Abstract
Mary Countess of Shrewsbury is much less well-known than her mother, Bess of Hardwick, and her niece, Arbella Stuart, but she was also a woman of strong character. One of her most ...significant characteristics was her loyalty, both to her family, especially her husband Gilbert, her daughters, and her niece, and to the Catholic faith, to which she converted as an adult. Both the loyalty to family and to her faith caused great trouble to her, particularly in the reign of James I, where, on his orders, she spent many years in the Tower.
Born the daughter of a country squire, Bess of Hardwick made four marriages which brought her wealth and status. She built and furnished houses and founded a dynasty which included a granddaughter, ...Arbella Stuart, who had a claim to the thrones of both England and Scotland.
"Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn." -- Irvin S. Cobb
Born and raised in Paducah, Kentucky, humorist Irvin S. Cobb (1876--1944) rose from humble beginnings to become ...one of the early twentieth century's most celebrated writers. As a staff reporter for theNew York WorldandSaturday Evening Post,he became one of the highest-paid journalists in the United States. He also wrote short stories for noted magazines, published books, and penned scripts for the stage and screen.
InIrvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of a Southern Humorist, historian William E. Ellis examines the life of this significant writer. Though a consummate wordsmith and a talented observer of the comical in everyday life, Cobb was a product of the Reconstruction era and the Jim Crow South. As a party to the endemic racism of his time, he often bemoaned the North's harsh treatment of the South and stereotyped African Americans in his writings. Marred by racist undertones, Cobb's work has largely slipped into obscurity.
Nevertheless, Ellis argues that Cobb's life and works are worthy of more detailed study, citing his wide-ranging contributions to media culture and his coverage of some of the biggest stories of his day, including on-the-ground reporting during World War I. A valuable resource for students of journalism, American humor, and popular culture, this illuminating biography explores Cobb's life and his influence on early twentieth-century letters.
This article uses a contemporary print, antiquarian histories and newspapers to examine the frost fair that took place on the River Severn at Shrewsbury during the great frost of 1739. By comparing ...the Shrewsbury frost fair with others that were organised on the Rivers Thames, Ouse and Tyne (for which printed handbills survive), it demonstrates how Shrewsbury's mirrored other frost fairs held during the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It included printing activities, promenading and sociability, as well as spectacles, notably Robert Cadman a 'flying man' who entertained the crowds, before plummeting to his death. The paper highlights an aspect of eighteenth-century culture by showing the transient nature of entertainments, urban spaces and forms of sociability and spectacle and argues that historians should consider frost fairs in localities outside London as events which provide insights into provincial urban culture.
A significant body of recent research has identified that trees in the urban environment provide considerable benefits to society, both providing desirable places to live and helping to reduce the ...impact of the urban population on the wider environment. If we are to continue to benefit from the urban forest in the future, a knowledge of the existing resource, its condition and future viability is a fundamental requirement. The design and creation of newly built development present one of the biggest threats to and greatest opportunities for urban forests but have not been analysed in depth. An assessment using i-tree ECO recorded the extent, nature and quality of the urban forest resource in residential areas of the town of Shrewsbury. Comparisons were then made between three separate study areas within the town based upon the period in which they were primarily constructed. The pre-1950 residential housing areas had significantly greater canopy cover (17.8%) when compared with 1951-1985 housing (13.1%) and post-1985 housing areas (9.9%). Analysis of tree age, size and ownership distributions identified that larger growing garden trees in the earlier housing schemes were the major contributor to this difference in canopy cover between areas. For this case study, we can conclude there is a negative trend in urban canopy cover that relates to the size of garden space allocated to more modern residential properties, which is not sufficiently compensated for by tree planting in adjacent public areas.
The Renaissance woman, whether privileged or of the artisan or the middle class, was trained in the expressive arts of needlework and painting, which were often given precedence over writing.Pens and ...Needlesis the first book to examine all these forms as interrelated products of self-fashioning and communication.
Because early modern people saw verbal and visual texts as closely related, Susan Frye discusses the connections between the many forms of women's textualities, including notes in samplers, alphabets both stitched and penned, initials, ciphers, and extensive texts like needlework pictures, self-portraits, poetry, and pamphlets, as well as commissioned artwork, architecture, and interior design. She examines works on paper and cloth by such famous figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Bess of Hardwick, as well as the output of journeywomen needleworkers and miniaturists Levina Teerlinc and Esther Inglis, and their lesser-known sisters in the English colonies of the New World. Frye shows how traditional women's work was a way for women to communicate with one another and to shape their own identities within familial, intellectual, religious, and historical traditions.Pens and Needlesoffers insights into women's lives and into such literary texts as Shakespeare'sOthelloandCymbelineand Mary Sidney Wroth'sUrania.
PDF
