Eufrasia Burlamacchi, Writers Revealed, and Seized Books: April Books Roundup

Our ongoing look at new books that have recently caught the eye of our print and online editors this month.

Eufrasia Burlamacchi by Loretta Vandi

A focus on the remarkable illuminated manuscripts produced by Sister Eufrasia Burlamacchi (1478–1548) who lived and worked in the convent of San Domenico in Lucca, not only establishing her own style but also developing a convent workshop. Published by Lund Humphries in the UK and Getty Publications in North America in the Illuminating Women Artists series.

Writers Revealed edited with text by Alexandra Ault and Catharine MacLeod

A collaboration between the British Library and London's National Portrait Gallery, this heavily illustrated volume combines a wealth of the gallery's portraits of more than 70 writers with selections from the library's archives, including handwritten manuscripts, letters and notebooks.  

Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair by William Morris

The first offering from a crowdfunded fledgling publishing company set up by Bryan Cash which aims to produce attractive editions of classic and forgotten fantasy, romance, and adventure stories using offset lithography printing and a sewn hardback binding withnatural fiber cloth covering. Cash describes the tale set in the imaginary medieval lands of Oakenrealm and Meadham where a boy-king and girl-queen find one another and seek to regain their lands as "perhaps William Morris’s most charming story". The story was originally printed and published at Morris’s Kelmscott Press in two small volumes in 1895. More details here.

Seized Books! LGBTQ+ books and censorship in 1980s Britain: A catalogue by Sarah Pyke & Leila Kassir


An indepth look at the publications wrongly confiscated from Gay's the Word, the UK's first lesbian and gay bookshop, by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, starting in April 1984. This is actually a print version of an online exhibition from the Senate House Library and focuses on a long list of gay and lesbian publications including zines, poems, novels, and non-fiction, as well as LGBTQ+ publishing and bookselling in the 1980s.
Senate House Library

Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England by Hannah Jeans

From University of London Press, Jeans examines the reading of early modern Englishwomen in the 17th century including religious texts, romances, cookbooks, scientific and medical treatises, and household records. It is published open access.

The Destruction of Medieval Manuscripts in England: Institutional Collections by Krista A Milne

What and how have we lost? Milne investigates whether the the Dissolution of the Monasteries really was the single most significant event in England’s history of medieval manuscript loss, as well as other losses due to poor storage and deliberate deacquisition, and which manuscripts were targeted. Published by Oxford University Press.

Shakespeare in Bloomsbury by Marjorie Garber

Now out in paperback if you missed it in hardback a couple of years ago, Garber looks at how Shakespeare influenced Virginia Woolf and others in the Bloomsbury Group who were rather obsessed with the Bard of Stratford on Avon. From Yale University Press.