The Memoirs of Asta Nielsen
Edited and translated by Julie K. Allen

The Danish actress Asta Nielsen (1881-1972) was a global star without parallel in the silent cinema era, whose work has enduring value for transnational film history. Her lively memoirs, first published in Danish in 1945-46 and in multiple Danish, German, and Russian editions since, have never been available in English until now. The recent growth of interest in women’s contributions to early film makes Julie K. Allen’s translation particularly timely. The text is accompanied by a scholarly introduction and annotations as well as a foreword by film scholar Jennifer M. Bean.

Runes: a Handbook

by Michael P. Barnes

New in paperback!

An immaculately scholarly and notably rational introduction to runology. [It] tells the reader everything he or she needs to know about runes and how to study them. It will be invaluable to students.”
Times Literary Supplement

Not only a handbook but a textbook for the study of runes.” CHOICE

Offers a full introduction to and survey of runes and runology: their history, how they were used, and their interpretation.

Coming of Age in the Afro-Latin American Novel

Blackness, Religion, Immigration
by Bonnie S. Wasserman

The centuries-old European genre of the coming-of-age story has been transformed by contemporary Afro-Latin American novelists to address key aspects of the diaspora in various nations of the Caribbean and Latin America. While attention to Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Brazilian literature has increased in recent decades, few critics have focused specifically on the Afro-Latin American Bildungsroman. In this study, author Bonnie Wasserman provides a far-reaching and compassionate analysis of novels by eight major writers from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Brazil, exploring such important themes as the intergenerational effects of slavery, the pull of immigration, and the influence of religion on young people’s lives.


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