Penn Press Log

Medici Gardens--Now Available

Medici Gardens: From Making to Design
Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto
328 pages | 6 x 9 | 54 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4072-6 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture series

Medici Gardens challenges the common assumption that such gardens as Trebbio, Cafaggiolo, Careggi, and Fiesole were the products of an established design practice whereby one client commissioned one architect or artist. The book suggests that in the case of the gardens in Florence garden making preceded its theoretical articulation.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

In the Mood for Horace

As another National Poetry Month comes to an end, here's a sampling from A.M. Juster's forthcoming translation of The Satires of Horace.

From I:VI

When I am in the mood, I go explore
entirely alone and ascertain 
the prices set for vegetables and grain.
As evening falls, I often wander through 
the sketchy Circus and the Forum too. 
I stand beside astrologers, then troop 
back home to have some leek and chickpea soup. 
Three slaveboys serve my meals, and polished stone 
supports the ladle and two cups I own. 
Beside these items is some bric-a-brac 
made in Campania: a cheap knick-knack, 
an oil-flask with its dish. When supper’s done, 
I sleep unworried that I’ll need to run 
out for an early meeting or appear 
in front of Marsyas (who is quite clear 
that looking at the face of Novius 
the Lesser should be viewed as odious).

Richard Helgerson

Staff at the University of Pennsylvania Press were saddened by the news of the death of Richard Helgerson, Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, author of numerous books--including A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe--and translator of Joachim du Bellay: "The Regrets," with "The Antiquities of Rome," Three Latin Elegies, and "The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language."  Professor Helgerson passed away on Saturday, April 26  in Santa Barbara, home of the institution where he had taught for over thirty-five years.

An obituary of Helgerson appears on the homepage of The Early Modern Center of the Department of English, UCSB and contains a link to Thoughts on Richard, a weblog where visitors can share their memories of the late scholar.

Marriage and Violence--Now Available

Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy
Frances E. Dolan
248 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4075-7 | $47.50 | £31.00

Marriage is often described as a melding of two people into one. But what--or who--must be lost, fragmented, or buried in that process? Dolan reveals the contradiction that lies at the very heart of modern marriage. We have inherited from early modern England a model of marriage, she contends, so flawed that its logical consequence is conflict.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Robin Chapman Stacey wins ACIS Prize

The American Conference for Irish Studies presented Robin Chapman Stacey with the James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences for his Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland. Stacey accepted the prize at this year's ACIS national conference held at  St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.

Medieval Academy Prize Goes to Sara Poor

Sara S. Poor's Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority has received another award. The Medieval Academy selected this study of a thirteenth-century mystic as cowinner of the 2008 John Nicholas Brown Prize for the best first book in Medieval Studies.

Poor is the third Penn Press author to win this Medieval Academy prize. She is preceded by Iain Macleod Higgins, author of Writing East: The "Travels" of Sir John Mandeville, and Robin Chapman Stacey, author of  The Road to Judgment: From Custom to Court in Medieval Ireland and Wales.

Place and Memory in the Singing Crane Garden--Now Available

Place and Memory in the Singing Crane Garden
Vera Schwarcz
296 pages | 6 x 9 | 44 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4100-6 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture series

The Singing Crane Garden in northwest Beijing has been the site of several important and cataclysmic events in modern Chinese history. In this poetic and highly personal study of memory, trauma, and cultural renewal, Schwarcz brings to life the complex history of a richly layered corner of China's much traversed yet little known cultural landscape.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

The Way of Improvement Leads Home--Now Available

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America
John Fea
280 pages | 6 x 9 | 12 illus.
Cloth Feb 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4109-9 | $39.95 | £26.00
A volume in the Early American Studies series

In this first full biography of Philip Vickers Fithian, John Fea tells the story of how one young man sought to pursue the life of an eighteenth-century Presbyterian gentleman while continuing to yearn for the everyday passions that defined what it meant for him to be human.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Beyond the Farm--Now Available

Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England
J. M. Opal
280 pages | 6 x 9 | 20 illus.
Cloth Mar 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4062-7 | $39.95 | £26.00
A volume in the Early American Studies series

During the first half-century of American independence, a fundamental change in the meaning and morality of ambition emerged. Beyond the Farm blends biography, social history, and cultural history to describe and explain that change.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact at Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky--Now in Paperback

The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft
Edited by Robert Dale Parker
312 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 14 illus.
Cloth 2006 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3981-2 | $34.95 | £23.00
Paper Feb 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-1969-2 | $19.95 | £13.00

Introducing a dramatic new chapter to American literary history, this book brings to the public for the first time the complete writings of the first known American Indian literary writer, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (1800-1842).

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.