The English Urban Renaissance Revisited

A quarter of a century ago, Professor Peter Borsay identified a specifically urban phenomenon of cultural revival that took root in the late seventeenth century, leading to the flowering of a wide range of cultural forms and the extensive remodelling of the townscape along classically inspired lines. Borsay called this the ‘English Urban Renaissance’. These essays, including Borsay’s reflective and thought-provoking revisiting of his concept, offer a wide-ranging exploration of the continuing and still developing impact of the ‘English Urban Renaissance’ and investigate the wider impact of the concept beyond England. The essays reiterate the importance of provincial towns as hubs of economic, cultural and political activity and the strength and vitality of urban culture beyond the metropolis. They trace the development of urban culture over time in the light of the concept of ‘urban renaissance’, showing how urban townscapes and cultural life were transformed throughout the long eighteenth century. Together, they establish the continuing impact and importance of Borsay’s concept, demonstrate the breadth of its influence in the UK and beyond, and point to possible areas of research for the future.

After the Restoration of 1660, English provincial towns experienced a cultural renaissance. This book offers a guide to some of the striking features of that revival, concentrating on the interaction between urban culture and society and looking at its origins and the forces which stimulated it.

The eighteenth-century typographer, printer, industrialist and Enlightenment figure, John Baskerville (1707-75) was an inventor, entrepreneur and artist with a worldwide reputation who made eighteenth-century Birmingham a city without typographic equal, by changing the course of type design. This publication explores Baskerville in his social and economic context and evaluates his impact.

Before the Public Library explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World in the two centuries before the advent of the Public Library movement in the mid-nineteenth century through essays by eighteen leading scholars.

For the first time, Early Modern Streets unites the diverse strands of scholarship on urban streets between circa 1450 and 1800 and tackles key questions on how early modern urban society was shaped and how this changed over time. Much of the lives of urban dwellers in early modern Europe were played out in city streets and squares. By exploring urban spaces in relation to themes such as politics, economies, religion, and crime, this edited collection shows that streets were not only places where people came together to work, shop, and eat, but also to fight, celebrate, show their devotion, and express their grievances. The volume brings together scholars from different backgrounds and applies new approaches and methodologies to the historical study of urban experience. In doing so, Early Modern Streets provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most dynamic fields of scholarship in early modern history. Accompanied by over 50 illustrations, Early Modern Streets is the perfect resource for all students and scholars interested in urban life in early modern Europe.

In this succinct one-volume account of the rise and fall of the English press, Jeremy Black traces the medium's history from the emergence of the country's newspaper industry to the Internet age. The English Press focuses on the major developments in the world of print journalism and sets the history of the press in wider currents of English history, political, social, economic and technological. Black takes the reader through a chronological sequence of chapters, with a final chapter exploring possible scenarios for the future of print media. He investigates whether we are witnessing the demise or simply a crisis of the press in the aftermath of the News of the World scandal and Levinson Inquiry. A new title by one of the most eminent historians of Britain and a leading expert on the history of the press, The English Press will appeal to undergraduate students of British and media history and journalism, as well as to the general reader with an interest in the history of England and the media.

Cities and urban societies have many faces. In this study, the pre-modern cities of Holland are presented as arenas where power relations between social classes are expressed in a more or less permanent appropriation of physical space and through discursive strategies. The continuity of the power relations in the cities of Holland, spanning centuries, makes it urgent to look not only at the assumption of urban space as an expression of power relations within society, but also at the contribution of this appropriation to the acceptance and continuity of the existing power relations in pre-modern Holland. Within this broad area, extensive attention is paid to: the very prominent and enduring appropriation of urban space in the field of housing; the less permanent, but violent appropriation of urban space during the public execution of scaffold punishments; the maintenance of public order by civic militias; and appropriation during riots and revolts. In addition, city descriptions, maps and pictures of the pre-modern cities of Holland are scrutinised for what they can reveal about the appropriation of urban spaces. These themes each have an extensive historiography, but they have never been brought together in an interpretative framework that fits in with Pierre Bourdieu's model of society and the work – of especially John Allen – on power until now.