Enfilade

First published in 2020, the book appeared in paperback in 2022; from Simon & Schuster:

Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees, The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure: Catherine the Great, a Golden Age Masterpiece, and a Legendary Shipwreck (New York: Pegasus Books, 2020), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1643135564 (hardback), $30 / ISBN: 978-1643139425 (paperback), $19.

A riveting history and maritime adventure about priceless masterpieces originally destined for Catherine the Great.

On October 1771, a merchant ship out of Amsterdam, Vrouw Maria, crashed off the stormy Finnish coast, taking her historic cargo to the depths of the Baltic Sea. The vessel was delivering a dozen Dutch masterpiece paintings to Europe’s most voracious collector: Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. Among the lost treasures was The Nursery, an oak-paneled triptych by Leiden fine painter Gerrit Dou, Rembrandt’s most brilliant student and Holland’s first international superstar artist. Dou’s triptych was long the most beloved and most coveted painting of the Dutch Golden Age, and its loss in the shipwreck was mourned throughout the art world. Vrouw Maria, meanwhile, became a maritime legend, confounding would-be salvagers for more than two hundred years. In July 1999, a daring Finnish wreck hunter found the ship, upright on the sea floor and perfectly preserved. The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure masterfully recounts the fascinating tale of Vrouw Maria—her loss and discovery—weaving together the rise and fall of the artist whose priceless masterpiece was the jewel of the wreckage. Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees bring to vivid life the personalities that drove (and are still driving) this compelling tale—evoking Robert Massie’s depiction of Russian high politics and culture, Simon Schama’s insights into Dutch Golden Age art and art history, and Gary Kinder’s spirit of, danger and adventure on the beguiling Archipelago Sea.

Gerald Easter is a Professor at Boston College who has been teaching and writing about Russian/East European politics and history for more than two decades.
Mara Vorhees is a travel writer with an expertise in Russia, New England, and Central America. She has written or contributed to more than 40 guidebook editions, published by Lonely Planet.

From Yale UP:

Matthew Kelly, The Women Who Saved the English Countryside (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 400 pages, ISBN: ‎ 978-0300232240 (hardback), $35 / ISBN: 978-0300270396 (paperback), $24.

A vibrant history of English landscape preservation over the last 150 years, told through the lives of four remarkable women.

In Britain today, a mosaic of regulations protects the natural environment and guarantees public access to green spaces. But this was not always so. Over the last 150 years, activists have campaigned tirelessly for the right to roam through the countryside and the vital importance of preserving Britain’s natural beauty. Matthew Kelly traces the history of landscape preservation through the lives of four remarkable women: Octavia Hill, Beatrix Potter, Pauline Dower, and Sylvia Sayer. From the commons of London to the Lake District, Northumberland, and Dartmoor, these women protected the English landscape at a crucial period through a mixture of environmental activism, networking, and sheer determination. They grappled with the challenges that urbanization and industrial modernity posed to human well-being as well as the natural environment. By tirelessly seeking to reconcile the needs of particular places to the broader public interest they helped reimagine the purpose of the English countryside for the democratic age.

Matthew Kelly is professor of modern history at Northumbria University. He is the author of Finding Poland: From Tavistock to Hurzdowa and Back Again and Quartz and Feldspar: Dartmoor—A British Landscape in Modern Times.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Maps

Introduction: The Four
Octavia Hill: Gathering in the Givers
Beatrix Potter: A Farm of One’s Own
Pauline Dower: ‘Inconspicuous Good’
Sylvia Sayer: Segregating Dartmoor
Epilogue: Fifty Years On

Notes
Further Reading
Index

Peter Borsay died in 2020 at the age of 70; his last book, prepared for publication by Rosemary Sweet, has just been published by Bloomsbury:

Peter Borsay, with Rosemary Sweet, The Invention of the English Landscape, c. 1700–1939 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1350031678, $115.

Since at least the Reformation, English men and women have been engaged in visiting, exploring and portraying, in words and images, the landscape of their nation. The Invention of the English Landscape examines these journeys and investigations to explore how the natural and historic English landscape was reconfigured to become a widely enjoyed cultural and leisure resource.

Peter Borsay considers the manifold forces behind this transformation, such as the rise of consumer culture, the media, industrial and transport revolutions, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Gothic revival. In doing so, he reveals the development of a powerful bond between landscape and natural identity, against the backdrop of social and political change from the early modern period to the start of the Second World War. Borsay’s interdisciplinary approach demonstrates how human understandings of the natural world shaped the geography of England, and uncovers a wealth of valuable material, from novels and poems to paintings, that expose historical understandings of the landscape. This innovative approach illuminates how the English countryside and historic buildings became cultural icons behind which the nation was rallied during war-time, and explores the emergence of a post-war heritage industry that is now a definitive part of British cultural life.

Peter Borsay was Professor of History at Aberystwyth University, a member of the advisory boards of Urban History and the Journal of Tourism History, and a committee member of the British Pre-Modern Towns Group. His books include The English Urban Renaissance (1989); The Image of Georgian Bath, 1700–2000: Towns, Heritage, and History (2000); and A History of Leisure: the British Experience since 1500 (2006). He co-edited Resorts and Ports: European Seaside Towns since 1700 (2011) and Leisure Cultures in Urban Europe, c. 1700–1870: A Transnational Perspective (2016).

Rosemary Sweet is Professor of Urban History and Director of the Centre of Urban History at the University of Leicester. She is the author of The English Town, 1680–1840 and The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth-Century England.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments

1  Introduction
2  Revealing the Early Modern Landscape
3  Ideas and Representations
4  Reconfiguring the Landscape
5  New Geographies and Topographies
6  Timescapes
7  Economic and Social Change
8  The Transport Revolution and the Journey
9  Identities
10  Conclusion: The Second World War and Beyond

Select Bibliography
Index

From the London Topographical Society:

Sheila O’Connell, ed., with an introduction by Paul Laxton and indexes by Roger Cline, The A–Z of Regency London 1819 (London: London Topographical Society, 2023), 159 pages, £36.

The A–Z of Regency London 1819 reproduces at two-thirds actual size the 4th and last edition of Richard Horwood’s map of London. As a guide to the topography of early-nineteenth-century London it is unequalled. The 40 sheets of the map are accompanied by an introductory essay describing its making, assessing its qualities, and casting new light on the life of the map-maker, as well as indexes to streets and buildings showing the juxtaposition of residential and industrial premises.

As described in a recent issue of Salon (the newsletter of The Society of Antiquaries of London, 30 August 2023):

In about 1790, Richard Horwood (1758–1803) embarked on what was to be the largest map of London ever published. He told his subscribers that it would be “on a Scale so extensive and accurate as to exhibit, not only every Street, Square, Court, Alley, and Passage therein, but also each individual House, the Number by which it is distinguished.” It was completed in 32 sheets in 1799. William Faden reissued the map in 1807, 1813, and 1819, adding eight new plates to cover developments to the east. The publication reproduces at two-thirds actual size the 4th and last edition of Richard Horwood’s map of London. As a guide to the topography of early-nineteenth-century London it is unequalled. The 40 sheets of the map are accompanied by an introductory essay describing its making, assessing its qualities, and casting new light on the life of the map-maker (including a surprising link with the emerging United States of America), as well as indexes to streets and buildings showing the juxtaposition of residential and industrial premises.