Search results for ""author isabel"

The Bible is at the heart of BRF’s work, and this special anniversary collection is a celebration of the Bible for BRF’s centenary year. Bringing together a fantastically wide-ranging writing team of authors, supporters and well-wishers from all areas of BRF’s work, this resource is designed to help us go deeper into the story of the Bible and reflect on how we can share it in our everyday lives. Including sections which lead us through the Bible narrative as well as thematic and seasonal sections, it is the perfect daily companion to resource your spiritual journey. Contributors include: Ian Adams, John Bell, Inderjit Bhogal, Amy Boucher Pye, Stephen Cottrell, Steven Croft, Mark Greene, Isabelle Hamley, Bob Hartman, Bev Jullien, Krish Kandiah, Paul Kerensa, Ann Lewin, Bex Lewis, Chine McDonald, Lucy Moore, Rob Parsons, John Pritchard, Jennifer Rees Larcombe, Pam Rhodes, Margaret Silf, Jo Swinney, Stephen Timms, Graham Tomlin and Justin Welby.

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This book is about a mad king and a mad duke. With original and iconoclastic readings, Richard van Oort pioneers the reading of Shakespeare as an ethical thinker of the "originary scene," the scene in which humans became conscious of themselves as symbol-using moral and narrative beings. Taking King Lear and Measure for Measure as case studies, van Oort shows how the minimal concept of an anthropological scene of origin—the "originary hypothesis"—provides the basis for a new understanding of every aspect of the plays, from the psychology of the characters to the ethical and dialogical conflicts upon which the drama is based. The result is a gripping commentary on the plays. Why does Lear abdicate and go mad? Why does Edgar torture his father with non-recognition? Why does Lucio accuse the Duke in Measure for Measure of madness and lechery, and why does Isabella remain silent at the end? In approaching these and other questions from the perspective of the originary hypothesis, van Oort helps us to see the ethical predicament of the plays, and, in the process, makes Shakespeare new again.

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This book is about a mad king and a mad duke. With original and iconoclastic readings, Richard van Oort pioneers the reading of Shakespeare as an ethical thinker of the "originary scene," the scene in which humans became conscious of themselves as symbol-using moral and narrative beings. Taking King Lear and Measure for Measure as case studies, van Oort shows how the minimal concept of an anthropological scene of origin—the "originary hypothesis"—provides the basis for a new understanding of every aspect of the plays, from the psychology of the characters to the ethical and dialogical conflicts upon which the drama is based. The result is a gripping commentary on the plays. Why does Lear abdicate and go mad? Why does Edgar torture his father with non-recognition? Why does Lucio accuse the Duke in Measure for Measure of madness and lechery, and why does Isabella remain silent at the end? In approaching these and other questions from the perspective of the originary hypothesis, van Oort helps us to see the ethical predicament of the plays, and, in the process, makes Shakespeare new again.

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This book places Bird's visit to Japan in the context of her worldwide life of travel and gives an introduction to the woman herself. Supported by detailed maps, it also offers a highly illuminating view of Japan and its people in the early years of the 'New Japan' following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, as well as providing a valuable new critique on what is often considered as Bird's most important work. The central focus of the book is a detailed exploration of Bird's journeys and the careful planning that went into them with the support of the British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, seen as the prime mover, who facilitated her extensive travels through his negotiations with the Japanese authorities. Furthermore, the author dismisses the widely-held notion that Bird ventured into the field on her own, revealing instead the crucial part played by Ito, her young servant-interpreter, without whose constant presence she would have achieved nothing. Written by Japan's leading scholar on Isabella Bird, the book also addresses the vexed question of the hitherto universally-held view that her travels in Japan in 1878 only involved the northern part of Honshu and Hokkaido. This mistaken impression, the author argues, derives from the fact that the abridged editions of Unbeaten Tracks in Japan that appeared after the 1880 two-volume original work entirely omit her visit to the Kansai, which took in Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and the Ise Shrines. Bird herself tells us that she wrote her book in the form of letters to her sister Henrietta but here the author proposes the intriguing theory that these letters were never actually sent. Many well-known figures, Japanese and foreign, are introduced as having influenced Bird's journey indirectly, and this forms a fascinating sub-text.

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_____________________The first book in the captivating Spanish Trilogy, focusing on the remarkable lives of Spain's most famous monarchs.In the 15th Century, Spain is full of intrigue and threatened by civil war. The independent young princess Isabella has become the pawn of her ambitious, half-crazed mother, kept as a virtual prisoner at the sordid court of her half-brother, France's Henry IV. Just sixteen years old, all seems lost: is Isabella fated to be the victim of the Queen's revenge, the Archbishop's ambition and the lust of Don Pedro Giron, one of the most notorious womanisers in Castile? Numbed with grief and fear, Isabella holds onto one cherished hope: that one day, she will escape her tormentors and marry Ferdinand, the handsome young Prince of Aragon - her only true betrothed. But the forces of Europe are ranged against them, and love's triumphs are rare...

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Isabella d'Este, the marchioness of Mantua, was a collector of antiquities, a patron of art, and one of the most vivid personalities of the Italian Renaissance. Her artistic relationship with Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is charted through the letters that they exchanged over the course of about six years. Beginning in late 1499, Leonardo spent several months in Mantua, where he met Isabella and produced a finished portrait drawing of her. In the years that followed, the marchioness wrote to the artist to ask him to undertake other paintings and projects. Though little came of these requests, da Vinci did produce a drawing of some classical hard-stone vases to assist her search for collectible antiques and also started work on a painting of Christ as a twelve-year-old boy at her request.The story of their relationship is explored in depth for the first time in Isabella and Leonardo. This illuminating story raises interesting and important questions about relationships between artists and patrons, and about women as art patrons at the beginning of the 16th century.

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'Packed with vivid character sketches and lyrical description, Tremlett has told a gripping story, full of beauty and darkness' The Times WINNER OF THE 2018 ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE In 1474, a twenty-three year old woman ascended the throne of Castile, the largest and strongest kingdom in Spain. Ahead of her lay the considerable challenge not only of being a young, female ruler in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world, but also of reforming a major European kingdom that was riddled with crime, corruption, and violent political factionism. Her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon was crucial to her success, bringing together as it did two kingdoms, but it was a royal partnership in which Isabella more than held her own. Her pivotal reign was long and transformative, uniting Spain and laying the foundations not just of modern Spain, but of the one of the world’s greatest empires. With authority and flair, acclaimed historian Giles Tremlett Tremlett relates the story of this legendary, if controversial, first initiate in a small club of great European queens that includes Elizabeth I of England, Russia's Catherine the Great, and Britain's Queen Victoria.

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“Must-Read”—Town & CountryA deeply evocative and imaginative portrayal of the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a daring visionary who created an inimitable legacy in American art and transformed the city of Boston itself. By the time Isabella Stewart Gardner opened her Italian palazzo-style home as a museum in 1903 to showcase her collection of old masters, antiques, and objects d’art, she was already well-known for scandalizing Boston’s polite society. But when Isabella first arrived in Boston in 1861, she was twenty years old, newly married to a wealthy trader, and unsure of herself. Puzzled by the frosty reception she received from stuffy bluebloods, she strived to fit in. After two devastating tragedies and rejection from upper-society, Isabella discovered her spirit and cast off expectations. Freed by travel, Isabella explores the world of art, ideas, and letters, meeting such kindred spirits as Henry James and Oscar Wilde. From London and Paris to Egypt and Asia, she develops a keen eye for paintings and objects, and meets feminists ready to transform nineteenth century thinking in the twentieth century. Isabella becomes an eccentric trailblazer, painted by John Singer Sargent in a portrait of daring décolletage, and fond of such stunts as walking a pair of lions in the Boston Public Garden.The Lioness of Boston is a portrait of what society expected a woman’s life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and was determined to live on her own terms.

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'Both heartwarming and sad, it's an insightful, thought-provoking glimpse into female friendships, love and loyalty.' - Julie Cohen'After Isabella is a beautiful, absorbing novel that deals with the issues at the very heart of what it means to be a woman.' - Tracy Buchanan'I was lost in this powerful, poignant tale.' - Amanda ProwseWhen Esther's childhood best friend Isabella dies of cancer, she is devastated. Years later, she is brought together with Isabella's sister Sally, who cared for Isabella in her last days, and who subsequently nursed their mother through years of dementia. English professor Esther sees shy, innocent Sally emerge from a life of isolation and loneliness. But as Esther herself suffers blow after blow, and sees her carefully ordered life collapse around her, she is forced to contemplate the notion of friendship and trust. Do the ones we hold dearest always have our best interests at heart?

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Considering the activity of the numerous foundations that contributed in spreading new expressive languages, today appears to be a fundamental operation in view of an interpretative widening of art history.Starting from this consideration, this publication - in two volumes - traces the path of the Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation, established in New York in 1982 with the aim of promoting Italian art in the United States.

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This is a lavish pictorial record produced in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). It features 200 unique photographs taken by Isabella Bird that transport the reader to the China of the late 19th century. It includes supporting text by travel photography expert Debbie Ireland. Ammonite Press is proud to collaborate with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in celebrating the achievements of Isabella Bird in this lavish pictorial record of her last great journey through China, in the closing years of the 19th century, with supporting text by travel photography expert Debbie Ireland. Bird was in her mid-sixties when she undertook her travels, to a land that was largely unknown and largely misunderstood in the West, where a woman travelling alone was greeted with incredulity and, occasionally, hostility. The highlight of her visit was journeying by boat and sedan chair to make a major tour of the valley of the Yangtze River and much beyond, right up to the border with Tibet.

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Six years ago, eighteen-year-old Lady Isabella Scranton scandalized all of London by eloping the night of her come-out ball with the notorious rake, Lord Mac Mackenzie. After three turbulent years of marriage, she scandalized London once again–this time by leaving him.Now the reformed Mac has returned, and he wants one thing: Isabella back in his life, his house, his bed. He’ll do anything he has to, play any game, as long as he gets her back. Isabella resists, but when she agrees to pose for explicit paintings he’s been working on, she realizes her body has never stopped craving her husband’s very skilled touch. Mac is determined to show Isabella that he’s a changed man, but three years without her has only increased his hunger for her.When an ingenious forger with designs on Mac’s paintings, and Isabella herself, comes dangerously near, Mac sets himself up as Isabella’s protector and vows to never leave her side, whether his independent and proud lady likes it or not.Read a deleted scene from Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage!

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Described by Christopher Marlowe as the 'She-Wolf of France', Isabella was one of the most notorious femme fatales in history. According to popular legend, her angry ghost can be glimpsed among church ruins, clutching the beating heart of her murdered husband. But how did Isabella aquire this reputation?Born in 1292 she married Edward II of England but was constantly humiliated by his relationships with male favourites and she lived adulterously with Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March. Had it not been for her unfaithfulness, history might have immortalised her as a liberator- the saviour who unshackled England from a weak and vicious monarch. Dramatic and startling this first full-length biography of Isabella will change the way we think of her and her world forever.

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Isabella de Valois was 3 years old when, on a hot August day in 1392, her father suddenly went mad. Less than four years later, she was married by proxy to the English King Richard II and arrived in England with a French retinue and her doll’s house. Richard’s humiliating deposition and brutal murder by his cousin, the future Henry IV, forced Isabella’s desperate return to France where she found her country fatally divided. Isabella’s sister, Catherine de Valois, became the beautiful young bride of Henry V and is unique in history for being the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, the mother of a king and the grandmother of a king. Like her sister, Catherine was viewed as a bargaining chip in times of political turmoil, yet her passionate love affair with the young Owain Tudor established the entire Tudor dynasty and set in motion one of the most fascinating periods of British history. The Sister Queens is a gripping tale of love, exile and conflict in a time when even royal women had to fight for survival.

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A major new biography of legendary art collector and philanthropist Isabella Stewart GardnerIsabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) assembled an extraordinary collection of art from diverse cultures and eras—and built a Venetian-style palazzo in Boston to share these exquisite treasures with the world. But her life and work remains shrouded in myth. Separating fiction and fact, this book paints an unforgettable portrait of Gardner, drawing on her substantial personal archive and including previously unpublished findings to offer new perspectives on her life and her construction of identity.Nathaniel Silver and Diana Seave Greenwald shed new light on Gardner's connections to minority communities in Boston, her views on suffrage and other issues of the day, the sources of her and her husband’s wealth, and her ties to politicians, writers, and artists. What emerges is a multifaceted portrait of a trailblazing collector and patron of the arts—from Italian Renaissance paintings to Chinese antiquities—who built a museum unprecedented in its curatorial vision.Beautifully illustrated, this book challenges any portrayal of Gardner as a straightforward feminist hero, revealing instead an exceptional, complex woman who created a legendary museum and played a vibrant and influential role in the art world.Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

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Surrounded by the artists, writers and musicians who made up her court in Boston as they did in Venice, Isabella Stewart Gardner, a passionate art collector, was as revered and sought after as royalty. Henry James was inspired by the rich and powerful Gardner, as well as by the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice, when he wrote his novel The Wings of the Dove. Gardner was to recreate a larger-than-life version of Palazzo Barbaro in Boston, which is now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. These dazzling letters bring to life James's passion for Venice and the Palazzo Barbaro, and serve as an introduction to the fascinating world of Isabella Stewart Gardner herself.

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Isabella Stewart Gardner was a force to be reckoned with. She routinely went toe-to-toe with major museums and titans of industry to purchase masterpieces, created a museum unlike any other, and was famous for consistently flouting the social conventions that governed women of her time. However, this book shows another side of Isabella that readers may not expect: her love of dogs. Richly illustrated with images from the collection and museum archives, this volume allows readers to meet Isabella’s favorite dogs (Kitty Wink and Patty Boy), see the litters of puppies she bred, and discover how her dogs were a comfort toward the end of her life. Usually stern in photographs, Isabella - like many people - could not help grinning when posing for photos with puppies. This enthusiasm for dogs is also evident in her correspondence. As she wrote excitedly to her art advisor Bernard Berenson: “Part of my morning’s work has been to try to induce two 9 days old fox terrier pups to open their eyes again. They did once; and then clapped them to, with a vim that seemed to say that the box they found themselves in was not the ideal they had come to this world to see!” Even the dogs of celebrities - both celebrities she knew personally, and others she admired from afar - drew her attention. This book also features some of the many photographs she collected of notable people and their dogs, like the painter Anders Zorn and his adorable pup Mouche and Caesar, the regal and loyal terrier who belonged to King Edward VII and even marched in the monarch’s funeral parade. From gathering Renaissance masterpieces to raising Fox Terriers, this book shows that Isabella approached all her tasks with enthusiasm and dedication. By learning about her love of her canine companions, this book presents a more human side of Isabella than typically on display.

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Isabella of France married Edward II in January 1308, and afterwards became one of the most notorious women in English history. In 1325, she was sent to her homeland to negotiate a peace settlement between her husband and her brother Charles IV, king of France. She refused to return. Instead, she began a relationship with her husband’s deadliest enemy, the English baron Roger Mortimer. With the king’s son and heir, the future Edward III, under their control, the pair led an invasion of England which ultimately resulted in Edward II’s forced abdication in January 1327. Isabella and Mortimer ruled England during Edward III’s minority until he overthrew them in October 1330. A rebel against her own husband and king, and regent for her son, Isabella was a powerful, capable and intelligent woman. She forced the first ever abdication of a king in England, and thus changed the course of English history. Examining Isabella’s life with particular focus on her revolutionary actions in the 1320s, this book corrects the many myths surrounding her and provides a vivid account of this most fascinating and influential of women.

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Isabella of France married Edward II in January 1308, and afterwards became one of the most notorious women in English history. In 1325, she was sent to her homeland to negotiate a peace settlement between her husband and her brother Charles IV, king of France. She refused to return. Instead, she began a relationship with her husband’s deadliest enemy, the English baron Roger Mortimer. With the king’s son and heir, the future Edward III, under their control, the pair led an invasion of England which ultimately resulted in Edward II’s forced abdication in January 1327. Isabella and Mortimer ruled England during Edward III’s minority until he overthrew them in October 1330. A rebel against her own husband and king, and regent for her son, Isabella was a powerful, capable and intelligent woman. She forced the first ever abdication of a king in England, and thus changed the course of English history. Examining Isabella’s life with particular focus on her revolutionary actions in the 1320s, this book corrects the many myths surrounding her and provides a vivid account of this most fascinating and influential of women.

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“A searching, sensitive, and engagingly witty meditation.” —Lyndall Gordon “What a great pleasure this gorgeous little book has given me! It should be offered everywhere indeed, and at every museum shop on earth.”—Honor Moore A fascinating meditation on art and personality, Patricia Vigderman’s exploration of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s famous Boston museum radiates out from its subject to investigate Garnder’s legacy of luxury and willfulness. Isabella Gardner’s high spirits and aesthetic pleasure, her women friends and female power, her friendships with the adventurers and aesthetes of her world, are gathered into this engrossing investigation of patronage and passion. Blending biography, memoir, philosophy, and detective story, The Memory Palace is more than a tribute to the museum and the woman; it is an altogether new genre. Vigderman’s witty and intimate quest for her subject sets a literary precedent for the appreciation of artistic imagination. Loosening up the past, entering its mysteries and its memories, she reminds us that we change our lives when we begin a relationship with art. Patricia Vigderman grew up in Washington, D.C., and Europe. She graduated from Vassar College, after which a circuitous course led her through editing, translating, freelance journalism, teaching, marriage, motherhood, divorce, a doctoral dissertation (on nineteenth-century novels as film, as history, and as autobiography), and a lot of time in museums. Her recent writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, Northwest Review, Raritan, Seneca Review, and Southwest Review. She divides her year between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Gambier, Ohio, where she teaches in the English department at Kenyon College. She is married to the writer Lewis Hyde.

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Isabella Bird travelled to the wildest places on earth, but at home in Britain she lay in bed, hardly able to write: ''an invalid at home and a Samson abroad''.In Japan she rode on a ''yezo savage'' through foaming floods along unbeaten tracks, and was followed in the city by a crowd of a thousand, whose clogs clattered ''like a hailstorm'' as they vied for a glimpse of the foreigner. She documented America before and after the Civil War and was deported from Korea with only the tweed suit she stood up in during a Japanese invasion. In China she was attacked with rocks and sticks and called a foreign dog, but she never gave up and went home. ''The prospect of the unknown has its charms.''Transformed by distant lands, she crossed raging floods, rode elephants, cows and yak, clung to her horse''s neck as it clambered down cliff paths, slept on simple mats on the bare ground, unable to change out of wet clothes or get out of the searing heat.Her travels and the books she wrote about them

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Isabella Bird’s best-selling book on Japan is republished here, but with a difference: for the first time, it is now fully annotated with supporting commentaries, providing the twenty-first century reader with an enhanced informed view of the new ‘modern Japan’ as Bird experienced it in 1878. Originally published as a two-volume work in 1880, this later abridged version, first published in 1885 and promoted as ‘a tale of travel and adventure’, became one of the best-selling travel books published by John Murray; it was reprinted numerous times and by different publishers. This volume is the original 1885 edition. It is not a facsimile, but has been reprocessed digitally to enable the annotations to be inserted, as well as the 40 copperplate illustrations to be restored to their original quality. The commentaries and notes have been written by Kiyonori Kanasaka, Japan’s leading expert on Isabella Bird who, over the past nearly 30 years, has retraced Isabella Bird’s footsteps in all the parts of the world she visited, and knows her travels in Japan intimately. (See Isabella Bird and Japan: A Reassessment>, Renaissance Books 2017.) This book will be essential reading for all those interested in the Bird legacy, the birth of modern Japan, travel writings of the Far East, the topography of Japan and Japan’s social and political history.

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A revealing and beautifully illustrated critical edition of Gardner’s collaged travel albumsIn 1865, art collector and philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) lost her only child to pneumonia at less than two years old. In an effort to rouse her from depression, Gardner and her husband, Jack, travelled to northern Europe and Russia. It was the first of many trips abroad that would eventually take her from the Middle East to Asia—trips that she documented in exquisitely crafted collaged travel albums. Fellow Wanderer brings together nearly thirty of Gardner’s striking travelogues, spanning some thirty-nine countries and offering invaluable perspective on the global influences on this legendary collector and patron of the arts.This book features beautiful facsimiles of Gardner’s travel albums—largely unpublished until now—along with essays by leading scholars who place these diaries and sketchbooks within the context of the art and culture of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the nineteenth century. The essays explore a host of topics, such as Gardner’s engagement with world religions while abroad, how she incorporated designs and ideas from around the globe into her Boston museum, and the ways in which the imperial power structures of the era facilitated her travels.Lushly illustrated, Fellow Wanderer provides a uniquely intimate look at how Gardner’s rich and diverse experiences abroad instilled her collecting and patronage with a truly global vision of art.Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumExhibition ScheduleIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, BostonFebruary 16–May 21, 2023

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Isabella de Valois was 3 years old when, on a hot August day in 1392, her father suddenly went mad. Less than four years later, she was married by proxy to the English King Richard II and arrived in England with a French retinue and her doll’s house. Richard’s humiliating deposition and brutal murder by his cousin, the future Henry IV, forced Isabella’s desperate return to France where she found her country fatally divided. Isabella’s sister, Catherine de Valois, became the beautiful young bride of Henry V and is unique in history for being the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, the mother of a king and the grandmother of a king. Like her sister, Catherine was viewed as a bargaining chip in times of political turmoil, yet her passionate love affair with the young Owain Tudor established the entire Tudor dynasty and set in motion one of the most fascinating periods of British history. The Sister Queens is a gripping tale of love, exile and conflict in a time when even royal women had to fight for survival.

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