17Th Century category: 857 books

The Great Fire of 1666 was one of the greatest catastrophes to befall London in its long history. While its impact on London and its built environment has been studied and documented, its impact on Londoners has been overlooked. This book makes full and systematic use of the wealth of manuscript sources...

The German Landsknechte (German plural, singular Landsknecht), meaning "servants of the land", were colourful mercenary soldiers with a redoubtable reputation, who took over the Swiss forces' legacy and became the most formidable military force of the late 15th and throughout 16th century Europe,...

This book discusses the impact of cameralism on the practices of governance, early modern state-building and economy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. It argues that the cameralist conception of state and economy - a form of 'science' of government dedicated to reforming society while...

From the moment governments began making money from levying duty on imported goods, a smuggling trade developed to avoid paying such taxes. Whilst the popular image of historic smuggling remains a romantic one, this book makes clear that the illicit trade could be a large-scale and systematic business...

Ailing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French men and women, members of their families, or their local physician or surgeon, could write to high profile physicians and surgeons seeking expert medical advice. This study, the first full-length examination of the practice of consulting by letter,...

Melancholy is rightly taken to be a central topic of concern in early modern culture, and it continues to generate scholarly interest among historians of medicine, literature, psychiatry and religion. This book considerably furthers our understanding of the issue by examining the extensive discussions...

This book places childbirth in early-modern England within a wider network of social institutions and relationships. Starting with illegitimacy - the violation of the marital norm - it proceeds through marriage to the wider gender-order and so to the ’ceremony of childbirth’, the popular ritual...

Armed with pistols and wearing jackboots, Bishop Henry Compton rode out in 1688 against his King but in defence of the Church of England and its bishops. His actions are a dramatic but telling indication of what was at stake for bishops in early modern England and Compton's action at the height of...

On the morning of the 19th of April, 1792, after weeks of stormy agitation in Paris, the Ministers of Louis XVI. brought down a letter from the King to the Legislative Assembly of France. The letter was brief but significant. It announced that the King intended to appear in the Hall of Assembly at...

« Ce sont vos écrits qui m’ont donné envie d’apprendre cette langue ». La langue est l’italien, les écrits sont la première édition des Vite de Vasari et l’auteur de cette lettre est un Flamand, Lambert Lombard, artiste et lettré renommé. La diffusion européenne des Vite fut immédiate,...

Louis XIV, the highly-feted “Sun King”, was renowned for his political and cultural influence and for raising France to a new level of prominence in seventeenth-century Europe. And yet, as Antonia Fraser keenly describes, he was equally legendary in the domestic sphere. Indeed, a panoply of women—his...

This antiquarian book contains Alexandre Dumas’s work, “The Cenci”. It was first published as part of his eight-volume series “Celebrated Crimes” (1839–40), and recounts the shocking story of the the Cenci family. Extremely powerful and well-known in sixteenth century Rome, the story of...

The sixth of nine volumes in the major Penguin History of Britain series, A Monarchy Transformed narrates the tempestuous political events of the Stuart dynasty. It charts the reigns of six monarchs, and the course of two revolutions as well as religious upheavals that shook the beliefs of seventeenth-century Britons to the core.

Here, in this stirring, vivid book, historian Derek B. Lange uses The Hague as the focal point for a sweeping, panoramic history of the Netherlands. One seventeenth-century visitor called The Hague "the mightiest village in Europe" - an epithet that could still be used today to describe...