The Early Modern Commons

Laura Sangha Part I   Gustave Dore, The Legend of the Wandering Jew: A Series of 12 Designs, c. 1857, V&A Collections. Story 1 A month or so ago I read Sarah Perry’s wonderful third novel Melmoth. Central to the book is the myth of Melmotka,...

As an ‘extra’ to our ongoing #AliceClark100 Online Reading Group – which will resume shortly with a post on Chapter II: ‘Capitalists’, so get reading – Tim Stretton has sourced some images of Alice from the Clark family...

This post in our After Iconophobia Online Symposium comes from Laura Sangha, fellow monster-head and Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Exeter.  Laura’s first monograph was on Angels and Belief in England 1480-1700,...

This introductory post to our After Iconophobia Online Symposium comes from Tara Hamling, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History in the Department of History at the University of Birmingham.  Tara is an Art Historian by training and has published...

After Iconophobia? An Online Symposium Tara Hamling and Jonathan Willis In 1985, Patrick Collinson delivered Reading University’s Stenton lecture on the topic ‘From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: the Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation.’...

I thoroughly enjoyed “How To Decorate Your Dream Library” by Amy Collier for The Toast. But because I am me, I was made insane by the lack of captions identifying any of the libraries pictured, so I went ahead and worked my way through...

the verso of John Starkey’s bookseller’s advertisement in the back of John Dancer’s translation of Tasso’s Aminta (London, 1660; Folger Shakespeare Library, T172) I have a lot of pictures of this book. I’ll write something...

Laura Sangha Last year I wrote a series of posts on memorialisation and history, inspired by my discovery of Exeter’s memorial to two sixteenth-century martyrs. I uncovered the story of the two local victims remembered on the monument, the life of its...

Brodie Waddell In 1658, the Czech scholar John Amos Comenius published what’s been called ‘the first children’s picture book’. It proved extremely popular and was republished many times, in many different languages. What brought it to my attention...

Brodie Waddell Whether you’re a historian, a hairdresser or a helicopter pilot, you may well define yourself by your occupation. The same was true in the early modern period, as when legal scribes added ‘labourer’, ‘weaver’ or ‘yeoman’ after...

Laura Sangha This is my latest post in my long running series on the pious Leeds antiquarian Ralph Thoresby. My thanks to the Yorkshire Archeological Society for their permission to reproduce material from the Thoresby papers. I recently returned from...

Laura Sangha This is the fourth post in a series of posts relating to Exeter’s martyrs memorial, the others are on the following: The story of the two martyrs commemorated on the memorial, Thomas Benet and Agnes Prest. Our main source of information...

Laura Sangha This is the second of a series of posts on issues relating to Exeter’s martyr memorial. The first post discusses the details of the martyrs themselves. Foxe’s [?] monumental [?] achievement.The information about Exeter’s...

Laura Sangha A recent trip to the pub took me into a new part of Exeter, and on my way there I stumbled across a fascinating snapshot of its history. At the corner of Barnfield and Denmark roads I came to a memorial in the form of an obelisk of Dartmoor...

Mark Hailwood As many readers of the ‘monster will know, April is one of the academic year’s prime conference seasons – and this year I threw myself into it with gusto, delivering three different papers on two continents in the space of...

For months now I’ve been stewing about how much I hate @HistoryInPics and their ilk (@HistoryInPix, @HistoricalPics, @History_Pics, etc.)—twitter streams that do nothing more than post “old” pictures and little tidbits of captions...

Laura Sangha This is the fifth post in a week long series about an exhibition at Exeter’s museum. Day one: a map of Exeter Day two: domestic decoration Day three: goldsmiths and urban redevelopment Day four: the Spanish Armadas In this final post...

Laura Sangha This is the fourth post in a week long series about an exhibition at Exeter’s museum. Click on pictures for enlargements. Day one: a map of Exeter Day two: domestic decoration Day three: goldsmiths and urban redevelopment Pendennis...

Laura Sangha This is the third post in a week long series about an exhibition at Exeter’s museum. Day one: a map of Exeter Day two: domestic decoration Today I want to talk filthy lucre. One of the things I learnt at the RAMM was that Exeter was...

Laura Sangha This is the second post in a week long series about an exhibition at Exeter’s museum. View the first post on a map of Exeter here. In early modern England the population was expanding incredibly rapidly and massive inflation led to...