The Sixteenth Century in 100 Women

This retelling of the sixteenth century introduces the reader to a gallery of amazing women from queens to commoners, who navigated the patriarchal world in memorable and life-changing ways all around the world. Amy Licence has scoured the records from Europe and beyond to compile this testament to female lives and achievements, telling the stories of mistresses and martyrs, witches and muses, pirates and jesters, doctors and astronomers, escapees and murderesses, colonists and saints. Read about the wife of astrologer John Dee, the women who inspired Michelangelo, the jester who saved the life of Henry IV of France, the beloved mistress of the Sultan Suleiman the Great, the wife of Ivan the Terrible, whose murder unleashed terror, set against the everyday lives of those women who did not make the history books.Introducing a number of new faces, including tales of women from Morocco, Nigeria, Japan, Chile, India and Turkey, this book will delight those who are looking to broaden their knowledge on the sixteenth century and celebrate the lost women of the past.

Biographies & Memoirs

Licence, Amy

Historical

Pen & Sword History

The great Elizabeth Raffald used to be a household name, and her list of accomplishments would make even the highest of achievers feel suddenly impotent. After becoming housekeeper at Arley Hall in Cheshire at age twenty-five, she married and moved to Manchester, transforming the Manchester food scene and business community, writing the first A to Z directory and creating the first domestic servants registry office, the first temping agency if you will. Not only that, she set up a cookery school and ran a high class tavern attracting both gentry and nobility. She reputedly gave birth to sixteen daughters, wrote book on midwifery and was an effective exorciser of evil spirits.\nThese achievements gave her notoriety and standing in Manchester, but it all pales in comparison to her biggest achievement; her cookery book The Experienced English Housekeeper. Published in 1769, it ran to over twenty editions and brought her fame and fortune.\nBut then disaster; her fortune lost, spent by her alcoholic husband. Bankrupted twice, she spent her final years in a pokey coffeehouse in a seedy part of town.\nHer book, however, lived on. Influential and often imitated (but never bettered), it became the must-have volume for any kitchen, and it helped form our notion of traditional British food as we think of it today.\nTo tell Elizabeth’s tumultuous rise and fall story, historian Neil Buttery doesn’t just delve into the history of food in the eighteenth century, he has to look at trade and empire, domestic service, the agricultural revolution, women’s rights, publishing and copyright law, gentlemen’s clubs and societies, the horse races, the defeminization of midwifery, and the paranormal, to name but a few.\nElizabeth Raffald should be revered, not unknown. How can this be? Perhaps we should ask Mrs Beeton…

Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald, England's Most Influential Housekeeper

Buttery, Neil

Community & Culture

King Henry VIII and Emperor Charles V both ruled for almost forty years at a time when momentous changes in society, politics and religion were taking place in England and across Europe. Richard Heath takes a fresh look at these two individuals and the importance of their relationship in determining both their immediate policies and the future of their lands.\nAlthough always rivals for status, Henry and Charles, despite their very different temperaments, had much in common. Both had been brought up as devout Christians and in the chivalric tradition. Ties between their lands (by 1520 Charles was Holy Roman Emperor as well as ruling Spain, the Low Countries and much of Italy) were close. There were alliances against a common enemy, France, valuable trading links and a personal connection – Henry was married to Charles’ aunt, Catherine of Aragon.\nThe book provides a clear account of their complex and ever-changing relationship, both personal and political. It reveals the goodwill that existed between them, particularly during Emperor Charles’ lengthy state visit to England in 1522. It also shows how this proved impossible to maintain once Henry decided to end his marriage to Catherine and his subsequent rejection of papal authority. On the occasions when they planned military action together their alliance collapsed in mutual recriminations. Yet they were officially at war for only a few months and their armies never faced each other.\nThe duplicitous world of international diplomacy, with dynastic marriages, fine words and broken promises, provides the backdrop to this fascinating story. In their search for honor and dynastic security, so important to both monarchs, the decisions of one could rarely be ignored by the other.

Henry VIII and Charles V: Rival Monarchs, Uneasy Allies

History

HEATH, RICHARD

Europe

2,000 Years of Manchester

Kathryn Coase

Elizabeth I's Secret Lover: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester

Robert Stedall

Explore eight hundred years of lust, love, and loss. The author takes the reader on a journey from medieval Courtly Love, through to the sexual license of the Restoration, and Victorian propriety. Pick up historical 'dating tips', from how to court (or be courted); write romantic love letters, give and receive gifts, propose and pose as a sighing swain. A historical approach to the problem of finding a mate, with case studies of classic romantic mistakes and plenty of unusual tales. In the 14th century young men tried to impress the ladies with their footwear, donning shoes with pointed toes so long that they had to be secured with whalebone presumably because size mattered!

A History of Courtship: 800 Years of Seduction Techniques

Tania O'Donnell

Historical Study & Educational Resources

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