Journal articles on the topic 'Royal Library (Windsor Castle)'

For almost six and a half centuries, the wardens (and later the Deans) of St George's Chapel have been lodged in the extreme north-east corner of the Lower Ward at Windsor Castle. From fairly modest beginnings, the house developed into a much grander building, after the construction of a huge new chapel in the late fifteenth century. After the Elizabethan settlement it developed further and was a childhood home of Sir Christopher Wren, before being vandalized in the Commonwealth period. Following the Reformation, it was reconstructed and then given a grand new front in 1710 for the first of a series of aristocratic Deans. The final major rebuilding was carried out in 1831 immediately after the demise of George IV, and the house was used by Queen Victoria as a sort of ‘confessional’ and very private access to the royal pew after her widowhood. Today it is still a fine house after being reduced in size for twentieth-century Deans who do not have large families and many servants. Its rendered south front can still be seen immediately behind the buttressed east end of the Albert Memorial Chapel (fig. 1).

For almost six and a half centuries, the wardens (and later the Deans) of St George's Chapel have been lodged in the extreme north-east corner of the Lower Ward at Windsor Castle. From fairly modest beginnings, the house developed into a much grander building, after the construction of a huge new chapel in the late fifteenth century. After the Elizabethan settlement it developed further and was a childhood home of Sir Christopher Wren, before being vandalized in the Commonwealth period. Following the Reformation, it was reconstructed and then given a grand new front in 1710 for the first of a series of aristocratic Deans. The final major rebuilding was carried out in 1831 immediately after the demise of George IV, and the house was used by Queen Victoria as a sort of ‘confessional’ and very private access to the royal pew after her widowhood. Today it is still a fine house after being reduced in size for twentieth-century Deans who do not have large families and many servants. Its rendered south front can still be seen immediately behind the buttressed east end of the Albert Memorial Chapel (fig. 1).

In this paper, we discuss the work on comets of Caroline Herschel, the first female comet-hunter. After leaving Bath for the environs of Windsor Castle and eventually Slough, she discovered at least eight comets, five of which were reported in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. We consider her public image, astronomers' perceptions of her contributions, and the style of her astronomical drawings that changed with the technological developments in astronomical illustration

A comprehensive study is attempted of the pre-1600 monuments in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Use is made for the first time of a key source, the set of plans of the chapel floors made by Henry Emlyn in 1789. These show the chapel once W have contained a large collection of monumental brasses. The plans are examined alongside the evidence of the extant indents in the chapel and cloister to reconstruct the original lay-out of the brasses. It is demonstrated that the great majority of the brasses commemorated the deans and canons who served the chapel. It is argued that the character of the chapel as a mausoleum changed after 1475, when Edward IV embarked on the building of the present fabric. From this time, the ranks of the commemorated expanded to include layfolk, particularly Knights of the Garter and men with royal connections, while, alongside the brasses, big sculpted monuments were commissioned in the side chapels of the building.

In the past twenty years there has been a renaissance in Jacobite studies in Britain and North America. It started with the publication in 1970 of Romney Sedgwick's The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1715–1754, in which the post-1715 Tory party was resurrected from the untimely death to which earlier historiography had consigned it in the face of the so-called Whig hegemony under Walpole and his successors. This section of Sedgwick's volumes was the work of Eveline Cruickshanks, who not only showed that there had been an active Tory party under Walpole, but also claimed that it had been essentially a Jacobite party. Dr. Cruickshanks has, since 1970, produced a book, several articles, and essays expanding her thesis. She has been joined in the quest for Jacobites by many others, and the flow of work on Jacobitism seems unabated. This body of work has, however, left other historians with a good deal of unease, not only over the conclusions reached, but also the methodology used and the sources upon which these conclusions are based (most notably the uncritical use of the Stuart Papers in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle).

Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, was the most important collector in early 17th Century Britain. Much attention has been paid to his collections of painting and sculpture, his patronage of painters such as Rubens and Van Dyck and architects such as Inigo Jones, and his search through Greece and Turkey for antiquities. Little, however, has been written on the Arundel Library, which was equally famous. The cause is not hard to find: the library has been dispersed whereas the marbles and antiquities have found a home at Oxford, the manuscripts at the British Library and the College of Arms, and the paintings and sculpture remain identifiable whether at Arundel Castle or in British, continental or American museums. Yet the Arundel Library is of great significance: to the history of book–collecting by the great bibliophiles Willibald Pirckheimer and Arundel himself; to the study of the reading practices and libraries of members of the Howard family, possibly including Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and, certainly, his son, Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton; and, more generally, to the history of the book in the Renaissance and early modern Europe and the concomitant study of communities of readers.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The paper presents archaeological and architectural research in the Royal Castle in Warsaw where a combination of image- and range-based 3D acquisition was applied. The area examined included excavations situated inside the Tower and near its outer western wall. The work was carried out at various periods and in different weather conditions. As part of the measurements, laser scanning was performed (with a Z+F 5006h scanner) and a series of close-range images were taken. It was important to integrate the data acquired to create a comprehensive documentation of archaeological excavations. When data was acquired from TLS together with photogrammetric data (in different measurement periods), the points' displacements were controlled and analysed. The process of orienting and processing the terrestrial images included photographs taken during the inventory of the tower (Canon 5D Mark II) and photographs provided by the Castle's employees (Canon PowerShot G5 X). Agisoft PhotoScan software was used to orient and process the terrestrial images, and LupoScan for the TLS data. In order to integrate the TLS data and the clouds of points from the photographs from the various stages, they were processed into a raster form; our own software (based on the OpenCV library and the Structure-from-Motion method) and LupoScan software were used to interconnect the multi-temporal and multi-sensor data sets. As a result of processing photographs and TLS data, point clouds in an external reference system were obtained. This data was then used to study the thickness of the walls of the Justice Court Tower, to analyse the course of the retaining wall, and to generate the orthoimages necessary for chronological analysis.</p>

AbstractThomas Salusbury's Life of Galileo (1664) was the first substantial biography of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) in any language. All copies but one were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The surviving copy was lost in the library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle in the mid-nineteenth century. With the auction of the library in 2004–7, it temporarily re-emerged. This essay presents a preliminary description of the copy and its contents. It argues that to understand the existence and nature of the book we need to explore the social relations governing the control of information in early modern Europe. It is shown that Salusbury's project was launched in the face of social and political information blockades and in direct competition with other similar ventures. In particular, rumours of the future publication of an official biography by Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703) and continuing negotiations over the memory and reputation of Galileo in Italy presented insurmountable barriers to the successful completion of his project. Despite these problems Salusbury's biography, produced on the margins of the emerging Royal Society, presents a spirited portrait of Galileo. Moreover, nearly four hundred years after the event, it offers a new and provocative explanation of the famous trial.

Since 1990 I have been working on a critical edition of records of the Royal African Company of England (hereafter RAC), preserved in the Rawlinson collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This material comprises letter-books containing correspondence received at the RAC's West African headquarters, Cape Coast Castle, mainly from the Company's other factories on the Gold Coast, during the period from 1681 to 1699 (though with some gaps). Two volumes of this correspondence, covering the years 1681-83 and 1685-88, were published in 1997 and 2001; a third and final volume, presenting correspondence from 1691-99, is now published.Although attention was drawn to this material in the 1970s, only limited use has hitherto been made of it by historians. The only substantial published study of the Gold Coast which makes extensive use of the Rawlinson material is that by Ray Kea (1982), which deals with general social and economic structures and their transformations, rather than with the detailed course of events. The general neglect of this material has undoubtedly been due, in large part, to its user-unfriendly arrangement, the letters being entered according to the date of their receipt at Cape Coast, without regard for geographical provenance, which makes the process of locating documents which relate to any particular locality extremely tedious—an obstacle which its publication has now removed. The potential utility of this material in the detailed reconstruction of events on the Gold Coast is illustrated here by the case of the “Komenda Wars” of 1694-1700.

AbstractThe nucleus of the collection of paintings in the Mauritshuis around 130 pictures - came from the hereditary stadholder Prince William v. It is widely believed to have become, the property of the State at the beginning of the 19th century, but how this happened is still. unclear. A hand-written notebook on this subject, compiled in 1876 by - the director Jonkheer J. K. L. de Jonge is in the archives of the Mauritshuis Note 4). On this basis a clnsor systematic and chronological investigation has been carried out into the stadholder's. property rights in respect of his collectcons and the changes these underwent between 1795 and 1816. Royal decrees and other documents of the period 1814- 16 in particular giae a clearer picture of whal look place. 0n 18 January 1795 William V (Fig. 2) left the Netherlands and fled to England. On 22 January the Dutch Republic was occupied by French armies. Since France had declared war on the stadholder, the ownership of all his propergy in the Netherlands, passed to France, in accordance with the laws of war of the time. His famous art collections on the Builerth of in. The Hague were taken to Paris, but the remaining art objects, distributed over his various houses, remained in the Netherlands. On 16 May 1795 the French concluded a treaty with the Batavian Republic, recognizing it as an independent power. All the properties of William v in the Netehrlands but not those taken to France, were made over to the Republic (Note 14), which proceeded to sell objects from the collections, at least seven sales taking place until 1798 (Note 15). A plan was then evolved to bring the remaining treasures together in a museum in emulation of the French. On the initiative of J. A. Gogel, the Nationale Konst-Galerij', the first national museum in the .Netherlands, was estahlished in The Hague and opened to the public on ,31 May 1800. Nothing was ever sold from lhe former stadholder's library and in 1798 a Nationale Bibliotheek was founded as well. In 1796, quite soon after the French had carried off the Stadholder, possessions to Paris or made them over to the Batavian Republic, indemnification was already mentioned (Note 19). However, only in the Trealy of Amiens of 180 and a subaequent agreement, between France ararl Prussia of 1 802, in which the Prince of Orarage renounced his and his heirs' rights in the Netherlands, did Prussia provide a certain compensation in the form of l.artds in Weslphalia and Swabia (Note 24) - William v left the management of these areas to the hereditary prince , who had already been involved in the problems oncerning his father's former possessions. In 1804 the Balavian Republic offered a sum of five million guilders 10 plenipotentiaries of the prince as compensation for the sequestrated titles and goods, including furniture, paintings, books and rarities'. This was accepted (Notes 27, 28), but the agreement was never carried out as the Batavian Republic failed to ratify the payment. In the meantime the Nationale Bibliolkeek and the Nationale Konst-Galerij had begun to develop, albeit at first on a small scale. The advent of Louis Napoleon as King of Hollarad in 1806 brought great changes. He made a start on a structured art policy. In 1806 the library, now called `Royal', was moved to the Mauritshuis and in 1808 the collectiorts in The Hague were transferred to Amsterdam, where a Koninklijk Museum was founded, which was housed in the former town hall. This collection was subsequertly to remain in Amsterdam, forming the nucleus of the later Rijksmuseum. The library too was intended to be transferred to Amsterdam, but this never happened and it remained in the Mauritshuis until 1819. Both institutions underwent a great expansion in the period 1806-10, the library's holdings increasing from around 10,000 to over 45,000 books and objects, while the museum acquired a number of paintings, the most important being Rembrandt's Night Watch and Syndics, which were placed in the new museum by the City of Amsterdam in 1808 (Note 44). In 1810 the Netherlands was incorporated into France. In the art field there was now a complete standstill and in 1812 books and in particular prints (around 11,000 of them) were again taken from The Hague to Paris. In November 1813 the French dominion was ended and on 2 December the hereditary prince, William Frederick, was declared sovereign ruler. He was inaugurated as constitutional monarch on 30 March 1814. On January 3rd the provisional council of The Hague had already declared that the city was in (unlawful' possession of a library, a collection of paintings, prints and other objects of art and science and requested the king tot take them back. The war was over and what had been confiscated from William under the laws of war could now be given back, but this never happened. By Royal Decree of 14 January 1814 Mr. ( later Baron) A. J. C. Lampsins (Fig. I ) was commissioned to come to an understanding with the burgomaster of The Hague over this transfer, to bring out a report on the condition of the objects and to formulate a proposal on the measures to be taken (Note 48). On 17 January Lampsins submitted a memorandum on the taking over of the Library as the private property of His Royal Highness the Sovereign of the United Netherlartds'. Although Lampsins was granted the right to bear the title 'Interim Director of the Royal Library' by a Royal Decree of 9 February 1814, William I did not propose to pay The costs himself ; they were to be carried by the Home Office (Note 52). Thus he left the question of ownership undecided. On 18 April Lampsins brought out a detailed report on all the measures to be taken (Appendix IIa ) . His suggestion was that the objects, formerly belonging to the stadholder should be removed from the former royal museum, now the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam and to return the 'Library', as the collectiort of books, paintings and prints in The Hague was called, to the place where they had been in 1795. Once again the king's reaction was not very clear. Among other things, he said that he wanted to wait until it was known how extensive the restitution of objects from Paris would be and to consider in zvhich scholarly context the collections would best, fit (Note 54) . While the ownership of the former collections of Prince William I was thus left undecided, a ruling had already been enacted in respect of the immovable property. By the Constitution of 1814, which came into effect on 30 March, the king was granted a high income, partly to make up for the losses he had sulfered. A Royal Decree of 22 January 1815 does, however, imply that William had renounced the right to his, father's collections, for he let it be known that he had not only accepted the situation that had developed in the Netherlands since 1795, but also wished it to be continued (Note 62). The restitution of the collections carried off to France could only be considered in its entirety after the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815- This was no simple matter, but in the end most, though not all, of the former possessions of William V were returned to the Netherlands. What was not or could not be recovered then (inc.uding 66 paintings, for example) is still in France today (Note 71)- On 20 November 1815 127 paintings, including Paulus Potter's Young Bull (Fig. 15), made a ceremonial entry into The Hague. But on 6 October, before anything had actually been returned, it had already been stipulated by Royal Decree that the control of the objects would hence forlh be in the hands of the State (Note 72). Thus William I no longer regarded his father's collections as the private property of the House of Orange, but he did retain the right to decide on the fulure destiny of the... painting.s and objects of art and science'. For the time being the paintings were replaced in the Gallery on the Buitenhof, from which they had been removed in 1795 (Note 73). In November 1815 the natural history collection was made the property of Leiden University (Note 74), becoming the basis for the Rijksmuseum voor Natuurlijke Historie, The print collection, part of the Royal Library in The Hague, was exchanged in May 1816 for the national collectiort of coins and medals, part of the Rijksmuseum. As of 1 Jufy 1816 directors were appointed for four different institutions in The Hague, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (with the Koninklijk Penningkabinet ) , the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen and the Yoninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Note 80) . From that time these institutions led independenl lives. The king continued to lake a keen interest in them and not merely in respect of collecting Their accommodation in The Hague was already too cramped in 1816. By a Royal Decree of 18 May 1819 the Hotel Huguetan, the former palace of the. crown prince on Lange Voorhout, was earmarked for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the Koninklijk Penningkabinet (Note 87) . while at the king's behest the Mauritshuis, which had been rented up to then, was bought by the State on 27 March 1820 and on IO July allotted to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen and the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Note 88). Only the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen is still in the place assigned to it by William and the collection has meanwhile become so identified with its home that it is generally known as the Mauritshui.s'. William i's most important gift was made in July 1816,just after the foundation of the four royal institutions, when he had deposited most of the objects that his father had taken first to England and later to Oranienstein in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden. The rarities (Fig. 17), curios (Fig. 18) and paintings (Fig. 19), remained there (Note 84), while the other art objects were sorted and divided between the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (the manuscripts and books) and the koninklijk Penningkabinet (the cameos and gems) (Note 85). In 1819 and 182 the king also gave the Koninklijke Bibliotheek an important part of the Nassau Library from the castle at Dillenburg. Clearly he is one of the European monarchs who in the second half of the 18th and the 19th century made their collectiorts accessible to the public, and thus laid the foundatinns of many of today's museums. But William 1 also made purchases on behalf of the institutions he had created. For the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, for example, he had the 'Tweede Historiebijbel', made in Utrecht around 1430, bought in Louvain in 1829 for 1, 134 guilders (Pigs.30,3 I, Note 92). For the Koninkijk Penningkabinet he bought a collection of 62 gems and four cameos , for ,50,000 guilders in 1819. This had belonged to the philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis, the keeper of his father's cabinet of antiquities (Note 95) . The most spectacular acquisition. for the Penninukabinet., however, was a cameo carved in onyx, a late Roman work with the Triumph of Claudius, which the king bought in 1823 for 50,000 guilders, an enormous sum in those days. The Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamhedert also received princely gifts. In 1821- the so-called doll's house of Tzar Peter was bought out of the king's special funds for 2.800 guilders (Figs.33, 34, ,Note 97) , while even in 1838, when no more money was available for art, unnecessary expenditure on luxury' the Von Siebold ethnographical collection was bought at the king's behest for over 55,000 guilders (Note 98). The Koninklijk Kabinel van Schilderyen must have been close to the hearl of the king, who regarded it as an extension of the palace (Notes 99, 100) . The old master paintings he acquzred for it are among the most important in the collection (the modern pictures, not dealt with here, were transferred to the Paviljoen Welgelegen in Haarlem in 1838, Note 104). For instance, in 1820 he bought a portrait of Johan Maurice of Nassau (Fig.35)., while in 1822, against the advice of the then director, he bought Vermeer' s View of Delft for 2,900 guilders (Fig.36, Note 105) and in 1827 it was made known, from Brussels that His Majesty had recommended the purchase of Rogier van der Weyden's Lamentation (Fig.37) . The most spectacular example of the king's love for 'his' museum, however, is the purchase in 1828 of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp for 32,000 guilders. The director of the Rijksmuseum, C. Apostool, cortsidered this Rembrandt'sfinest painting and had already drawn attention to it in 1817, At the king'.s behest the picture, the purchase of which had been financed in part by the sale of a number of painlings from. the Rijksmuseum, was placed in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen in The Hague. On his accession King William I had left the art objects which had become state propery after being ceded by the French to the Batavian Republic in 1795 as they were. He reclaimed the collections carried off to France as his own property, but it can be deduced from the Royal Decrees of 1815 and 1816 that it Was his wish that they should be made over to the State, including those paintings that form the nucleus of the collection in the Mauritshuis. In addition, in 1816 he handed over many art objects which his father had taken with him into exile. His son, William II, later accepted this, after having the matter investigated (Note 107 and Appendix IV). Thus William I'S munificence proves to have been much more extensive than has ever been realized.

Ivan Boserup & Karsten Christensen: Anders Sørensen Vedel’s manuscript about Marshal Stig. Two comments on Svend Clausen’s thesis in Fund og Forskning 55, 2016 Svend Clausen has in vol. 55 of Fund og Forskning called attention to a lost and “forgotten” parchment manuscript described by Anders Sørensen Vedel in 1595 as “The History of Marshal Stig” containing key documents related to the trial which followed the assassination in Finderup Grange of King Eric V ‘Glipping’ of Denmark (1259–1286). Clausen’s evidence consists of registrations of manuscripts known only through their titles, which had been available to the Danish historians Anders Sørensen Vedel (1542–1616), Niels Krag (1550–1602), and Jon Jakobsen ‘Venusinus’ (1563–1608), but appear ultimately to have burned in the fire of Copenhagen in 1728. The sources referred to by Clausen were published in one case by H. F. Rørdam in 1874, in all other cases in the appendix to S. Birket Smith’s History of the University Library of Copenhagen, 1882, reprinted 1982. Apparently inspired by a casual remark made in 1891 by the then very young historian Mouritz Mackeprang, Svend Clausen argues that despite the lack of extant copies and quotations etc., the manuscript’s supposedly exclusively judicial contents and allegedly very considerable volume reveal the “existence” of such an important source that future research on the background and consequences of the royal assassination must take much more account of this lost source than has been the case until now. Reviewing Svend Clausen’s arguments, Ivan Boserup corrects Rørdam’s and Clausen’s incomplete reading of the source on which the latter builds his identification of Vedel’s manuscript with descriptions of a lost manuscript “Concerning King Eric [Glipping],” and rejects Clausen’s interpretation of “… cum adversariis ac diversis” (Clausen seems unaware of the literary concept of adversaria), on which all his further arguments are based. From his professional standpoint as a historian, Karsten Christensen refers to Vedel’s strong focus on Marshal Stig in his collection of One Hundred Danish Folk Songs (publ. 1591), to Vedel’s idiosyncratic manner of describing his manuscripts from the point of view of his own main interests, and to the fact that in contrast to the Jens Grand trial held before the Pope in Rome in 1296, one should not expect written actiones to have been delivered at the meeting of the Danish grandees in Nyborg Castle in 1286 subsequent to the murder of Eric Glipping. Christensen therefore suggests that it is much more probable that the manuscript referred to in Vedel’s registration refers to a lost manuscript that, contrary to the one associated by Svend Clausen with Vedel’s lost manuscript, can be followed closely all the way up to 1728, and the contents of which have been detailed by the historian Stephanus Stephanius (1599–1650).

The library and the cabinet collections of King of Poland Stanisław August Poniatowski reflect the trends of the Enlightement as well as the monarch’s interests. Their acquisition by one of the most important Polish schools, the Volhynian Gymnasium in Kremenets, saved them from dismemberment and gave rise to school collections. The acquisition was possible owing to history (the Partition of Poland, and the emergence of the Vilna Educational District) and a unique man – Tadeusz Czacki.The collections at the Volhynian Gymnasium in Kremenets was open to the public on a daily basis. In this way, the Polish King’s Stanisław August wish to have the collection available for masses came true, after his death regrettably. School collections were very valuable. Having originated from the royal collection of the last Polish King, they became a reminiscence of the national potential of a country that disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795.This article is a part of a future book and an attempt of documenting the transition of respective collections from the royal residence in Warsaw to Kremenets. The analysis of Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian archives enables to reconstruct the history of the royal collections and to show their quality and didactic utility.

Karen Skovgaard-Petersen anmelder: Catalogue of Scandinavian Books in the British Library printed before 1801. By Peter Hogg. London: London: British Library 2007. 3 vols. Xxi + 2184 pp. ISBN 978-0-7123-0898-4. Steffen Heiberg anmelder: Jørgen Hein: The Treasure Collection at Rosenborg Castle I-III. The Inventories of 1696 and 1718. Royal Heritage and Collecting in Denmark-Norway 1500-1900. 2009, 849 s., indb. Kassette med tre bind, ca. 1050 farveillustrationer. ISBN 978-87-635-0131-6. Jesper Düring Jørgensen anmelder: Michael H. Clemmesen: Den lange vej imod 9. april Historien om de fyrre år før den tyske operation mod Norge og Danmark i 1940. Syddansk Universitetsforlag 2010, 679 s. ISBN 978-87-7674-464-9.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born 200 years ago, on 4 August 1792, and was drowned near Viareggio in Italy a month before his 30th birthday, on 8 July 1822. From his schooldays onwards he was fascinated by science, and his poetry is much enriched by the infusion of scientific imagery. 1 Shelley was the eldest son of a dull country squire and Whig Member of Parliament, Timothy Shelley of Field Place near Horsham, Sussex. Sent to Eton College when he was 12 years old, Shelley rebelled against the discipline and much of the teaching; but he had the great good fortune to find an inspiring mentor in Dr James Lind, F.R.S. (1736-1812), physician to the Royal Household at Windsor: 2 the Castle and the College are only a mile apart. As a result Shelley became enthusiastic for experiment and well informed in science by the time he left Eton for Oxford at the age of 17. Why was Lind so appealing to Shelley? James Lind came from a prosperous Scottish family, and one of his lifelong friends was his cousin James Keir, F.R.S. (1735-1820), a pioneer of the modern chemical industry. 3 In his 20s Lind was also a close confidant of James Watt: it was to Lind that Watt wrote the letters about his invention in 1765 of the steam engine with separate condenser 4 . In the same year, at the age of 29, Lind sailed as a ship’s surgeon to India, the East Indies and China. He took great interest in these largely unknown lands and brought back many examples of Chinese art and manufacture, and objects of scientific interest, including specimens of corundum. Lind returned at the end of 1767, and in 1770 he became acquainted with a more famous scientific traveller, Joseph Banks, fresh from his voyage with Cook in the Endeavour . Banks and Lind planned to sail with Cook on his second voyage, but difficulties arose; 5 instead they went on an expedition to Iceland in 1772.

HALLEY’S personal and professional papers have survived in reasonable numbers, but little attention has been accorded to his Commonplace Book . Indeed, for more than two centuries the existence of the work remained unknown to scholarship. In 1898, in a footnote to the sketch of Halley in his edition of Aubrey’s Brief Lives , Andrew Clark reported: ‘In the Earl of Macclesfield’s library at Shirburne Castle, Oxon., are several MSS. by Halley; among them a common-place book ’. E. F. MacPike, compiler of Halley’s correspondence and papers, twice referred to this ‘inedited’ commonplace book and expressed his wish that it ‘ could be examined by a competent scholar ’. Yet it was not until the early 1950s, while he was collecting Newton’s correspondence for the Royal Society, that Professor H. W. Turnbull came upon the document and verified its identity as Halley’s. To date, however, no portion of the manuscript has been published. Our essential purpose is therefore to present Halley’s Commonplace Book to the learned world. To this end we provide, first, an introduction to Halley’s sources, second, a description of the manuscript and a register of its contents, and, third, a text of the most remarkable entry, Halley’s ‘Observations & Maximes’.

It is a well-known story how, after the death in 1683 of John Collins (F.R.S. 1667), the mathematical correspondent of Barrow, Newton, Wallis, James Gregory and so many more, Collins’s voluminous collection of books and papers passed into the possession of William Jones (1675-1749; F.R.S. 1712), himself an avid collector and transcriber of the manuscripts of Newton, Halley and others. Because Jones had acted as tutor to George Parker, later second Earl of Macclesfield, and afterwards lived for many years at Shirbum Castle, Oxon., this enhanced collection has remained ever since with that family. It is equally well known that the book edited by S.J. Rigaud in 1841, The Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century , was drawn from the riches of the Macclesfield collection. Most of the letters had not been printed before and not many have been re-edited since. However, when in 1712 Isaac Newton prepared his biographical riposte against Leibniz in defence of his original discovery of the method of fluxions, he printed extracts from a number of letters found in Jones’s collection, and the original letters (or drafts) used in this way remained (as evidence) in the possession of the Royal Society - of which of course Newton was President - the Society being formally the publisher of the resultant slim volume, Commercium Epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum de Analysi promota: jussu Societatis Regiae in lucent editum (London 1712). Today that collection of letters remains in the Royal Society’s library mounted in its own particular guard-book. 1

IntroductionFirmly located within the discourse of visible culture as the lofty preserve of art exhibitions and museum artefacts, the noun “curate” has gradually transformed into the verb “to curate”. Williams writes that “curate” has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded to describe a creative activity. Designers no longer simply sell clothes; they “curate” merchandise. Chefs no longer only make food; they also “curate” meals. Chosen for their keen eye for a particular style or a precise shade, it is their knowledge of their craft, their reputation, and their sheer ability to choose among countless objects which make the creative process a creative activity in itself. Writing from within the framework of “curate” as a creative process, this article discusses how the state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II, hosted by Irish President Mary McAleese at Dublin Castle in May 2011, was carefully curated to represent Ireland’s diplomatic, cultural, and culinary identity. The paper will focus in particular on how the menu for the banquet was created and how the banquet’s brief, “Ireland on a Plate”, was fulfilled.History and BackgroundFood has been used by nations for centuries to display wealth, cement alliances, and impress foreign visitors. Since the feasts of the Numidian kings (circa 340 BC), culinary staging and presentation has belonged to “a long, multifaceted and multicultural history of diplomatic practices” (IEHCA 5). According to the works of Baughman, Young, and Albala, food has defined the social, cultural, and political position of a nation’s leaders throughout history.In early 2011, Ross Lewis, Chef Patron of Chapter One Restaurant in Dublin, was asked by the Irish Food Board, Bord Bía, if he would be available to create a menu for a high-profile banquet (Mahon 112). The name of the guest of honour was divulged several weeks later after vetting by the protocol and security divisions of the Department of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Lewis was informed that the menu was for the state banquet to be hosted by President Mary McAleese at Dublin Castle in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Ireland the following May.Hosting a formal banquet for a visiting head of state is a key feature in the statecraft of international and diplomatic relations. Food is the societal common denominator that links all human beings, regardless of culture (Pliner and Rozin 19). When world leaders publicly share a meal, that meal is laden with symbolism, illuminating each diner’s position “in social networks and social systems” (Sobal, Bove, and Rauschenbach 378). The public nature of the meal signifies status and symbolic kinship and that “guest and host are on par in terms of their personal or official attributes” (Morgan 149). While the field of academic scholarship on diplomatic dining might be young, there is little doubt of the value ascribed to the semiotics of diplomatic gastronomy in modern power structures (Morgan 150; De Vooght and Scholliers 12; Chapple-Sokol 162), for, as Firth explains, symbols are malleable and perfectly suited to exploitation by all parties (427).Political DiplomacyWhen Ireland gained independence in December 1921, it marked the end of eight centuries of British rule. The outbreak of “The Troubles” in 1969 in Northern Ireland upset the gradually improving environment of British–Irish relations, and it would be some time before a state visit became a possibility. Beginning with the peace process in the 1990s, the IRA ceasefire of 1994, and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, a state visit was firmly set in motion by the visit of Irish President Mary Robinson to Buckingham Palace in 1993, followed by the unofficial visit of the Prince of Wales to Ireland in 1995, and the visit of Irish President Mary McAleese to Buckingham Palace in 1999. An official invitation to Queen Elizabeth from President Mary McAleese in March 2011 was accepted, and the visit was scheduled for mid-May of the same year.The visit was a highly performative occasion, orchestrated and ordained in great detail, displaying all the necessary protocol associated with the state visit of one head of state to another: inspection of the military, a courtesy visit to the nation’s head of state on arrival, the laying of a wreath at the nation’s war memorial, and a state banquet.These aspects of protocol between Britain and Ireland were particularly symbolic. By inspecting the military on arrival, the existence of which is a key indicator of independence, Queen Elizabeth effectively demonstrated her recognition of Ireland’s national sovereignty. On making the customary courtesy call to the head of state, the Queen was received by President McAleese at her official residence Áras an Uachtaráin (The President’s House), which had formerly been the residence of the British monarch’s representative in Ireland (Robbins 66). The state banquet was held in Dublin Castle, once the headquarters of British rule where the Viceroy, the representative of Britain’s Court of St James, had maintained court (McDowell 1).Cultural DiplomacyThe state banquet provided an exceptional showcase of Irish culture and design and generated a level of preparation previously unseen among Dublin Castle staff, who described it as “the most stage managed state event” they had ever witnessed (Mahon 129).The castle was cleaned from top to bottom, and inventories were taken of the furniture and fittings. The Waterford Crystal chandeliers were painstakingly taken down, cleaned, and reassembled; the Killybegs carpets and rugs of Irish lamb’s wool were cleaned and repaired. A special edition Newbridge Silverware pen was commissioned for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to sign the newly ordered Irish leather-bound visitors’ book. A new set of state tableware was ordered for the President’s table. Irish manufacturers of household goods necessary for the guest rooms, such as towels and soaps, hand creams and body lotions, candle holders and scent diffusers, were sought. Members of Her Majesty’s staff conducted a “walk-through” several weeks in advance of the visit to ensure that the Queen’s wardrobe would not clash with the surroundings (Mahon 129–32).The promotion of Irish manufacture is a constant thread throughout history. Irish linen, writes Kane, enjoyed a reputation as far afield as the Netherlands and Italy in the 15th century, and archival documents from the Vaucluse attest to the purchase of Irish cloth in Avignon in 1432 (249–50). Support for Irish-made goods was raised in 1720 by Jonathan Swift, and by the 18th century, writes Foster, Dublin had become an important centre for luxury goods (44–51).It has been Irish government policy since the late 1940s to use Irish-manufactured goods for state entertaining, so the material culture of the banquet was distinctly Irish: Arklow Pottery plates, Newbridge Silverware cutlery, Waterford Crystal glassware, and Irish linen tablecloths. In order to decide upon the table setting for the banquet, four tables were laid in the King’s Bedroom in Dublin Castle. The Executive Chef responsible for the banquet menu, and certain key personnel, helped determine which setting would facilitate serving the food within the time schedule allowed (Mahon 128–29). The style of service would be service à la russe, so widespread in restaurants today as to seem unremarkable. Each plate is prepared in the kitchen by the chef and then served to each individual guest at table. In the mid-19th century, this style of service replaced service à la française, in which guests typically entered the dining room after the first course had been laid on the table and selected food from the choice of dishes displayed around them (Kaufman 126).The guest list was compiled by government and embassy officials on both sides and was a roll call of Irish and British life. At the President’s table, 10 guests would be served by a team of 10 staff in Dorchester livery. The remaining tables would each seat 12 guests, served by 12 liveried staff. The staff practiced for several days prior to the banquet to make sure that service would proceed smoothly within the time frame allowed. The team of waiters, each carrying a plate, would emerge from the kitchen in single file. They would then take up positions around the table, each waiter standing to the left of the guest they would serve. On receipt of a discreet signal, each plate would be laid in front of each guest at precisely the same moment, after which the waiters would then about foot and return to the kitchen in single file (Mahon 130).Post-prandial entertainment featured distinctive styles of performance and instruments associated with Irish traditional music. These included reels, hornpipes, and slipjigs, voice and harp, sean-nόs (old style) singing, and performances by established Irish artists on the fiddle, bouzouki, flute, and uilleann pipes (Office of Public Works).Culinary Diplomacy: Ireland on a PlateLewis was given the following brief: the menu had to be Irish, the main course must be beef, and the meal should represent the very best of Irish ingredients. There were no restrictions on menu design. There were no dietary requirements or specific requests from the Queen’s representatives, although Lewis was informed that shellfish is excluded de facto from Irish state banquets as a precautionary measure. The meal was to be four courses long and had to be served to 170 diners within exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes (Mahon 112). A small army of 16 chefs and 4 kitchen porters would prepare the food in the kitchen of Dublin Castle under tight security. The dishes would be served on state tableware by 40 waiters, 6 restaurant managers, a banqueting manager and a sommélier. Lewis would be at the helm of the operation as Executive Chef (Mahon 112–13).Lewis started by drawing up “a patchwork quilt” of the products he most wanted to use and built the menu around it. The choice of suppliers was based on experience but also on a supplier’s ability to deliver perfectly ripe goods in mid-May, a typically black spot in the Irish fruit and vegetable growing calendar as it sits between the end of one season and the beginning of another. Lewis consulted the Queen’s itinerary and the menus to be served so as to avoid repetitions. He had to discard his initial plan to feature lobster in the starter and rhubarb in the dessert—the former for the precautionary reasons mentioned above, and the latter because it featured on the Queen’s lunch menu on the day of the banquet (Mahon 112–13).Once the ingredients had been selected, the menu design focused on creating tastes, flavours and textures. Several draft menus were drawn up and myriad dishes were tasted and discussed in the kitchen of Lewis’s own restaurant. Various wines were paired and tasted with the different courses, the final choice being a Château Lynch-Bages 1998 red and a Château de Fieuzal 2005 white, both from French Bordeaux estates with an Irish connection (Kellaghan 3). Two months and two menu sittings later, the final menu was confirmed and signed off by state and embassy officials (Mahon 112–16).The StarterThe banquet’s starter featured organic Clare Island salmon cured in a sweet brine, laid on top of a salmon cream combining wild smoked salmon from the Burren and Cork’s Glenilen Farm crème fraîche, set over a lemon balm jelly from the Tannery Cookery School Gardens, Waterford. Garnished with horseradish cream, wild watercress, and chive flowers from Wicklow, the dish was finished with rapeseed oil from Kilkenny and a little sea salt from West Cork (Mahon 114). Main CourseA main course of Irish beef featured as the pièce de résistance of the menu. A rib of beef from Wexford’s Slaney Valley was provided by Kettyle Irish Foods in Fermanagh and served with ox cheek and tongue from Rathcoole, County Dublin. From along the eastern coastline came the ingredients for the traditional Irish dish of smoked champ: cabbage from Wicklow combined with potatoes and spring onions grown in Dublin. The new season’s broad beans and carrots were served with wild garlic leaf, which adorned the dish (Mahon 113). Cheese CourseThe cheese course was made up of Knockdrinna, a Tomme style goat’s milk cheese from Kilkenny; Milleens, a Munster style cow’s milk cheese produced in Cork; Cashel Blue, a cow’s milk blue cheese from Tipperary; and Glebe Brethan, a Comté style cheese from raw cow’s milk from Louth. Ditty’s Oatmeal Biscuits from Belfast accompanied the course.DessertLewis chose to feature Irish strawberries in the dessert. Pat Clarke guaranteed delivery of ripe strawberries on the day of the banquet. They married perfectly with cream and yoghurt from Glenilen Farm in Cork. The cream was set with Irish Carrageen moss, overlaid with strawberry jelly and sauce, and garnished with meringues made with Irish apple balsamic vinegar from Lusk in North Dublin, yoghurt mousse, and Irish soda bread tuiles made with wholemeal flour from the Mosse family mill in Kilkenny (Mahon 113).The following day, President McAleese telephoned Lewis, saying of the banquet “Ní hé go raibh sé go maith, ach go raibh sé míle uair níos fearr ná sin” (“It’s not that it was good but that it was a thousand times better”). The President observed that the menu was not only delicious but that it was “amazingly articulate in terms of the story that it told about Ireland and Irish food.” The Queen had particularly enjoyed the stuffed cabbage leaf of tongue, cheek and smoked colcannon (a traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes with curly kale or green cabbage) and had noted the diverse selection of Irish ingredients from Irish artisans (Mahon 116). Irish CuisineWhen the topic of food is explored in Irish historiography, the focus tends to be on the consequences of the Great Famine (1845–49) which left the country “socially and emotionally scarred for well over a century” (Mac Con Iomaire and Gallagher 161). Some commentators consider the term “Irish cuisine” oxymoronic, according to Mac Con Iomaire and Maher (3). As Goldstein observes, Ireland has suffered twice—once from its food deprivation and second because these deprivations present an obstacle for the exploration of Irish foodways (xii). Writing about Italian, Irish, and Jewish migration to America, Diner states that the Irish did not have a food culture to speak of and that Irish writers “rarely included the details of food in describing daily life” (85). Mac Con Iomaire and Maher note that Diner’s methodology overlooks a centuries-long tradition of hospitality in Ireland such as that described by Simms (68) and shows an unfamiliarity with the wealth of food related sources in the Irish language, as highlighted by Mac Con Iomaire (“Exploring” 1–23).Recent scholarship on Ireland’s culinary past is unearthing a fascinating story of a much more nuanced culinary heritage than has been previously understood. This is clearly demonstrated in the research of Cullen, Cashman, Deleuze, Kellaghan, Kelly, Kennedy, Legg, Mac Con Iomaire, Mahon, O’Sullivan, Richman Kenneally, Sexton, and Stanley, Danaher, and Eogan.In 1996 Ireland was described by McKenna as having the most dynamic cuisine in any European country, a place where in the last decade “a vibrant almost unlikely style of cooking has emerged” (qtd. in Mac Con Iomaire “Jammet’s” 136). By 2014, there were nine restaurants in Dublin which had been awarded Michelin stars or Red Ms (Mac Con Iomaire “Jammet’s” 137). Ross Lewis, Chef Patron of Chapter One Restaurant, who would be chosen to create the menu for the state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II, has maintained a Michelin star since 2008 (Mac Con Iomaire, “Jammet’s” 138). Most recently the current strength of Irish gastronomy is globally apparent in Mark Moriarty’s award as San Pellegrino Young Chef 2015 (McQuillan). As Deleuze succinctly states: “Ireland has gone mad about food” (143).This article is part of a research project into Irish diplomatic dining, and the author is part of a research cluster into Ireland’s culinary heritage within the Dublin Institute of Technology. The aim of the research is to add to the growing body of scholarship on Irish gastronomic history and, ultimately, to contribute to the discourse on the existence of a national cuisine. If, as Zubaida says, “a nation’s cuisine is its court’s cuisine,” then it is time for Ireland to “research the feasts as well as the famines” (Mac Con Iomaire and Cashman 97).ConclusionThe Irish state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II in May 2011 was a highly orchestrated and formalised process. From the menu, material culture, entertainment, and level of consultation in the creative content, it is evident that the banquet was carefully curated to represent Ireland’s diplomatic, cultural, and culinary identity.The effects of the visit appear to have been felt in the years which have followed. Hennessy wrote in the Irish Times newspaper that Queen Elizabeth is privately said to regard her visit to Ireland as the most significant of the trips she has made during her 60-year reign. British Prime Minister David Cameron is noted to mention the visit before every Irish audience he encounters, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague has spoken in particular of the impact the state banquet in Dublin Castle made upon him. Hennessy points out that one of the most significant indicators of the peaceful relationship which exists between the two countries nowadays was the subsequent state visit by Irish President Michael D. Higgins to Britain in 2013. This was the first state visit to the United Kingdom by a President of Ireland and would have been unimaginable 25 years ago. The fact that the President and his wife stayed at Windsor Castle and that the attendant state banquet was held there instead of Buckingham Palace were both deemed to be marks of special favour and directly attributed to the success of Her Majesty’s 2011 visit to Ireland.As the research demonstrates, eating together unites rather than separates, gathers rather than divides, diffuses political tensions, and confirms alliances. It might be said then that the 2011 state banquet hosted by President Mary McAleese in honour of Queen Elizabeth II, curated by Ross Lewis, gives particular meaning to the axiom “to eat together is to eat in peace” (Taliano des Garets 160).AcknowledgementsSupervisors: Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire (Dublin Institute of Technology) and Dr Michael Kennedy (Royal Irish Academy)Fáilte IrelandPhotos of the banquet dishes supplied and permission to reproduce them for this article kindly granted by Ross Lewis, Chef Patron, Chapter One Restaurant ‹http://www.chapteronerestaurant.com/›.Illustration ‘Ireland on a Plate’ © Jesse Campbell BrownRemerciementsThe author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.ReferencesAlbala, Ken. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe. Chicago: University of Illinois, 2007.———. “The Historical Models of Food and Power in European Courts of the Nineteenth Century: An Expository Essay and Prologue.” Royal Taste, Food Power and Status at the European Courts after 1789. Ed. Daniëlle De Vooght. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2011. 13–29.Baughman, John J. “The French Banqueting Campaign of 1847–48.” The Journal of Modern History 31 (1959): 1–15. Cashman, Dorothy. “That Delicate Sweetmeat, the Irish Plum: The Culinary World of Maria Edgeworth.” ‘Tickling the Palate': Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture. Ed. Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, and Eamon Maher. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014. 15–34.———. “French Boobys and Good English Cooks: The Relationship with French Culinary Influence in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Ireland.” Reimagining Ireland: Proceedings from the AFIS Conference 2012. Vol. 55 Reimagining Ireland. Ed. Benjamin Keatinge, and Mary Pierse. Bern: Peter Lang, 2014. 207–22.———. “‘This Receipt Is as Safe as the Bank’: Reading Irish Culinary Manuscripts.” M/C Journal 16.3 (2013). ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal›.———. “Ireland’s Culinary Manuscripts.” Irish Traditional Cooking, Recipes from Ireland’s Heritage. By Darina Allen. London: Kyle Books, 2012. 14–15.Chapple-Sokol, Sam. “Culinary Diplomacy: Breaking Bread to Win Hearts and Minds.” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 8 (2013): 161–83.Cullen, Louis M. The Emergence of Modern Ireland 1600–1900. London: Batsford, 1981.Deleuze, Marjorie. “A New Craze for Food: Why Is Ireland Turning into a Foodie Nation?” ‘Tickling the Palate': Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture. Ed. Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, and Eamon Maher. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014. 143–58.“Details of the State Dinner.” Office of Public Works. 8 Apr. 2013. ‹http://www.dublincastle.ie/HistoryEducation/TheVisitofHerMajestyQueenElizabethII/DetailsoftheStateDinner/›.De Vooght, Danïelle, and Peter Scholliers. Introduction. Royal Taste, Food Power and Status at the European Courts after 1789. Ed. Daniëlle De Vooght. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2011. 1–12.Diner, Hasia. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish & Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001.Firth, Raymond. Symbols: Public and Private. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973.Foster, Sarah. “Buying Irish: Consumer Nationalism in 18th Century Dublin.” History Today 47.6 (1997): 44–51.Goldstein, Darra. Foreword. ‘Tickling the Palate': Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture. Eds. Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Eamon Maher. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014. xi–xvii.Hennessy, Mark. “President to Visit Queen in First State Visit to the UK.” The Irish Times 28 Nov. 2013. 25 May 2015 ‹http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/president-to-visit-queen-in-first-state-visit-to-the-uk-1.1598127›.“International Historical Conference: Table and Diplomacy—from the Middle Ages to the Present Day—Call for Papers.” Institut Européen d’Histoire et des Cultures de l’Alimentation (IEHCA) 15 Feb. 2015. ‹http://www.iehca.eu/IEHCA_v4/pdf/16-11-3-5-colloque-table-diplomatique-appel-a-com-fr-en.pdf›.Kane, Eileen M.C. “Irish Cloth in Avignon in the Fifteenth Century.” The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. 102.2 (1972): 249–51.Kaufman, Cathy K. “Structuring the Meal: The Revolution of Service à la Russe.” The Meal: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2001. Ed. Harlan Walker. Devon: Prospect Books, 2002. 123–33.Kellaghan, Tara. “Claret: The Preferred Libation of Georgian Ireland’s Elite.” Dublin Gastronomy Symposium. Dublin, 6 Jun. 2012. ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/dgs/2012/june612/3/›.Kelly, Fergus. “Early Irish Farming.” Early Irish Law Series. Ed. Fergus Kelly. Volume IV. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1997.Kennedy, Michael. “‘Where’s the Taj Mahal?’: Indian Restaurants in Dublin since 1908.” History Ireland 18.4 (2010): 50–52. ‹http://www.jstor.org/stable/27823031›.Legg, Marie-Louise. “'Irish Wine': The Import of Claret from Bordeaux to Provincial Ireland in the Eighteenth Century.” Irish Provincial Cultures in the Long Eighteenth Century: Making the Middle Sort (Essays for Toby Barnard). Eds. Raymond Gillespie and R[obert] F[itzroy] Foster. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012.Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín. “Haute Cuisine Restaurants in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Ireland.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C. DOI: 10.3318/PRIAC.2015.115.06. 2015.———. “‘From Jammet’s to Guilbaud’s’: The Influence of French Haute Cuisine on the Development of Dublin Restaurants.” ‘Tickling the Palate’: Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture. Eds. Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Eamon Maher. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014. 121–41. ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tschafbk/15/›.———. “Exploring the 'Food Motif' in Songs from the Irish Tradition.” Dublin Gastronomy Symposium. Dublin, 3 Jun. 2014. ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/dgs/2014/june314/7/›.———. “Gastro-Topography: Exploring Food Related Placenames in Ireland.” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. 38.1-2 (2014): 126–57.———. “The Pig in Irish Cuisine and Culture.” M/C Journal 13.5 (2010). ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/296›.———. “The Emergence, Development and Influence of French Haute Cuisine on Public Dining Restaurants 1900–2000: An Oral History.” Doctoral Thesis. Dublin Institute of Technology, 2009. ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tourdoc/12/›.———. “A History of Seafood in Irish Cuisine and Culture.” Wild Food: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2004. Ed. Richard Hosking. Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 2006. ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tfschcafcon/3/›.———. “The Pig in Irish Cuisine Past and Present.” The Fat of the Land: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2002. Ed. Harlan Walker. Bristol: Footwork, 2003. 207–15. ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tfschcafcon/1/›.———, and Dorothy Cashman. “Irish Culinary Manuscripts and Printed Books: A Discussion.” Petits Propos Culinaires 94 (2011): 81–101. 16 Mar. 2012 ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tfschafart/111/›.———, and Tara Kellaghan. “Royal Pomp: Viceregal Celebrations and Hospitality in Georgian Dublin.” Celebration: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2011. Ed. Mark McWilliams. Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books. 2012. ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tfschafart/109/›.———, and Eamon Maher. Introduction. ‘Tickling the Palate': Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture. Eds. Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Eamon Maher. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014. 1–11. ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tschafbk/11/›.———, and Pádraic Óg Gallagher. “The Potato in Irish Cuisine and Culture.” Journal of Culinary Science and Technology 7.2-3 (2009): 152–67. 24 Sep. 2012 ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tfschafart/3/›.McConnell, Tara. “'Brew as Much as Possible during the Proper Season': Beer Consumption in Elite Households in Eighteenth-Century Ireland.” ‘Tickling the Palate': Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture. Eds. Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Eamon Maher. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014. 177–89.McDowell, R[obert] B[rendan]. Historical Essays 1938–2001. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2003.McQuillan, Deirdre. “Young Irish Chef Wins International Award in Milan.” The Irish Times. 28 June 2015. 30 June 2015 ‹http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/food-and-drink/young-irish-chef-wins-international-award-in-milan-1.2265725›.Mahon, Bríd. Land of Milk and Honey: The Story of Traditional Irish Food and Drink. Cork: Mercier Press, 1991.Mahon, Elaine. “Eating for Ireland: A Preliminary Investigation into Irish Diplomatic Dining since the Inception of the State.” Diss. Dublin Institute of Technology, 2013.Morgan, Linda. “Diplomatic Gastronomy: Style and Power at the Table.” Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment 20.2 (2012): 146–66.O'Sullivan, Catherine Marie. Hospitality in Medieval Ireland 900–1500. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004.Pliner, Patricia, and Paul Rozin. “The Psychology of the Meal.” Dimensions of the Meal: The Science, Culture, Business, and Art of Eating. Ed. Herbert L. Meiselman. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen, 2000. 19–46.Richman Kenneally, Rhona. “Cooking at the Hearth: The ‘Irish Cottage’ and Women’s Lived Experience.” Memory Ireland. Ed. Oona Frawley. Vol. 2. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2012. 224–41.Robins, Joseph. Champagne and Silver Buckles: The Viceregal Court at Dublin Castle 1700–1922. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2001.Sexton, Regina. A Little History of Irish Food. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998.Sobal, Jeffrey, Caron Bove, and Barbara Rauschenbach. "Commensal Careers at Entry into Marriage: Establishing Commensal Units and Managing Commensal Circles." The Sociological Review 50.3 (2002): 378-397.Simms, Katharine. “Guesting and Feasting in Gaelic Ireland.” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 108 (1978): 67–100.Stanley, Michael, Ed Danaher, and James Eogan, eds. Dining and Dwelling. Dublin: National Roads Authority, 2009.Swift, Jonathan. “A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture.” The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift D.D. Ed. Temple Scott. Vol. 7: Historical and Political Tracts. London: George Bell & Sons, 1905. 17–30. 29 July 2015 ‹http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E700001-024/›.Taliano des Garets, Françoise. “Cuisine et Politique.” Sciences Po University Press. Vingtième Siècle: Revue d’histoire 59 (1998): 160–61. Williams, Alex. “On the Tip of Creative Tongues.” The New York Times. 4 Oct. 2009. 16 June 2015 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/fashion/04curate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0›.Young, Carolin. Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.Zubaida, Sami. “Imagining National Cuisines.” TCD/UCD Public Lecture Series. Trinity College, Dublin. 5 Mar. 2014.

Introduction Ireland did not have a tradition of printed cookbooks prior to the 20th century. As a consequence, Irish culinary manuscripts from before this period are an important primary source for historians. This paper makes the case that the manuscripts are a unique way of accessing voices that have quotidian concerns seldom heard above the dominant narratives of conquest, colonisation and famine (Higgins; Dawson). Three manuscripts are examined to see how they contribute to an understanding of Irish social and culinary history. The Irish banking crisis of 2008 is a reminder that comments such as the one in the title of this paper may be more then a casual remark, indicating rather an underlying anxiety. Equally important is the evidence in the manuscripts that Ireland had a domestic culinary tradition sited within the culinary traditions of the British Isles. The terms “vernacular”, representing localised needs and traditions, and “polite”, representing stylistic features incorporated for aesthetic reasons, are more usually applied in the architectural world. As terms, they reflect in a politically neutral way the culinary divide witnessed in the manuscripts under discussion here. Two of the three manuscripts are anonymous, but all are written from the perspective of a well-provisioned house. The class background is elite and as such these manuscripts are not representative of the vernacular, which in culinary terms is likely to be a tradition recorded orally (Gold). The first manuscript (NLI, Tervoe) and second manuscript (NLI, Limerick) show the levels of impact of French culinary influence through their recipes for “cullis”. The Limerick manuscript also opens the discussion to wider social concerns. The third manuscript (NLI, Baker) is unusual in that the author, Mrs. Baker, goes to great lengths to record the provenance of the recipes and as such the collection affords a glimpse into the private “polite” world of the landed gentry in Ireland with its multiplicity of familial and societal connections. Cookbooks and Cuisine in Ireland in the 19th Century During the course of the 18th century, there were 136 new cookery book titles and 287 reprints published in Britain (Lehmann, Housewife 383). From the start of the 18th to the end of the 19th century only three cookbooks of Irish, or Anglo-Irish, authorship have been identified. The Lady’s Companion: or Accomplish’d Director In the whole Art of Cookery was published in 1767 by John Mitchell in Skinner-Row, under the pseudonym “Ceres,” while the Countess of Caledon’s Cheap Receipts and Hints on Cookery: Collected for Distribution Amongst the Irish Peasantry was printed in Armagh by J. M. Watters for private circulation in 1847. The modern sounding Dinners at Home, published in London in 1878 under the pseudonym “Short”, appears to be of Irish authorship, a review in The Irish Times describing it as being written by a “Dublin lady”, the inference being that she was known to the reviewer (Farmer). English Copyright Law was extended to Ireland in July 1801 after the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 (Ferguson). Prior to this, many titles were pirated in Ireland, a cause of confusion alluded to by Lehmann when she comments regarding the Ceres book that it “does not appear to be simply a Dublin-printed edition of an English book” (Housewife 403). This attribution is based on the dedication in the preface: “To The Ladies of Dublin.” From her statement that she had a “great deal of experience in business of this kind”, one may conclude that Ceres had worked as a housekeeper or cook. Cheap Receipts and Hints on Cookery was the second of two books by Catherine Alexander, Countess of Caledon. While many commentators were offering advice to Irish people on how to alleviate their poverty, in Friendly Advice to Irish Mothers on Training their Children, Alexander was unusual in addressing her book specifically to its intended audience (Bourke). In this cookbook, the tone is of a practical didactic nature, the philosophy that of enablement. Given the paucity of printed material, manuscripts provide the main primary source regarding the existence of an indigenous culinary tradition. Attitudes regarding this tradition lie along the spectrum exemplified by the comments of an Irish journalist, Kevin Myers, and an eminent Irish historian, Louis Cullen. Myers describes Irish cuisine as a “travesty” and claims that the cuisine of “Old Ireland, in texture and in flavour, generally resembles the cinders after the suttee of a very large, but not very tasty widow”, Cullen makes the case that Irish cuisine is “one of the most interesting culinary traditions in Europe” (141). It is not proposed to investigate the ideological standpoints behind the various comments on Irish food. Indeed, the use of the term “Irish” in this context is fraught with difficulty and it should be noted that in the three manuscripts proposed here, the cuisine is that of the gentry class and representative of a particular stratum of society more accurately described as belonging to the Anglo-Irish tradition. It is also questionable how the authors of the three manuscripts discussed would have described themselves in terms of nationality. The anxiety surrounding this issue of identity is abating as scholarship has moved from viewing the cultural artifacts and buildings inherited from this class, not as symbols of an alien heritage, but rather as part of the narrative of a complex country (Rees). The antagonistic attitude towards this heritage could be seen as reaching its apogee in the late 1950s when the then Government minister, Kevin Boland, greeted the decision to demolish a row of Georgian houses in Dublin with jubilation, saying that they stood for everything that he despised, and describing the Georgian Society, who had campaigned for their preservation, as “the preserve of the idle rich and belted earls” (Foster 160). Mac Con Iomaire notes that there has been no comprehensive study of the history of Irish food, and the implications this has for opinions held, drawing attention to the lack of recognition that a “parallel Anglo-Irish cuisine existed among the Protestant elite” (43). To this must be added the observation that Myrtle Allen, the doyenne of the Irish culinary world, made when she observed that while we have an Irish identity in food, “we belong to a geographical and culinary group with Wales, England, and Scotland as all counties share their traditions with their next door neighbour” (1983). Three Irish Culinary Manuscripts The three manuscripts discussed here are held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). The manuscript known as Tervoe has 402 folio pages with a 22-page index. The National Library purchased the manuscript at auction in December 2011. Although unattributed, it is believed to come from Tervoe House in County Limerick (O’Daly). Built in 1776 by Colonel W.T. Monsell (b.1754), the Monsell family lived there until 1951 (see, Fig. 1). The house was demolished in 1953 (Bence-Jones). William Monsell, 1st Lord Emly (1812–94) could be described as the most distinguished of the family. Raised in an atmosphere of devotion to the Union (with Great Britain), loyalty to the Church of Ireland, and adherence to the Tory Party, he converted in 1850 to the Roman Catholic religion, under the influence of Cardinal Newman and the Oxford Movement, changing his political allegiance from Tory to Whig. It is believed that this change took place as a result of the events surrounding the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50 (Potter). The Tervoe manuscript is catalogued as 18th century, and as the house was built in the last quarter of the century, it would be reasonable to surmise that its conception coincided with that period. It is a handsome volume with original green vellum binding, which has been conserved. Fig. 1. Tervoe House, home of the Monsell family. In terms of culinary prowess, the scope of the Tervoe manuscript is extensive. For the purpose of this discussion, one recipe is of particular interest. The recipe, To make a Cullis for Flesh Soups, instructs the reader to take the fat off four pounds of the best beef, roast the beef, pound it to a paste with crusts of bread and the carcasses of partridges or other fowl “that you have by you” (NLI, Tervoe). This mixture should then be moistened with best gravy, and strong broth, and seasoned with pepper, thyme, cloves, and lemon, then sieved for use with the soup. In 1747 Hannah Glasse published The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. The 1983 facsimile edition explains the term “cullis” as an Anglicisation of the French word coulis, “a preparation for thickening soups and stews” (182). The coulis was one of the essential components of the nouvelle cuisine of the 18th century. This movement sought to separate itself from “the conspicuous consumption of profusion” to one where the impression created was one of refinement and elegance (Lehmann, Housewife 210). Reactions in England to this French culinary innovation were strong, if not strident. Glasse derides French “tricks”, along with French cooks, and the coulis was singled out for particular opprobrium. In reality, Glasse bestrides both sides of the divide by giving the much-hated recipe and commenting on it. She provides another example of this in her recipe for The French Way of Dressing Partridges to which she adds the comment: “this dish I do not recommend; for I think it an odd jumble of thrash, by that time the Cullis, the Essence of Ham, and all other Ingredients are reckoned, the Partridges will come to a fine penny; but such Receipts as this, is what you have in most Books of Cookery yet printed” (53). When Daniel Defoe in The Complete English Tradesman of 1726 criticised French tradesmen for spending so much on the facades of their shops that they were unable to offer their customers a varied stock within, we can see the antipathy spilling over into other creative fields (Craske). As a critical strategy, it is not dissimilar to Glasse when she comments “now compute the expense, and see if this dish cannot be dressed full as well without this expense” at the end of a recipe for the supposedly despised Cullis for all Sorts of Ragoo (53). Food had become part of the defining image of Britain as an aggressively Protestant culture in opposition to Catholic France (Lehmann Politics 75). The author of the Tervoe manuscript makes no comment about the dish other than “A Cullis is a mixture of things, strained off.” This is in marked contrast to the second manuscript (NLI, Limerick). The author of this anonymous manuscript, from which the title of this paper is taken, is considerably perplexed by the term cullis, despite the manuscript dating 1811 (Fig. 2). Of Limerick provenance also, but considerably more modest in binding and scope, the manuscript was added to for twenty years, entries terminating around 1831. The recipe for Beef Stake (sic) Pie is an exact transcription of a recipe in John Simpson’s A Complete System of Cookery, published in 1806, and reads Cut some beef steaks thin, butter a pan (or as Lord Buckingham’s cook, from whom these rects are taken, calls it a soutis pan, ? [sic] (what does he mean, is it a saucepan) [sic] sprinkle the pan with pepper and salt, shallots thyme and parsley, put the beef steaks in and the pan on the fire for a few minutes then put them to cool, when quite cold put them in the fire, scrape all the herbs in over the fire and ornament as you please, it will take an hour and half, when done take the top off and put in some coulis (what is that?) [sic]. Fig. 2. Beef Stake Pie (NLI, Limerick). Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. Simpson was cook to Lord Buckingham for at least a year in 1796, and may indeed have travelled to Ireland with the Duke who had several connections there. A feature of this manuscript are the number of Cholera remedies that it contains, including the “Rect for the cholera sent by Dr Shanfer from Warsaw to the Brussels Government”. Cholera had reached Germany by 1830, and England by 1831. By March 1832, it had struck Belfast and Dublin, the following month being noted in Cork, in the south of the country. Lasting a year, the epidemic claimed 50,000 lives in Ireland (Fenning). On 29 April 1832, the diarist Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin notes, “we had a meeting today to keep the cholera from Callan. May God help us” (De Bhaldraithe 132). By 18 June, the cholera is “wrecking destruction in Ennis, Limerick and Tullamore” (135) and on 26 November, “Seed being sown. The end of the month wet and windy. The cholera came to Callan at the beginning of the month. Twenty people went down with it and it left the town then” (139). This situation was obviously of great concern and this is registered in the manuscript. Another concern is that highlighted by the recommendation that “this receipt is as good as the bank. It has been obligingly given to Mrs Hawkesworth by the chief book keeper at the Bank of Ireland” (NLI, Limerick). The Bank of Ireland commenced business at St. Mary’s Abbey in Dublin in June 1783, having been established under the protection of the Irish Parliament as a chartered rather then a central bank. As such, it supplied a currency of solidity. The charter establishing the bank, however, contained a prohibitory clause preventing (until 1824 when it was repealed) more then six persons forming themselves into a company to carry on the business of banking. This led to the formation, especially outside Dublin, of many “small private banks whose failure was the cause of immense wretchedness to all classes of the population” (Gilbert 19). The collapse that caused the most distress was that of the Ffrench bank in 1814, founded eleven years previously by the family of Lord Ffrench, one of the leading Catholic peers, based in Connacht in the west of Ireland. The bank issued notes in exchange for Bank of Ireland notes. Loans from Irish banks were in the form of paper money which were essentially printed promises to pay the amount stated and these notes were used in ordinary transactions. So great was the confidence in the Ffrench bank that their notes were held by the public in preference to Bank of Ireland notes, most particularly in Connacht. On 27 June 1814, there was a run on the bank leading to collapse. The devastation spread through society, from business through tenant farmers to the great estates, and notably so in Galway. Lord Ffrench shot himself in despair (Tennison). Williams and Finn, founded in Kilkenny in 1805, entered bankruptcy proceedings in 1816, and the last private bank outside Dublin, Delacours in Mallow, failed in 1835 (Barrow). The issue of bank failure is commented on by writers of the period, notably so in Dickens, Thackery, and Gaskill, and Edgeworth in Ireland. Following on the Ffrench collapse, notes from the Bank of Ireland were accorded increased respect, reflected in the comment in this recipe. The receipt in question is one for making White Currant Wine, with the unusual addition of a slice of bacon suspended from the bunghole when the wine is turned, for the purpose of enriching it. The recipe was provided to “Mrs Hawkesworth by the chief book keeper of the bank” (NLI, Limerick). In 1812, a John Hawkesworth, agent to Lord CastleCoote, was living at Forest Lodge, Mountrath, County Laois (Ennis Chronicle). The Coote family, although settling in County Laois in the seventeenth century, had strong connections with Limerick through a descendent of the younger brother of the first Earl of Mountrath (Landed Estates). The last manuscript for discussion is the manuscript book of Mrs Abraham Whyte Baker of Ballytobin House, County Kilkenny, 1810 (NLI, Baker). Ballytobin, or more correctly Ballaghtobin, is a townland in the barony of Kells, four miles from the previously mentioned Callan. The land was confiscated from the Tobin family during the Cromwellian campaign in Ireland of 1649–52, and was reputedly purchased by a Captain Baker, to establish what became the estate of Ballaghtobin (Fig. 3) To this day, it is a functioning estate, remaining in the family, twice passing down through the female line. In its heyday, there were two acres of walled gardens from which the house would have drawn for its own provisions (Ballaghtobin). Fig. 3. Ballaghtobin 2013. At the time of writing the manuscript, Mrs. Sophia Baker was widowed and living at Ballaghtobin with her son and daughter-in-law, Charity who was “no beauty, but tall, slight” (Herbert 414). On the succession of her husband to the estate, Charity became mistress of Ballaghtobin, leaving Sophia with time on what were her obviously very capable hands (Nevin). Sophia Baker was the daughter of Sir John Blunden of Castle Blunden and Lucinda Cuffe, daughter of the first Baron Desart. Sophia was also first cousin of the diarist Dorothea Herbert, whose mother was Lucinda’s sister, Martha. Sophia Baker and Dorothea Herbert have left for posterity a record of life in the landed gentry class in rural Georgian Ireland, Dorothea describing Mrs. Baker as “full of life and spirits” (Herbert 70). Their close relationship allows the two manuscripts to converse with each other in a unique way. Mrs. Baker’s detailing of the provenance of her recipes goes beyond the norm, so that what she has left us is not just a remarkable work of culinary history but also a palimpsest of her family and social circle. Among the people she references are: “my grandmother”; Dorothea Beresford, half sister to the Earl of Tyrone, who lived in the nearby Curraghmore House; Lady Tyrone; and Aunt Howth, the sister of Dorothea Beresford, married to William St Lawrence, Lord Howth, and described by Johnathan Swift as “his blue eyed nymph” (195). Other attributions include Lady Anne Fitzgerald, wife of Maurice Fitzgerald, 16th knight of Kerry, Sir William Parsons, Major Labilen, and a Mrs. Beaufort (Fig. 4). Fig. 4. Mrs. Beauforts Rect. (NLI, Baker). Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. That this Mrs. Beaufort was the wife of Daniel Augustus Beaufort, mother of the hydrographer Sir Francis Beaufort, may be deduced from the succeeding recipe supplied by a Mrs. Waller. Mrs. Beaufort’s maiden name was Waller. Fanny Beaufort, the elder sister of Sir Francis, was Richard Edgeworth’s fourth wife and close friend and confidante of his daughter Maria, the novelist. There are also entries for “Miss Herbert” and “Aunt Herbert.” While the Baker manuscript is of interest for the fact that it intersects the worlds of the novelist Maria Edgeworth and the diarist Dorothea Herbert, and for the societal references that it documents, it is also a fine collection of recipes that date back to the mid-18th century. An example of this is a recipe for Sligo pickled salmon that Mrs. Baker, nee Blunden, refers to in an index that she gives to a second volume. Unfortunately this second volume is not known to be extant. This recipe features in a Blunden family manuscript of 1760 as referred to in Anelecta Hibernica (McLysaght). The recipe has also appeared in Cookery and Cures of Old Kilkenny (St. Canices’s 24). Unlike the Tervoe and Limerick manuscripts, Mrs. Baker is unconcerned with recipes for “cullis”. Conclusion The three manuscripts that have been examined here are from the period before the famine of 1845–50, known as An Gorta Mór, translated as “the big hunger”. The famine preceding this, Bliain an Áir (the year of carnage) in 1740–1 was caused by extremely cold and rainy weather that wiped out the harvest (Ó Gráda 15). This earlier famine, almost forgotten today, was more severe than the subsequent one, causing the death of an eight of the population of the island over one and a half years (McBride). These manuscripts are written in living memory of both events. Within the world that they inhabit, it may appear there is little said about hunger or social conditions beyond the walls of their estates. Subjected to closer analysis, however, it is evident that they are loquacious in their own unique way, and make an important contribution to the narrative of cookbooks. Through the three manuscripts discussed here, we find evidence of the culinary hegemony of France and how practitioners in Ireland commented on this in comparatively neutral fashion. An awareness of cholera and bank collapses have been communicated in a singular fashion, while a conversation between diarist and culinary networker has allowed a glimpse into the world of the landed gentry in Ireland during the Georgian period. References Allen, M. “Statement by Myrtle Allen at the opening of Ballymaloe Cookery School.” 14 Nov. 1983. Ballaghtobin. “The Grounds”. nd. 13 Mar. 2013. ‹http://www.ballaghtobin.com/gardens.html›. Barrow, G.L. “Some Dublin Private Banks.” Dublin Historical Record 25.2 (1972): 38–53. Bence-Jones, M. A Guide to Irish Country Houses. London: Constable, 1988. Bourke, A. Ed. Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Vol V. Cork: Cork UP, 2002. Craske, M. “Design and the Competitive Spirit in Early and Mid 18th Century England”, Journal of Design History 12.3 (1999): 187–216. Cullen, L. The Emergence of Modern Ireland. London: Batsford, 1981. Dawson, Graham. “Trauma, Memory, Politics. The Irish Troubles.” Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors. Ed. Kim Lacy Rogers, Selma Leydesdorff and Graham Dawson. New Jersey: Transaction P, 2004. De Bhaldraithe,T. Ed. Cín Lae Amhlaoibh. Cork: Mercier P, 1979. Ennis Chronicle. 12–23 Feb 1812. 10 Feb. 2013 ‹http://astheywere.blogspot.ie/2012/12/ennis-chronicle-1812-feb-23-feb-12.html› Farmar, A. E-mail correspondence between Farmar and Dr M. Mac Con Iomaire, 26 Jan. 2011. Fenning, H. “The Cholera Epidemic in Ireland 1832–3: Priests, Ministers, Doctors”. Archivium Hibernicum 57 (2003): 77–125. Ferguson, F. “The Industrialisation of Irish Book Production 1790-1900.” The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Vol. IV The Irish Book in English 1800-1891. Ed. J. Murphy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Foster, R.F. Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change from 1970. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Gilbert, James William. The History of Banking in Ireland. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1836. Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by a Lady: Facsimile Edition. Devon: Prospect, 1983. Gold, C. Danish Cookbooks. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2007. Herbert, D. Retrospections of an Outcast or the Life of Dorothea Herbert. London: Gerald Howe, 1929. Higgins, Michael D. “Remarks by President Michael D. Higgins reflecting on the Gorta Mór: the Great famine of Ireland.” Famine Commemoration, Boston, 12 May 2012. 18 Feb. 2013 ‹http://www.president.ie/speeches/ › Landed Estates Database, National University of Galway, Moore Institute for Research, 10 Feb. 2013 ‹http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/family-show.jsp?id=633.› Lehmann, G. The British Housewife: Cookery books, cooking and society in eighteenth-century Britain. Totnes: Prospect, 1993. ---. “Politics in the Kitchen.” 18th Century Life 23.2 (1999): 71–83. Mac Con Iomaire, M. “The Emergence, Development and Influence of French Haute Cuisine on Public Dining in Dublin Restaurants 1900-2000: An Oral History”. Vol. 2. PhD thesis. Dublin Institute of Technology. 2009. 8 Mar. 2013 ‹http://arrow.dit.ie/tourdoc/12›. McBride, Ian. Eighteenth Century Ireland: The Isle of Slaves. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2009. McLysaght, E.A. Anelecta Hibernica 15. Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1944. Myers, K. “Dinner is served ... But in Our Culinary Dessert it may be Korean.” The Irish Independent 30 Jun. 2006. Nevin, M. “A County Kilkenny Georgian Household Notebook.” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 109 (1979): 5–18. (NLI) National Library of Ireland. Baker. 19th century manuscript. MS 34,952. ---. Limerick. 19th century manuscript. MS 42,105. ---. Tervoe. 18th century manuscript. MS 42,134. Ó Gráda, C. Famine: A Short History. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2009. O’Daly, C. E-mail correspondence between Colette O’Daly, Assistant Keeper, Dept. of Manuscripts, National Library of Ireland and Dorothy Cashman. 8 Dec. 2011. Potter, M. William Monsell of Tervoe 1812-1894. Dublin: Irish Academic P, 2009. Rees, Catherine. “Irish Anxiety, Identity and Narrative in the Plays of McDonagh and Jones.” Redefinitions of Irish Identity: A Postnationalist Approach. Eds. Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Carmen Zamorano Llena. Bern: Peter Lang, 2010. St. Canice’s. Cookery and Cures of Old Kilkenny. Kilkenny: Boethius P, 1983. Swift, J. The Works of the Rev Dr J Swift Vol. XIX Dublin: Faulkner, 1772. 8 Feb. 2013. ‹http://www.google.ie/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=works+of+jonathan+swift+Vol+XIX+&btnG=› Tennison, C.M. “The Old Dublin Bankers.” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archeological Society 1.2 (1895): 36–9.

Cremer, Annette C. / Martin Mulsow (Hrsg.), Objekte als Quellen der historischen Kulturwissenschaften. Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung (Ding, Materialität, Geschichte, 2), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 352 S. / Abb., € 50,00. (Alexander Georg Durben, Münster) Pfister, Ulrich (Hrsg.), Kulturen des Entscheidens. Narrative – Praktiken – Ressourcen (Kulturen des Entscheidens, 1), Göttingen 2019, Vandenhoeck &amp; Ruprecht, 409 S. / Abb., € 70,00. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Krischer, André (Hrsg.), Verräter. Geschichte eines Deutungsmusters, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 353 S. / Abb., € 39,00. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Baumbach, Hendrik / Horst Carl (Hrsg.), Landfrieden – epochenübergreifend. Neue Perspektiven der Landfriedensforschung auf Verfassung, Recht, Konflikt (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Beiheft 54), Berlin 2018, Duncker &amp; Humblot, 280 S., € 69,90. (Fabian Schulze, Ulm / Augsburg) Ertl, Thomas (Hrsg.), Erzwungene Exile. Umsiedlung und Vertreibung in der Vormoderne (500 – 1850), Frankfurt a. M. / New York 2017, Campus, 272 S., € 39,95. (Alexander Schunka, Berlin) Earenfight, Theresa (Hrsg.), Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. More than Just a Castle (Explorations in Medieval Culture, 6), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, IX u. 416 S., € 150,00. (Jeroen Duindam, Leiden) Hiltmann, Torsten / Laurent Hablot (Hrsg.), Heraldic Artists and Painters in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (Heraldic Studies, 1), Ostfildern 2018, Thorbecke, 236 S. / Abb., € 45,00. (Luc Duerloo, Antwerpen) Kießling, Rolf / Frank Konersmann / Werner Troßbach, Grundzüge der Agrargeschichte, Bd. 1: Vom Spätmittelalter bis zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg (1350 – 1650), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2016, Böhlau, 329 S. / Abb., € 30,00. (Maximilian Schuh, Heidelberg) Kiening, Christian, Fülle und Mangel. Medialität im Mittelalter, Zürich 2016, Chronos, 468 S. / Abb., € 26,00. (Petra Schulte, Trier) Lachaud, Frédérique / Michael Penman (Hrsg.), Absentee Authority across Medieval Europe, Woodbridge 2017, The Boydell Press, XI u. 264 S. / Abb., £ 60,00. (Melanie Panse-Buchwalter, Essen) Antonín, Robert, The Ideal Ruler in Medieval Bohemia (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450 – 1450, 44), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, XIII u. 400 S. / Abb., € 145,00. (Julia Burkhardt, Heidelberg) Musson, Anthony / Nigel Ramsay (Hrsg.), Courts of Chivalry and Admiralty in Late Medieval Europe, Woodbridge 2018, The Boydell Press, XIV u. 250 S. / Abb., £ 60,00. (Jörg Peltzer, Heidelberg) Paravicini, Werner, Ehrenvolle Abwesenheit. Studien zum adligen Reisen im späteren Mittelalter. Gesammelte Aufsätze, hrsg. v. Jan Hirschbiegel / Harm von Seggern, Ostfildern 2017, Thorbecke, XI u. 757 S. / Abb., € 94,00. (Christina Antenhofer, Salzburg) Kolditz, Sebastian / Markus Koller (Hrsg.), The Byzantine-Ottoman Transition in Venetian Chronicles / La transizione bizantino-ottomana nelle cronache veneziane (Venetiana, 19), Rom 2018, Viella, 324 S. / graph. Darst., € 32,00. (Mihailo Popović, Wien) Documents on the Papal Plenary Indulgences 1300 – 1517 Preached in the „Regnum Teutonicum“, hrsg. v. Stuart Jenks (Later Medieval Europe, 16), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, XX u. 811 S., € 175,00. (Axel Ehlers, Hannover) Kumhera, Glenn, The Benefits of Peace. Private Peacemaking in Late Medieval Italy (The Medieval Mediterranean, 109), Berlin / Boston 2017, Brill, VIII u. 314 S., € 119,00. (Tobias Daniels, München) Campopiano, Michele / Helen Fulton (Hrsg.), Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations in the Later Middle Ages, Woodbridge 2018, York Medieval Press, XI u. 212 S. / Abb., £ 60,00. (Jörg Rogge, Mainz) Hole, Jennifer, Economic Ethics in Late Medieval England, 1300 – 1500 (Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics), Cham 2016, Palgrave Macmillan, XII u. 300 S., € 123,04. (Petra Schulte, Trier) Klingner, Jens / Benjamin Müsegades (Hrsg.), (Un)‌Gleiche Kurfürsten? Die Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein und die Herzöge von Sachsen im späten Mittelalter (1356 – 1547) (Heidelberger Veröffentlichungen zur Landesgeschichte und Landeskunde, 19), Heidelberg 2017, Universitätsverlag Winter, 280 S. / Abb., € 45,00. (Jörg Schwarz, München) Mütze, Dirk M., Das Augustiner-Chorherrenstift St. Afra in Meißen (1205 – 1539) (Schriften zur sächsischen Geschichte und Volkskunde, 54), Leipzig 2016, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 434 S. / Abb., € 49,00. (Stefan Tebruck, Gießen) Langeloh, Jacob, Erzählte Argumente. Exempla und historische Argumentation in politischen Traktaten c. 1265 – 1325 (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 123), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, X u. 414 S., € 128,00. (Frank Godthardt, Hamburg) The Dedicated Spiritual Life of Upper Rhine Noble Women. A Study and Translation of a Fourteenth-Century Spiritual Biography of Gertrude Rickeldey of Ortenberg and Heilke of Staufenberg, hrsg., komm. u. übers. v. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker in Zusammenarbeit mit Gertrud J. Lewis / Tilman Lewis / Michael Hopf / Freimut Löser (Sanctimoniales, 2), Turnhout 2017, Brepols, VIII u. 269 S., € 80,00. (Jörg Voigt, Rom) Roeck, Bernd, Der Morgen der Welt. Geschichte der Renaissance (Historische Bibliothek der Gerda Henkel Stiftung), München 2017, Beck, 1304 S. / Abb., € 44,00. (Reinhard Stauber, Klagenfurt) Eming, Jutta / Michael Dallapiazza (Hrsg.), Marsilio Ficino in Deutschland und Italien. Renaissance-Magie zwischen Wissenschaft und Literatur (Episteme in Bewegung, 7), Wiesbaden 2017, Harrassowitz, VIII u. 291 S. / Abb., € 56,00. (Michaela Boenke, München) Furstenberg-Levi, Shulamit, The Accademia Pontaniana. A Model of a Humanist Network (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 258), Leiden / London 2016, Brill, VIII u. 223 S., € 116,00. (Tobias Daniels, München) Andermann, Ulrich, Humanismus im Nordwesten. Köln – Niederrhein – Westfalen, Münster 2018, Aschendorff, 361 S., € 56,00. (Jan-Hendryk de Boer, Essen) Adams, Jonathan / Cordelia Heß (Hrsg.), Revealing the Secrets of the Jews. Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe, Berlin / Boston 2017, de Gruyter, XV u. 325 S. / Abb., € 79,95. (Gudrun Emberger, Berlin) Buchet, Christian / Gérard Le Bouëdec (Hrsg.), The Sea in History / La mer dans l’histoire, [Bd. 3:] The Early Modern World / La période moderne, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge / Rochester 2017, The Boydell Press, XXVI u. 1072 S., £ 125,00. (Jann M. Witt, Laboe) Broomhall, Susan (Hrsg.), Early Modern Emotions. An Introduction (Early Modern Themes), London / New York 2017, Routledge, XXXVIII u. 386 S. / Abb., £ 36,99. (Hannes Ziegler, London) Faini, Marco / Alessia Meneghin (Hrsg.), Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World (Intersections, 59.2), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XXII u. 356 S. / Abb., € 154,00. (Volker Leppin, Tübingen) Richardson, Catherine / Tara Hamling / David Gaimster (Hrsg.), The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (The Routledge History Handbook), London / New York 2017, Routledge, XIX u. 485 S. / Abb. £ 105,00. (Kim Siebenhüner, Jena) Ilmakunnas, Johanna / Jon Stobart (Hrsg.), A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe. Display, Acquisition and Boundaries, London [u. a.] 2017, Bloomsbury Academic, XV u. 318 S. / Abb., £ 85,00. (Kim Siebenhüner, Jena) Czeguhn, Ignacio / José Antonio López Nevot / Antonio Sánchez Aranda (Hrsg.), Control of Supreme Courts in Early Modern Europe (Schriften zur Rechtsgeschichte, 181), Berlin 2018, Duncker &amp; Humblot, 323 S. / Abb., € 89,90. (Peter Oestmann, Münster) Heuser, Beatrice (Hrsg.), Small Wars and Insurgencies in Theory and Practice, 1500 – 1850, London / New York 2016, Routledge, XII u. 219 S., £ 29,95. (Horst Carl, Gießen) Koopmans, Joop W., Early Modern Media and the News in Europe. Perspectives from the Dutch Angle (Library of the Written Word, 70; The Handpress World, 54), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, XVII u. 361 S. / Abb., € 140,00. (Johannes Arndt, Münster) Miller, John, Early Modern Britain. 1450 – 1750 (Cambridge History of Britain, 3), Cambridge 2017, Cambridge University Press, XVIII u. 462 S. / Abb., £ 22,99. (Michael Schaich, London) Blickle, Renate, Politische Streitkultur in Altbayern. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Grundrechte in der frühen Neuzeit, hrsg. v. Claudia Ulbrich / Michaela Hohkamp / Andrea Griesebner (Quellen und Forschungen zur Agrargeschichte, 58), Berlin / Boston 2017, de Gruyter, XII u. 226 S., € 69,95. (Thomas Wallnig, Wien) Näther, Birgit, Die Normativität des Praktischen. Strukturen und Prozesse vormoderner Verwaltungsarbeit. Das Beispiel der landesherrlichen Visitation in Bayern (Verhandeln, Verfahren, Entscheiden, 4), Münster 2017, Aschendorff, 215 S. / Abb., € 41,00. (Franziska Neumann, Rostock) Sherer, Idan, Warriors for a Living. The Experience of the Spanish Infantry during the Italian Wars, 1494 – 1559 (History of Warfare, 114), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, VIII u. 289 S. / Abb., € 120,00. (Heinrich Lang, Leipzig) Abela, Joan, Hospitaller Malta and the Mediterranean Economy in the Sixteenth Century, Woodbridge 2018, The Boydell Press, XXVI u. 263 S. / Abb., £ 75,00. (Magnus Ressel, Frankfurt a. M.) Bünz, Enno / Werner Greiling / Uwe Schirmer (Hrsg.), Thüringische Klöster und Stifte in vor- und frühreformatorischer Zeit (Quellen und Forschungen zu Thüringen im Zeitalter der Reformation, 6), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 461 S., € 60,00. (Ingrid Würth, Halle a. d. S.) Witt, Christian V., Martin Luthers Reformation der Ehe. Sein theologisches Eheverständnis vor dessen augustinisch-mittelalterlichem Hintergrund (Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation, 95), Tübingen 2017, Mohr Siebeck, XIV u. 346 S., € 99,00. (Iris Fleßenkämper, Münster) Freitag, Werner / Wilfried Reininghaus (Hrsg.), Beiträge zur Geschichte der Reformation in Westfalen, Bd. 1: „Langes“ 15. Jahrhundert, Übergänge und Zäsuren. Beiträge der Tagung am 30. und 31. Oktober 2015 in Lippstadt (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Westfalen. Neue Folge, 35), Münster 2017, Aschendorff, 352 S. / Abb., € 39,00. (Andreas Rutz, Düsseldorf) Hartmann, Thomas F., Die Reichstage unter Karl V. Verfahren und Verfahrensentwicklung 1521 – 1555 (Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 100), Göttingen / Bristol 2017, Vandenhoeck &amp; Ruprecht, 370 S., € 70,00. (Reinhard Seyboth, Regensburg) Der Reichstag zu Regensburg 1541, 4 Teilbde., bearb. v. Albrecht P. Luttenberger (Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Jüngere Reihe, 11), Berlin / Boston 2018, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 3777 S., € 598,00. (Eva Ortlieb, Graz) Putten, Jasper van, Networked Nation. Mapping German Cities in Sebastian Münster’s „Cosmographia“ (Maps, Spaces, Cultures, 1), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, XXIII u. 353 S. / Abb., € 135,00. (Felicitas Schmieder, Hagen) Müller, Winfried / Martina Schattkowski / Dirk Syndram (Hrsg.), Kurfürst August von Sachsen. Ein nachreformatorischer „Friedensfürst“ zwischen Territorium und Reich. Beiträge zur wissenschaftlichen Tagung vom 9. bis 11. Juli 2015 in Torgau und Dresden, Dresden 2017, Sandstein, 240 S. / Abb., € 28,00. (Vinzenz Czech, Potsdam) Haas, Alexandra, Hexen und Herrschaftspolitik. Die Reichsgrafen von Oettingen und ihr Umgang mit den Hexenprozessen im Vergleich (Hexenforschung, 17), Bielefeld 2018, Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 319 S. / Abb., € 29,00. (Rainer Walz, Bochum) Flurschütz da Cruz, Andreas, Hexenbrenner, Seelenretter. Fürstbischof Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn (1573 – 1617) und die Hexenverfolgungen im Hochstift Würzburg (Hexenforschung, 16), Bielefeld 2017, Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 252 S. / Abb., € 24,00. (Rainer Walz, Bochum) Sidler, Daniel, Heiligkeit aushandeln. Katholische Reform und lokale Glaubenspraxis in der Eidgenossenschaft (1560 – 1790) (Campus Historische Studien, 75), Frankfurt a. M. / New York 2017, Campus, 593 S. / Abb., € 58,00. (Heinrich Richard Schmidt, Bern) Moring, Beatrice / Richard Wall, Widows in European Economy and Society, 1600 – 1920, Woodbridge / Rochester 2017, The Boydell Press, XIII u. 327 S. / Abb., £ 75,00. (Margareth Lanzinger, Wien) Katsiardi-Hering, Olga / Maria A. Stassinopoulou (Hrsg.), Across the Danube. Southeastern Europeans and Their Travelling Identities (17th–19th C.) (Studies in Global Social History, 27; Studies in Global Migration History, 9), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, VIII u. 330 S. / Abb., € 110,00. (Olivia Spiridon, Tübingen) „wobei mich der liebe Gott wunderlich beschutzet“. Die Schreibkalender des Clamor Eberhard von dem Bussche zu Hünnefeld (1611 – 1666). Edition mit Kommentar, hrsg. v. Lene Freifrau von dem Bussche-Hünnefeld / Stephanie Haberer, [Bramsche] 2017, Rasch, 216 S. / Abb., € 34,50. (Helga Meise, Reims) Rohrschneider, Michael / Anuschka Tischer (Hrsg.), Dynamik durch Gewalt? Der Dreißigjährige Krieg (1618 – 1648) als Faktor der Wandlungsprozesse des 17. Jahrhunderts (Schriftenreihe zur Neueren Geschichte, 38; Neue Folge, 1), Münster 2018, Aschendorff, VII u. 342 S. / Abb., € 48,00. (Claire Gantet, Fribourg) Schloms, Antje, Institutionelle Waisenfürsorge im Alten Reich 1648 – 1806. Statistische Analyse und Fallbeispiele (Beiträge zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, 129), Stuttgart 2017, Steiner, 395 S., € 62,00. (Iris Ritzmann, Zürich) Mühling, Christian, Die europäische Debatte über den Religionskrieg (1679 – 1714). Konfessionelle Memoria und internationale Politik im Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV. (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz, 250), Göttingen 2018, Vandenhoeck &amp; Ruprecht, 587 S., € 85,00. (Cornel Zwierlein, Bamberg) Dietz, Bettina, Das System der Natur. Die kollaborative Wissenskultur der Botanik im 18. Jahrhundert, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 216 S., € 35,00. (Flemming Schock, Leipzig) Friedrich, Markus / Alexander Schunka (Hrsg.), Reporting Christian Missions in the Eighteenth Century. Communication, Culture of Knowledge and Regular Publication in a Cross-Confessional Perspective (Jabloniana, 8), Wiesbaden 2017, Harrassowitz, 196 S., € 52,00. (Nadine Amsler, Frankfurt a. M.) Berkovich, Ilya, Motivation in War. The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe, Cambridge / New York 2017, Cambridge University Press, XII u. 280 S. / graph. Darst., £ 22,99. (Marian Füssel, Göttingen) Stöckl, Alexandra, Der Principalkommissar. Formen und Bedeutung sozio-politischer Repräsentation im Hause Thurn und Taxis (Thurn und Taxis Studien. Neue Folge, 10), Regensburg 2018, Pustet, VII u. 280 S., € 34,95. (Dorothée Goetze, Bonn) Wunder, Dieter, Der Adel im Hessen des 18. Jahrhunderts – Herrenstand und Fürstendienst. Grundlagen einer Sozialgeschichte des Adels in Hessen (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen, 84), Marburg 2016, Historische Kommission für Hessen, XIV u. 844 S. / Abb., € 39,00. (Alexander Kästner, Dresden) Mährle, Wolfgang (Hrsg.), Aufgeklärte Herrschaft im Konflikt. Herzog Carl Eugen von Württemberg 1728 – 1793. Tagung des Arbeitskreises für Landes- und Ortsgeschichte im Verband der württembergischen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine am 4. und 5. Dezember 2014 im Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (Geschichte Württembergs, 1), Stuttgart 2017, Kohlhammer, 354 S. / Abb., € 25,00. (Dietmar Schiersner, Weingarten) Bennett, Rachel E., Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740 – 1834 (Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife), Cham 2018, Palgrave Macmillan, XV u. 237 S., € 29,96. (Benjamin Seebröker, Dresden) York, Neil L., The American Revolution, 1760 – 1790. New Nation as New Empire, New York / London 2016, Routledge, XIII u. 151 S. / Karten, Hardcover, £ 125,00. (Volker Depkat, Regensburg) Richter, Roland, Amerikanische Revolution und niederländische Finanzanleihen 1776 – 1782. Die Rolle John Adams’ und der Amsterdamer Finanzhäuser bei der diplomatischen Anerkennung der USA (Niederlande-Studien, 57), Münster / New York 2016, Waxmann, 185 S. / Abb., € 29,90. (Volker Depkat, Regensburg) Steiner, Philip, Die Landstände in Steiermark, Kärnten und Krain und die josephinischen Reformen. Bedrohungskommunikation angesichts konkurrierender Ordnungsvorstellungen (1789 – 1792), Münster 2017, Aschendorff, 608 S. / Abb., € 59,00 (Simon Karstens, Trier)

Introduction: Our current obsession with the lives of others “Biography—that is to say, our creative and non-fictional output devoted to recording and interpreting real lives—has enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance in recent years,” writes Nigel Hamilton in Biography: A Brief History (1). Ian Donaldson agrees that biography is back in fashion: “Once neglected within the academy and relegated to the dustier recesses of public bookstores, biography has made a notable return over recent years, emerging, somewhat surprisingly, as a new cultural phenomenon, and a new academic adventure” (23). For over a decade now, commentators having been making similar observations about our obsession with the intimacies of individual people’s lives. In a lecture in 1994, Justin Kaplan asserted the West was “a culture of biography” (qtd. in Salwak 1) and more recent research findings by John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge affirm that “the undiminished human curiosity about other peoples lives is clearly reflected in the popularity of autobiographies and biographies” (218). At least in relation to television, this assertion seems valid. In Australia, as in the USA and the UK, reality and other biographically based television shows have taken over from drama in both the numbers of shows produced and the viewers these shows attract, and these forms are also popular in Canada (see, for instance, Morreale on The Osbournes). In 2007, the program Biography celebrated its twentieth anniversary season to become one of the longest running documentary series on American television; so successful that in 1999 it was spun off into its own eponymous channel (Rak; Dempsey). Premiered in May 1996, Australian Story—which aims to utilise a “personal approach” to biographical storytelling—has won a significant viewership, critical acclaim and professional recognition (ABC). It can also be posited that the real home movies viewers submit to such programs as Australia’s Favourite Home Videos, and “chat” or “confessional” television are further reflections of a general mania for biographical detail (see Douglas), no matter how fragmented, sensationalized, or even inane and cruel. A recent example of the latter, the USA-produced The Moment of Truth, has contestants answering personal questions under polygraph examination and then again in front of an audience including close relatives and friends—the more “truthful” their answers (and often, the more humiliated and/or distressed contestants are willing to be), the more money they can win. Away from television, but offering further evidence of this interest are the growing readerships for personally oriented weblogs and networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook (Grossman), individual profiles and interviews in periodical publications, and the recently widely revived newspaper obituary column (Starck). Adult and community education organisations run short courses on researching and writing auto/biographical forms and, across Western countries, the family history/genealogy sections of many local, state, and national libraries have been upgraded to meet the increasing demand for these services. Academically, journals and e-mail discussion lists have been established on the topics of biography and autobiography, and North American, British, and Australian universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in life writing. The commonly aired wisdom is that published life writing in its many text-based forms (biography, autobiography, memoir, diaries, and collections of personal letters) is enjoying unprecedented popularity. It is our purpose to examine this proposition. Methodological problems There are a number of problems involved in investigating genre popularity, growth, and decline in publishing. Firstly, it is not easy to gain access to detailed statistics, which are usually only available within the industry. Secondly, it is difficult to ascertain how publishing statistics are gathered and what they report (Eliot). There is the question of whether bestselling booklists reflect actual book sales or are manipulated marketing tools (Miller), although the move from surveys of booksellers to electronic reporting at point of sale in new publishing lists such as BookScan will hopefully obviate this problem. Thirdly, some publishing lists categorise by subject and form, some by subject only, and some do not categorise at all. This means that in any analysis of these statistics, a decision has to be made whether to use the publishing list’s system or impose a different mode. If the publishing list is taken at face value, the question arises of whether to use categorisation by form or by subject. Fourthly, there is the bedeviling issue of terminology. Traditionally, there reigned a simple dualism in the terminology applied to forms of telling the true story of an actual life: biography and autobiography. Publishing lists that categorise their books, such as BookScan, have retained it. But with postmodern recognition of the presence of the biographer in a biography and of the presence of other subjects in an autobiography, the dichotomy proves false. There is the further problem of how to categorise memoirs, diaries, and letters. In the academic arena, the term “life writing” has emerged to describe the field as a whole. Within the genre of life writing, there are, however, still recognised sub-genres. Academic definitions vary, but generally a biography is understood to be a scholarly study of a subject who is not the writer; an autobiography is the story of a entire life written by its subject; while a memoir is a segment or particular focus of that life told, again, by its own subject. These terms are, however, often used interchangeably even by significant institutions such the USA Library of Congress, which utilises the term “biography” for all. Different commentators also use differing definitions. Hamilton uses the term “biography” to include all forms of life writing. Donaldson discusses how the term has been co-opted to include biographies of place such as Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography (2000) and of things such as Lizzie Collingham’s Curry: A Biography (2005). This reflects, of course, a writing/publishing world in which non-fiction stories of places, creatures, and even foodstuffs are called biographies, presumably in the belief that this will make them more saleable. The situation is further complicated by the emergence of hybrid publishing forms such as, for instance, the “memoir-with-recipes” or “food memoir” (Brien, Rutherford and Williamson). Are such books to be classified as autobiography or put in the “cookery/food & drink” category? We mention in passing the further confusion caused by novels with a subtitle of The Biography such as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. The fifth methodological problem that needs to be mentioned is the increasing globalisation of the publishing industry, which raises questions about the validity of the majority of studies available (including those cited herein) which are nationally based. Whether book sales reflect what is actually read (and by whom), raises of course another set of questions altogether. Methodology In our exploration, we were fundamentally concerned with two questions. Is life writing as popular as claimed? And, if it is, is this a new phenomenon? To answer these questions, we examined a range of available sources. We began with the non-fiction bestseller lists in Publishers Weekly (a respected American trade magazine aimed at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents that claims to be international in scope) from their inception in 1912 to the present time. We hoped that this data could provide a longitudinal perspective. The term bestseller was coined by Publishers Weekly when it began publishing its lists in 1912; although the first list of popular American books actually appeared in The Bookman (New York) in 1895, based itself on lists appearing in London’s The Bookman since 1891 (Bassett and Walter 206). The Publishers Weekly lists are the best source of longitudinal information as the currently widely cited New York Times listings did not appear till 1942, with the Wall Street Journal a late entry into the field in 1994. We then examined a number of sources of more recent statistics. We looked at the bestseller lists from the USA-based Amazon.com online bookseller; recent research on bestsellers in Britain; and lists from Nielsen BookScan Australia, which claims to tally some 85% or more of books sold in Australia, wherever they are published. In addition to the reservations expressed above, caveats must be aired in relation to these sources. While Publishers Weekly claims to be an international publication, it largely reflects the North American publishing scene and especially that of the USA. Although available internationally, Amazon.com also has its own national sites—such as Amazon.co.uk—not considered here. It also caters to a “specific computer-literate, credit-able clientele” (Gutjahr: 219) and has an unashamedly commercial focus, within which all the information generated must be considered. In our analysis of the material studied, we will use “life writing” as a genre term. When it comes to analysis of the lists, we have broken down the genre of life writing into biography and autobiography, incorporating memoir, letters, and diaries under autobiography. This is consistent with the use of the terminology in BookScan. Although we have broken down the genre in this way, it is the overall picture with regard to life writing that is our concern. It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a detailed analysis of whether, within life writing, further distinctions should be drawn. Publishers Weekly: 1912 to 2006 1912 saw the first list of the 10 bestselling non-fiction titles in Publishers Weekly. It featured two life writing texts, being headed by an autobiography, The Promised Land by Russian Jewish immigrant Mary Antin, and concluding with Albert Bigelow Paine’s six-volume biography, Mark Twain. The Publishers Weekly lists do not categorise non-fiction titles by either form or subject, so the classifications below are our own with memoir classified as autobiography. In a decade-by-decade tally of these listings, there were 3 biographies and 20 autobiographies in the lists between 1912 and 1919; 24 biographies and 21 autobiographies in the 1920s; 13 biographies and 40 autobiographies in the 1930s; 8 biographies and 46 biographies in the 1940s; 4 biographies and 14 autobiographies in the 1950s; 11 biographies and 13 autobiographies in the 1960s; 6 biographies and 11 autobiographies in the 1970s; 3 biographies and 19 autobiographies in the 1980s; 5 biographies and 17 autobiographies in the 1990s; and 2 biographies and 7 autobiographies from 2000 up until the end of 2006. See Appendix 1 for the relevant titles and authors. Breaking down the most recent figures for 1990–2006, we find a not radically different range of figures and trends across years in the contemporary environment. The validity of looking only at the top ten books sold in any year is, of course, questionable, as are all the issues regarding sources discussed above. But one thing is certain in terms of our inquiry. There is no upwards curve obvious here. If anything, the decade break-down suggests that sales are trending downwards. This is in keeping with the findings of Michael Korda, in his history of twentieth-century bestsellers. He suggests a consistent longitudinal picture across all genres: In every decade, from 1900 to the end of the twentieth century, people have been reliably attracted to the same kind of books […] Certain kinds of popular fiction always do well, as do diet books […] self-help books, celebrity memoirs, sensationalist scientific or religious speculation, stories about pets, medical advice (particularly on the subjects of sex, longevity, and child rearing), folksy wisdom and/or humour, and the American Civil War (xvii). Amazon.com since 2000 The USA-based Amazon.com online bookselling site provides listings of its own top 50 bestsellers since 2000, although only the top 14 bestsellers are recorded for 2001. As fiction and non-fiction are not separated out on these lists and no genre categories are specified, we have again made our own decisions about what books fall into the category of life writing. Generally, we erred on the side of inclusion. (See Appendix 2.) However, when it came to books dealing with political events, we excluded books dealing with specific aspects of political practice/policy. This meant excluding books on, for instance, George Bush’s so-called ‘war on terror,’ of which there were a number of bestsellers listed. In summary, these listings reveal that of the top 364 books sold by Amazon from 2000 to 2007, 46 (or some 12.6%) were, according to our judgment, either biographical or autobiographical texts. This is not far from the 10% of the 1912 Publishers Weekly listing, although, as above, the proportion of bestsellers that can be classified as life writing varied dramatically from year to year, with no discernible pattern of peaks and troughs. This proportion tallied to 4% auto/biographies in 2000, 14% in 2001, 10% in 2002, 18% in 2003 and 2004, 4% in 2005, 14% in 2006 and 20% in 2007. This could suggest a rising trend, although it does not offer any consistent trend data to suggest sales figures may either continue to grow, or fall again, in 2008 or afterwards. Looking at the particular texts in these lists (see Appendix 2) also suggests that there is no general trend in the popularity of life writing in relation to other genres. For instance, in these listings in Amazon.com, life writing texts only rarely figure in the top 10 books sold in any year. So rarely indeed, that from 2001 there were only five in this category. In 2001, John Adams by David McCullough was the best selling book of the year; in 2003, Hillary Clinton’s autobiographical Living History was 7th; in 2004, My Life by Bill Clinton reached number 1; in 2006, Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman was 9th; and in 2007, Ishmael Beah’s discredited A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier came in at 8th. Apart from McCulloch’s biography of Adams, all the above are autobiographical texts, while the focus on leading political figures is notable. Britain: Feather and Woodbridge With regard to the British situation, we did not have actual lists and relied on recent analysis. John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge find considerably higher levels for life writing in Britain than above with, from 1998 to 2005, 28% of British published non-fiction comprising autobiography, while 8% of hardback and 5% of paperback non-fiction was biography (2007). Furthermore, although Feather and Woodbridge agree with commentators that life writing is currently popular, they do not agree that this is a growth state, finding the popularity of life writing “essentially unchanged” since their previous study, which covered 1979 to the early 1990s (Feather and Reid). Australia: Nielsen BookScan 2006 and 2007 In the Australian publishing industry, where producing books remains an ‘expensive, risky endeavour which is increasingly market driven’ (Galligan 36) and ‘an inherently complex activity’ (Carter and Galligan 4), the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal that the total numbers of books sold in Australia has remained relatively static over the past decade (130.6 million in the financial year 1995–96 and 128.8 million in 2003–04) (ABS). During this time, however, sales volumes of non-fiction publications have grown markedly, with a trend towards “non-fiction, mass market and predictable” books (Corporall 41) resulting in general non-fiction sales in 2003–2004 outselling general fiction by factors as high as ten depending on the format—hard- or paperback, and trade or mass market paperback (ABS 2005). However, while non-fiction has increased in popularity in Australia, the same does not seem to hold true for life writing. Here, in utilising data for the top 5,000 selling non-fiction books in both 2006 and 2007, we are relying on Nielsen BookScan’s categorisation of texts as either biography or autobiography. In 2006, no works of life writing made the top 10 books sold in Australia. In looking at the top 100 books sold for 2006, in some cases the subjects of these works vary markedly from those extracted from the Amazon.com listings. In Australia in 2006, life writing makes its first appearance at number 14 with convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby’s My Story. This is followed by another My Story at 25, this time by retired Australian army chief, Peter Cosgrove. Jonestown: The Power and Myth of Alan Jones comes in at 34 for the Australian broadcaster’s biographer Chris Masters; the biography, The Innocent Man by John Grisham at 38 and Li Cunxin’s autobiographical Mao’s Last Dancer at 45. Australian Susan Duncan’s memoir of coping with personal loss, Salvation Creek: An Unexpected Life makes 50; bestselling USA travel writer Bill Bryson’s autobiographical memoir of his childhood The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid 69; Mandela: The Authorised Portrait by Rosalind Coward, 79; and Joanne Lees’s memoir of dealing with her kidnapping, the murder of her partner and the justice system in Australia’s Northern Territory, No Turning Back, 89. These books reveal a market preference for autobiographical writing, and an almost even split between Australian and overseas subjects in 2006. 2007 similarly saw no life writing in the top 10. The books in the top 100 sales reveal a downward trend, with fewer titles making this band overall. In 2007, Terri Irwin’s memoir of life with her famous husband, wildlife warrior Steve Irwin, My Steve, came in at number 26; musician Andrew Johns’s memoir of mental illness, The Two of Me, at 37; Ayaan Hirst Ali’s autobiography Infidel at 39; John Grogan’s biography/memoir, Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, at 42; Sally Collings’s biography of the inspirational young survivor Sophie Delezio, Sophie’s Journey, at 51; and Elizabeth Gilbert’s hybrid food, self-help and travel memoir, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything at 82. Mao’s Last Dancer, published the year before, remained in the top 100 in 2007 at 87. When moving to a consideration of the top 5,000 books sold in Australia in 2006, BookScan reveals only 62 books categorised as life writing in the top 1,000, and only 222 in the top 5,000 (with 34 titles between 1,000 and 1,999, 45 between 2,000 and 2,999, 48 between 3,000 and 3,999, and 33 between 4,000 and 5,000). 2007 shows a similar total of 235 life writing texts in the top 5,000 bestselling books (75 titles in the first 1,000, 27 between 1,000 and 1,999, 51 between 2,000 and 2,999, 39 between 3,000 and 3,999, and 43 between 4,000 and 5,000). In both years, 2006 and 2007, life writing thus not only constituted only some 4% of the bestselling 5,000 titles in Australia, it also showed only minimal change between these years and, therefore, no significant growth. Conclusions Our investigation using various instruments that claim to reflect levels of book sales reveals that Western readers’ willingness to purchase published life writing has not changed significantly over the past century. We find no evidence of either a short, or longer, term growth or boom in sales in such books. Instead, it appears that what has been widely heralded as a new golden age of life writing may well be more the result of an expanded understanding of what is included in the genre than an increased interest in it by either book readers or publishers. What recent years do appear to have seen, however, is a significantly increased interest by public commentators, critics, and academics in this genre of writing. We have also discovered that the issue of our current obsession with the lives of others tends to be discussed in academic as well as popular fora as if what applies to one sub-genre or production form applies to another: if biography is popular, then autobiography will also be, and vice versa. If reality television programming is attracting viewers, then readers will be flocking to life writing as well. Our investigation reveals that such propositions are questionable, and that there is significant research to be completed in mapping such audiences against each other. This work has also highlighted the difficulty of separating out the categories of written texts in publishing studies, firstly in terms of determining what falls within the category of life writing as distinct from other forms of non-fiction (the hybrid problem) and, secondly, in terms of separating out the categories within life writing. Although we have continued to use the terms biography and autobiography as sub-genres, we are aware that they are less useful as descriptors than they are often assumed to be. In order to obtain a more complete and accurate picture, publishing categories may need to be agreed upon, redefined and utilised across the publishing industry and within academia. This is of particular importance in the light of the suggestions (from total sales volumes) that the audiences for books are limited, and therefore the rise of one sub-genre may be directly responsible for the fall of another. Bair argues, for example, that in the 1980s and 1990s, the popularity of what she categorises as memoir had direct repercussions on the numbers of birth-to-death biographies that were commissioned, contracted, and published as “sales and marketing staffs conclude[d] that readers don’t want a full-scale life any more” (17). Finally, although we have highlighted the difficulty of using publishing statistics when there is no common understanding as to what such data is reporting, we hope this study shows that the utilisation of such material does add a depth to such enquiries, especially in interrogating the anecdotal evidence that is often quoted as data in publishing and other studies. Appendix 1 Publishers Weekly listings 1990–1999 1990 included two autobiographies, Bo Knows Bo by professional athlete Bo Jackson (with Dick Schaap) and Ronald Reagan’s An America Life: An Autobiography. In 1991, there were further examples of life writing with unimaginative titles, Me: Stories of My Life by Katherine Hepburn, Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography by Kitty Kelley, and Under Fire: An American Story by Oliver North with William Novak; as indeed there were again in 1992 with It Doesn’t Take a Hero: The Autobiography of Norman Schwarzkopf, Sam Walton: Made in America, the autobiography of the founder of Wal-Mart, Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, Every Living Thing, yet another veterinary outpouring from James Herriot, and Truman by David McCullough. In 1993, radio shock-jock Howard Stern was successful with the autobiographical Private Parts, as was Betty Eadie with her detailed recounting of her alleged near-death experience, Embraced by the Light. Eadie’s book remained on the list in 1994 next to Don’t Stand too Close to a Naked Man, comedian Tim Allen’s autobiography. Flag-waving titles continue in 1995 with Colin Powell’s My American Journey, and Miss America, Howard Stern’s follow-up to Private Parts. 1996 saw two autobiographical works, basketball superstar Dennis Rodman’s Bad as I Wanna Be and figure-skater, Ekaterina Gordeeva’s (with EM Swift) My Sergei: A Love Story. In 1997, Diana: Her True Story returns to the top 10, joining Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and prolific biographer Kitty Kelly’s The Royals, while in 1998, there is only the part-autobiography, part travel-writing A Pirate Looks at Fifty, by musician Jimmy Buffet. There is no biography or autobiography included in either the 1999 or 2000 top 10 lists in Publishers Weekly, nor in that for 2005. In 2001, David McCullough’s biography John Adams and Jack Welch’s business memoir Jack: Straight from the Gut featured. In 2002, Let’s Roll! Lisa Beamer’s tribute to her husband, one of the heroes of 9/11, written with Ken Abraham, joined Rudolph Giuliani’s autobiography, Leadership. 2003 saw Hillary Clinton’s autobiography Living History and Paul Burrell’s memoir of his time as Princess Diana’s butler, A Royal Duty, on the list. In 2004, it was Bill Clinton’s turn with My Life. In 2006, we find John Grisham’s true crime (arguably a biography), The Innocent Man, at the top, Grogan’s Marley and Me at number three, and the autobiographical The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama in fourth place. Appendix 2 Amazon.com listings since 2000 In 2000, there were only two auto/biographies in the top Amazon 50 bestsellers with Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life about his battle with cancer at 20, and Dave Eggers’s self-consciously fictionalised memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius at 32. In 2001, only the top 14 bestsellers were recorded. At number 1 is John Adams by David McCullough and, at 11, Jack: Straight from the Gut by USA golfer Jack Welch. In 2002, Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani was at 12; Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro at 29; Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper by Patricia Cornwell at 42; Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative by David Brock at 48; and Louis Gerstner’s autobiographical Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance: Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround at 50. In 2003, Living History by Hillary Clinton was 7th; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson 14th; Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How President Bill Clinton Endangered America’s Long-Term National Security by Robert Patterson 20th; Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer 32nd; Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor of Jordan 33rd; Kate Remembered, Scott Berg’s biography of Katharine Hepburn, 37th; Who’s your Caddy?: Looping for the Great, Near Great and Reprobates of Golf by Rick Reilly 39th; The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship about a winning baseball team by David Halberstam 42nd; and Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong 49th. In 2004, My Life by Bill Clinton was the best selling book of the year; American Soldier by General Tommy Franks was 16th; Kevin Phillips’s American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush 18th; Timothy Russert’s Big Russ and Me: Father and Son. Lessons of Life 20th; Tony Hendra’s Father Joe: The Man who Saved my Soul 23rd; Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton 27th; Cokie Roberts’s Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised our Nation 31st; Kitty Kelley’s The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty 42nd; and Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan was 43rd. In 2005, auto/biographical texts were well down the list with only The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion at 45 and The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls at 49. In 2006, there was a resurgence of life writing with Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman at 9; Grisham’s The Innocent Man at 12; Bill Buford’s food memoir Heat: an Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany at 23; more food writing with Julia Child’s My Life in France at 29; Immaculée Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust at 30; CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival at 43; and Isabella Hatkoff’s Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship (between a baby hippo and a giant tortoise) at 44. In 2007, Ishmael Beah’s discredited A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier came in at 8; Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe 13; Ayaan Hirst Ali’s autobiography of her life in Muslim society, Infidel, 18; The Reagan Diaries 25; Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI 29; Mother Teresa: Come be my Light 36; Clapton: The Autobiography 40; Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles 45; Tony Dungy’s Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life 47; and Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant at 49. Acknowledgements A sincere thank you to Michael Webster at RMIT for assistance with access to Nielsen BookScan statistics, and to the reviewers of this article for their insightful comments. Any errors are, of course, our own. References Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). “About Us.” Australian Story 2008. 1 June 2008. ‹http://www.abc.net.au/austory/aboutus.htm>. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “1363.0 Book Publishers, Australia, 2003–04.” 2005. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1363.0>. Bair, Deirdre “Too Much S & M.” Sydney Morning Herald 10–11 Sept. 2005: 17. Basset, Troy J., and Christina M. Walter. “Booksellers and Bestsellers: British Book Sales as Documented by The Bookman, 1891–1906.” Book History 4 (2001): 205–36. Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. “Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace.” M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 1 June 2008 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>. Carter, David, and Anne Galligan. “Introduction.” Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2007. 1–14. Corporall, Glenda. Project Octopus: Report Commissioned by the Australian Society of Authors. Sydney: Australian Society of Authors, 1990. Dempsey, John “Biography Rewrite: A&E’s Signature Series Heads to Sib Net.” Variety 4 Jun. 2006. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117944601.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1>. Donaldson, Ian. “Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography.” Australian Book Review 286 (Nov. 2006): 23–29. Douglas, Kate. “‘Blurbing’ Biographical: Authorship and Autobiography.” Biography 24.4 (2001): 806–26. Eliot, Simon. “Very Necessary but not Sufficient: A Personal View of Quantitative Analysis in Book History.” Book History 5 (2002): 283–93. Feather, John, and Hazel Woodbridge. “Bestsellers in the British Book Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 23.3 (Sept. 2007): 210–23. Feather, JP, and M Reid. “Bestsellers and the British Book Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 11.1 (1995): 57–72. Galligan, Anne. “Living in the Marketplace: Publishing in the 1990s.” Publishing Studies 7 (1999): 36–44. Grossman, Lev. “Time’s Person of the Year: You.” Time 13 Dec. 2006. Online edition. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C1569514%2C00.html>. Gutjahr, Paul C. “No Longer Left Behind: Amazon.com, Reader Response, and the Changing Fortunes of the Christian Novel in America.” Book History 5 (2002): 209–36. Hamilton, Nigel. Biography: A Brief History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Kaplan, Justin. “A Culture of Biography.” The Literary Biography: Problems and Solutions. Ed. Dale Salwak. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. 1–11. Korda, Michael. Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900–1999. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2001. Miller, Laura J. “The Bestseller List as Marketing Tool and Historical Fiction.” Book History 3 (2000): 286–304. Morreale, Joanne. “Revisiting The Osbournes: The Hybrid Reality-Sitcom.” Journal of Film and Video 55.1 (Spring 2003): 3–15. Rak, Julie. “Bio-Power: CBC Television’s Life & Times and A&E Network’s Biography on A&E.” LifeWriting 1.2 (2005): 1–18. Starck, Nigel. “Capturing Life—Not Death: A Case For Burying The Posthumous Parallax.” Text: The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs 5.2 (2001). 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct01/starck.htm>.