New light is shed on everyday life in the middle ages in Great Britain and continental Europe through this unique survey of its food culture. Students and other readers will learn about the common foodstuffs available, how and what they cooked, ate, and drank, what the regional cuisines were like, how the different classes entertained and celebrated, and what restrictions they followed for health and faith reasons. Fascinating information is provided, such as on imitation food, kitchen humor, and medical ideas. Many period recipes and quotations flesh out the narrative.

Between the early sixteenth and the early eighteenth centuries, the character of English social policy and social welfare changed fundamentally. Aspirations for wholesale reformation were replaced by more specific schemes for improvement. Paul Slack's analysis of this decisive shift of focus, derived from his 1995 Ford Lectures, examines its intellectual and political roots. He describes the policies and rhetoric of the commonwealthsmen, godly magistrates, Stuart monarchs, Interregnum projectors, and early Hanoverian philanthropists, and the institutions — notably hospitals and workhouses - which they created or reformed. In a series of thematic chapters, each linked to a chronological period, he brings together what might seem to have been disparate notions and activities, and shows that they expressed a sequence of coherent approaches towards public welfare. The result is a strikingly original study, which throws fresh light on the formation of civic consciousness and the emergence of a civil society in early modern England.

Reproduction of the original: The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 by Frederick Engels

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.