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      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        February 2025

        Unburied

        The true story of Hannah Beswick, the Manchester Mummy

        by Hannah Priest

        The macabre tale of an eighteenth-century woman immortalised in folklore as the 'Manchester Mummy'. In 1835, the Manchester Natural History Society opened the doors of its museum. Taking pride of place in its collection were three mummies: one was Egyptian, one was Peruvian and one was a woman from Cheetham Hill. This is the first time the true story of Hannah Beswick, the so-called 'Manchester Mummy', has been told. Over the years, explanations for the Manchester Mummy have ranged from the chilling - Hannah's fear of being buried alive - to the downright bizarre - the legend of her buried gold - but the truth is more complex. Exploring this fascinating episode from museum history, Unburied sheds light on the Victorian turn to the macabre and changing attitudes to the display of human remains. It debunks the legends and asks what Hannah Beswick can tell us about death and dying, mummies and museums.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2017

        Asia in Western fiction

        by Robin Winks

        Any reader who has ever visited Asia knows that the great bulk of Western-language fiction about Asian cultures turns on stereotypes. This book, a collection of essays, explores the problem of entering Asian societies through Western fiction, since this is the major port of entry for most school children, university students and most adults. In the thirteenth century, serious attempts were made to understand Asian literature for its own sake. Hau Kioou Choaan, a typical Chinese novel, was quite different from the wild and magical pseudo-Oriental tales. European perceptions of the Muslim world are centuries old, originating in medieval Christendom's encounter with Islam in the age of the Crusades. There is explicit and sustained criticism of medieval mores and values in Scott's novels set in the Middle Ages, and this is to be true of much English-language historical fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even mediocre novels take on momentary importance because of the pervasive power of India. The awesome, remote and inaccessible Himalayas inevitably became for Western writers an idealised setting for novels of magic, romance and high adventure, and for travellers' tales that read like fiction. Chinese fictions flourish in many guises. Most contemporary Hong Kong fiction reinforced corrupt mandarins, barbaric punishments and heathens. Of the novels about Japan published after 1945, two may serve to frame a discussion of Japanese behaviour as it could be observed (or imagined) by prisoners of war: Black Fountains and Three Bamboos.

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        November 2019

        Migrant architects of the NHS

        South Asian doctors and the reinvention of British general practice (1940s-1980s)

        by Julian Simpson, Keir Waddington

        Migrant architects of the NHS draws on forty-five oral history interviews and extensive archival research to offer a radical reappraisal of how the National Health Service was made. It tells the story of migrant South Asian doctors who became general practitioners in the NHS. Imperial legacies, professional discrimination and an exodus of UK-trained doctors combined to direct these doctors towards work as GPs in some of the most deprived parts of the UK. In some areas, they made up over half of the general practitioner workforce. The NHS was structurally dependent on them and they shaped British society and medicine through their agency. Aimed at students and academics with interests in the history of immigration, immigration studies, the history of medicine, South Asian studies and oral history. It will also be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about how Empire and migration have contributed to making Britain what it is today.

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        September 2023

        Situating religion and medicine in Asia

        Methodological insights and innovations

        by Michael Stanley-Baker

        This edited volume presents the latest research on the intersection of religion and medicine in Asia. It features chapters by internationally known scholars, who bring to bear a range of methodological and geographic expertise on this topic. The book's central question is to what extent 'religion' and 'medicine' have overlapped or interrelated in various Asian societies. Collectively, the contributions explore a number of related issues, such as: which societies separated out religious from medical concerns, at which times and in what ways? Where have medicine and religion converged, and how has such knowledge been defined by scholars and cultural actors? Are 'religion' and 'medicine' the best terms by which scholars can grapple with knowledge about the sacred and the self, destiny and disease?

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2023

        The supernatural in early modern Scotland

        by Julian Goodare, Martha McGill

        This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and elite understandings of the supernatural.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2001

        Ottonian Germany

        The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg

        by Rosemary Horrox, Simon Maclean

        The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg has long been recognised as one of the most important sources for the history of the tenth and early eleventh centuries, especially for the history of the Ottonian Empire. Thietmar's testimony also has special value because of his geographical location, in eastern Saxony, on the boundary between German and Slavic cultures. He is arguably the single most important witness to the early history of Poland, and his detailed descriptions of Slavic folklore are the earliest on record. This is a very important source in the medieval period, translated here in its entirety for the first time. It relates to an area of medieval studies generally dominated by German scholars, in which Anglo-phone scholars are beginning to make a substantial contribution. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        August 2010

        The Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics, 1849–1950

        by Miriam Moffitt

        This work details traces the origins, development and impact of the proselytizing organization, the Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics, from its Protestant foundation during the famine of 1845-47 to the early decades of Irish Free State. It argues that the foundation of this ostensibly religious society was also underpinned by social, political, and economic factors and demonstrates that by the mid 1850s the mission operated on a very substantial scale. Moffitt examines the mission's role in the shifting political realities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The impact of this inter-faith power struggle and its legacy to the present day are explored by examining contemporary sources, folklore evidence, and the depiction of proselytizing missions in both Catholic and Protestant denomination literature and fictional writings. ;

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2024

        The Legacy of John Polidori

        The Romantic Vampire and its Progeny

        by Sam George, Bill Hughes

        John Polidori's novella The Vampyre (1819) is perhaps 'the most influential horror story of all time' (Frayling). Polidori's story transformed the shambling, mindless monster of folklore into a sophisticated, seductive aristocrat that stalked London society rather than being confined to the hinterlands of Eastern Europe. Polidori's Lord Ruthven was thus the ancestor of the vampire as we know it. This collection explores the genesis of Polidori's vampire. It then tracks his bloodsucking progeny across the centuries and maps his disquieting legacy. Texts discussed range from the Romantic period, including the fascinating and little-known The Black Vampyre (1819), through the melodramatic vampire theatricals in the 1820s, to contemporary vampire film, paranormal romance, and science fiction. They emphasise the background of colonial revolution and racial oppression in the early nineteenth century and the cultural shifts of postmodernity.

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        Religious subjects depicted in art
        October 2009

        Pyostryye skazki

        By V. F. Odoyevsky

        by Neil Cornwell

        Odoyevsky's cycle of short stories, Pyostryye skazki (1833), is a transitional work between his writings of the 1820s (in particular his contributions to Mnemozina, 1824-5) and his mature period which culminated in Russkiye nochi (1844). Pyostryye skazki thus represents a romantic amalgam of elements drawn from fairy-tale and folklore, the fantastic and the society tale, serving didactic, satirical and whimsical purposes. The narration supposedly comes from an authorial alter ego, one Iriney Modestovich Gomozeyko, who occupies a place in Russian literature of the 1830s alongside Pushkin's Ivan Petrovich Belkin and Gogol's Rudyy Pan'ko. While individual stories from the cycle reappeared during the Soviet revival of interest in Odoyevsky, this edition, which includes an introduction, notes and a short bibliography, was the first integral (re)publication since 1833 of one of the basic texts of Russian Romanticism.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2020

        Bog bodies

        Face to face with the past

        by Melanie Giles

        The 'bog bodies' of north-western Europe have captured the imaginations of poets and archaeologists alike, allowing us to come face-to-face with individuals from the past. Their exceptional preservation permits us to examine minute details of their lives and deaths, making us reflect poignantly on our own mortality. But, as this book argues, the bodies must be resituated within a turbulent world of endemic violence and change. Reinterpreting the latest continental research and new discoveries, and featuring a ground-breaking 'cold case' forensic study of Worsley Man, Manchester Museum's 'bog head', it brings the bogs to life through both natural history and folklore, revealing them as places that were rich and fertile yet dangerous. The book also argues that these remains do not just pose practical conservation problems but also philosophical dilemmas, compounded by the critical debate on if - and how - they should be displayed.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2002

        The Scottish witch-hunt in context

        by Julian Goodare

        A collection of essays on Scottish witchcraft and witch-hunting, which covers the whole period of the Scottish witch-hunt, from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth. Includes studies of particular witchcraft panics such as a reassessment of the role of King James VI. Covers a wide range of topics concerned with Scottish witch-hunting and places it in the context of other topics such as gender relations, folklore, magic and healing, and moral regulation by the church and state. Provides a comparative dimension of witch-hunting beyond Scotland - one on the global context, and one comparing Scotland with England. It is a showcase for the latest thinking on the subject and will be of interest to all scholars studying witchcraft in early modern Europe, as well as the general reader wanting to move beyond shallow and sensational accounts of a subject of compelling in. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        August 2007

        Monstrous adaptations

        Generic and thematic mutations in horror film

        by Edited by Richard Hand and Jay McRoy

        The fifteen groundbreaking essays contained in this book address the concept of adaptation in relation to horror cinema. Adaptation is not only a key cultural practice and strategy for filmmakers, but it is also a theme of major importance within horror cinema as a hole. The history of the genre is full of adaptations that have drawn from fiction or folklore, or that have assumed the shape of remakes of pre-existing films. The horror genre itself also abounds with its own myriad transformations and transmutations. The essays within this volume engage with an impressive range of horror texts, from the earliest silent horror films by Thomas Edison and Jean Epstein through to important contemporary phenomena, such as the western appropriation of Japanese horror motifs. Classic works by Alfred Hitchcock, David Cronenberg and Abel Ferrara receive cutting-edge re-examination, as do unjustly neglected works by Mario Bava, Guillermo del Toro and Stan Brakhage.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        Monstrous adaptations

        Generic and thematic mutations in horror film

        by Richard Hand, Jay McRoy

        The fifteen groundbreaking essays contained in this book address the concept of adaptation in relation to horror cinema. Adaptation is not only a key cultural practice and strategy for filmmakers, but it is also a theme of major importance within horror cinema as a hole. The history of the genre is full of adaptations that have drawn from fiction or folklore, or that have assumed the shape of remakes of pre-existing films. The horror genre itself also abounds with its own myriad transformations and transmutations. The essays within this volume engage with an impressive range of horror texts, from the earliest silent horror films by Thomas Edison and Jean Epstein through to important contemporary phenomena, such as the western appropriation of Japanese horror motifs. Classic works by Alfred Hitchcock, David Cronenberg and Abel Ferrara receive cutting-edge re-examination, as do unjustly neglected works by Mario Bava, Guillermo del Toro and Stan Brakhage.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        November 2022

        Hybrid healing

        by Lori Ann Garner, James Paz, David Matthews, Anke Bernau

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      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 2021

        Old Fortunatus

        By Thomas Dekker

        by David McInnis

        With its fantasy of magical travel and inexhaustible riches, Thomas Dekker's Old Fortunatus is the quintessential early modern journeying play. The adventures of Fortunatus and his sons, aided by a magical purse and wishing-hat, offers the period's most overt celebration of the pleasures of travel, as well as a sustained critique of the dangers of intemperance and prodigality. Written following a period of financial difficulty for Dekker, the play is also notable for its fascination with the symbolic, mercantile and ethical uses of gold. This Revels Plays edition is the first fully annotated, single-volume critical edition of Old Fortunatus. It offers scholarly discussion of the play's performance and textual history, including attention to the German version printed and performed in the early seventeenth century. It provides a long overdue critical reappraisal of this unjustly neglected play.

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