Enfilade

From Yale UP:

Terence Dooley, Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in a Time of War and Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-0300260748, $35.

During the Irish Revolution nearly three hundred country houses were burned to the ground. These ‘Big Houses’ were powerful symbols of conquest, plantation, and colonial oppression, and were caught up in the struggle for independence and the conflict between the aristocracy and those demanding access to more land. Stripped of their most important artifacts, most of the houses were never rebuilt and ruins such as Summerhill stood like ghostly figures for generations to come. Terence Dooley offers a unique perspective on the Irish Revolution, exploring the struggles over land, the impact of the Great War, and why the country mansions of the landed class became such a symbolic target for republicans throughout the period. Dooley details the shockingly sudden acts of occupation and destruction—including soldiers using a Rembrandt as a dart board—and evokes the exhilaration felt by the revolutionaries at seizing these grand houses and visibly overturning the established order.

Terence Dooley is professor of history at Maynooth University and director at the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates. He is the author of numerous books including The Decline of the Big House in Ireland.

To those observing Rosh Hashanah, very warm wishes for the year ahead! –CH
And a book that I should have posted much earlier, from Indiana UP:

Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Eighteenth Century: A European Biography, 1700–1750, translated by Jeffrey Green (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020), 560 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0253049452 (hardcover), $95 / ISBN: 978-0253049469 (paperback), $40.

The eighteenth century was the Jews’ first modern century. The deep changes that took place during its course shaped the following generations, and its most prominent voices still reverberate today. In this first volume of his magisterial work, Shmuel Feiner charts the twisting and fascinating world of the first half of the 18th century from the viewpoint of the Jews of Europe. Paying careful attention to life stories, to bright and dark experiences, to voices of protest, to aspirations of reform, and to strivings for personal and general happiness, Feiner identifies the tectonic changes that were taking place in Europe and their unprecedented effects on and among Jews. From the religious and cultural revolution of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) to the question of whether Jews could be citizens of any nation, Feiner presents a broad view of how this century of upheaval altered the map of Europe and the Jews who called it home.

Shmuel Feiner is Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University and Chairman of the Historical Society of Israel. He is author of Haskalah and History; The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness; The Jewish Enlightenment; Moses Mendelssohn, Sage of Modernity; and The Origins of Jewish Secularization. Jeffrey M. Green is a professional writer and translator who lives and works in Jerusalem. He is author of Thinking through Translation and Largest Island in the Sea.

C O N T E N T S

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Happy Times? The First Century in the Modern Age

I. 1700
1  Pictures from Married Life: Glikl the daughter of Leib between Hamburg and Metz
2  ‘Rise up and Succeed’: Absolutism and Court Jews in Baroque Culture
3  Jews in the News: The Angry Masses, a Holy Society, and ‘Judaism Unmasked’
4  Between Enlightened Thought and an Imaginary Universe

II. 1701–1725
5  ‘Everyone Wants to be Happy’: Dangers and Amusements
6  ‘Our Miserable Brethren’: Jews in Time of War
7  Melancholy, Career, and Travels: Five Life Stories
8  Christians versus Jews: Bitter and Violent Relations
9  From London to Jerusalem: Confrontations and Disputes
10  The Challenge of Sabbateanism: The Storm over the ‘Hypocritical Serpent’
11  Competition over the Picture of the World: Witches and Human Knowledge

III. 1725–1750
12  To Silence the ‘Fellow from Padua’: Moses Haim Luzzatto and the Great Awakening
13  Criticism and Ambition: From Gulliver to the Baal Shem Tov and Jew Süss
14  Contradictory Tendencies: Hostility, Violence, and ‘True Happiness’
15  ‘An Indelible Stain’: War and Expulsion
16  A Vision of the Future: Ascent of the Soul, a Path for the Just, and a Teacher of the Perplexed
17  Toward Mid-Century: The Awakening of Shame

Index

From ACC Art Books:

Vidya Dehejia, India: A Story Through 100 Objects (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2021), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-8194969174, $40.

We are constantly surrounded by objects, by ‘things’ that channel and dictate our everyday life, ‘things’ that we take for granted. But these objects speak to us, and speak about us. They have a story to tell that reflects our values and aspirations, our achievements and dreams, and reveal more about us than we realize! This richly illustrated book focuses on 100 objects to tell a story of India that unravels in a series of thematic sections that allow the objects to take center-stage. The stories that some objects tell will be new to readers; at other times, the objects themselves may be familiar but the story they tell may not be obvious. The 100 objects shed light on the varying priorities and the differing strands of achievement that arose over time to create the rich multi-cultural medley that is today’s India.

Vidya Dehejia is the Barbara Stoler Miller Professor of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University in New York, and the recipient of a Padma Bhushan conferred on her by the President of India in 2012 for achievement in Art and Education. Over the past 40 years, she has combined research with teaching and exhibition-related activities around the world. Her work has ranged from Buddhist art of the centuries BCE to the esoteric temples of North India, and from the sacred bronzes of South India to art under the British Raj. This comprehensive scope is evident from her books: The Thief Who Stole My Heart: The Material Life of Sacred Bronzes from Chola India, 855–1280 to Discourse in Early Buddhist Art: Visual Narratives of India; from The Unfinished: Stone Carvers at Work on the Indian Subcontinent to The Body Adorned: Dissolving Boundaries between Sacred and Profane in India’s Art; and from Delight in Design: Indian Silver for the Raj to Devi, The Great Goddess: Female Divinity in South Asian Art. Management and curatorial experience at the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington DC, combined with her interest and pleasure in teaching first-year undergraduates, provided her with a broad mandate to convey the excitement of her field to non-specialist audiences. India: A Story through 100 Objects is a result of this priority.

C O N T E N T S

What’s in a Name
Into History
Idealized Body, Human and Divine
Urge to Adorn
Inter-Cultural Encounters
Written Word
Scientific Insights
Rise of Temple Culture
Kingship and Courtly Culture
Indian Ocean Networks
Art of the Illustrated Book
Art of Contest
Connoisseurship, Luxury, and Brilliance
Mobility and Cosmopolitanism
Sensorium
Mappling Place and Space
India through British Eyes
Deshi Expressions, Deep Traditions
Ideals of Womanhood
Early Twentieth Century
Into the Present

Further Reading

From The British Museum and Thames & Hudson:

T. Richard Blurton, India: A History in Objects (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2022), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-0500480649, £30 / $45.

An authoritative visual history of India, one of the world’s oldest and most vibrant cultures, drawing on South Asian art and artifacts from prehistory to the present.

India: A History in Objects presents a beautiful collection of material culture from South Asia and traces its history through a huge variety of art and artifacts, both religious and secular.

Arranged chronologically, and abundantly illustrated with expertly selected objects, this superb new overview connects today’s South Asia with its past. Early chapters describe prehistoric objects from 1.5 million years ago, examine artifacts from the Indus Civilization, and follow the emergence of Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, and Christianity. The collection outlines the rise of the Mughals, the greatest Muslim dynasty of India, who made India a leading economic power. The distinct Mughal style is traced through paintings, architecture, hardstone carving, metalwork, and jewelry. This volume also explores the early trade industry to Europe via examples of spice pots, textiles, and other luxury goods. Finally, modernism and political independence in the 20th century are examined through Indian culture such as popular prints, contemporary photography, and the performing arts.

This volume presents a vast panoply, from the urban splendor of dynastic empires to the rural life of the subcontinent. A compelling visual history of rich and diverse cultures, this book will inspire and inform anyone interested in India and material culture.

T. Richard Blurton was the Head of the South and Southeast Asia section at the British Museum. Trained as an archaeologist, he has worked all over South Asia. His publications include Krishna in the Garden of Assam, Bengali Myths, and Hindu Art.

Marking Banned Books Week (18–24 September 2022), with an 18th-century reminder of publishing’s power. From Princeton UP (the British cover is, I think, more exciting –CH).

Daisy Hay, Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 536 pages, ISBN: 978-0691243962, $40.

Once a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities gathered around a dining table. The veal and boiled vegetables may have been unappetising, but the company was convivial and the conversation brilliant and unpredictable. The host was Joseph Johnson, publisher and bookseller: a man at the heart of literary life. In this book, Daisy Hay paints a remarkable portrait of a revolutionary age through the connected stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose ideas still influence us today.

Johnson’s years as a publisher, 1760 to 1809, witnessed profound political, social, cultural, and religious changes—from the American and French revolutions to birth of the Romantic age—and many of his dinner guests and authors were at the center of events. The shifting constellation of extraordinary people at Johnson’s table included William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Benjamin Franklin, the scientist Joseph Priestly, and the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, as well as a group of extraordinary women—Mary Wollstonecraft, the novelist Maria Edgeworth, and the poet Anna Barbauld. These figures pioneered revolutions in science and medicine, proclaimed the rights of women and children, and charted the evolution of Britain’s relationship with America and Europe. As external forces conspired to silence their voices, Johnson made them heard by continuing to publish them, just as his table gave them refuge.

A rich work of biography and cultural history, Dinner with Joseph Johnson is an entertaining and enlightening story of a group of people who left an indelible mark on the modern age.

Daisy Hay is an award-winning biographer whose previous books include Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives and Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli: A Strange Romance. She is associate professor of English literature and life writing at the University of Exeter.