Aug 8, 2025
Latest Book Reviews in JBS
Check out these recent book reviews published in the Journal of British Studies.
Sean M. Kelley. American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644–1865 New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. Pp. 496, $35.00 (Cloth).
Tao Wei
David Watt. Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England: Social Discomfort in the Literature of the Middle Ages New Directions in Medieval Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Pp. 197. $103.50 (cloth).
Martha Bayless
Jean P. Smith. Settlers at the End of Empire: Race and the Politics of Migration in South Africa, Rhodesia and the United Kingdom Studies in Imperialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. Pp. 240. $120.00 (cloth).
Josiah Brownell
Agnes Arnold-Forster and Alison Moulds, eds. Feelings at Work in Modern History: Emotional Labour and Emotions About Labour London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. Pp. 280. $39.95 (paper).
Stephen Brooke
Ray Campbell. A Cultural History of British Alternative Cabaret (1979–1991) Liverpool Studies in the Politics of Popular Culture. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2023. Pp. 264. $150.00 (cloth).
Oliver Double
Thomas Kaufmann. The Saved and the Damned: A History of the Reformation Translated by Tony Crawford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. xviii+358. £36.99.
Paolo Astorri, Lars Cyril Nørgaard
Anne L. Murphy. Virtuous Bankers: A Day in the Life of the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. 288. $35.00.
Paul Kosmetatos
Bernard Capp. British Slaves and Barbary Corsairs, 1580–1750 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp 208. $105.00 (cloth).
R. J. W. Mills
Steve Hindle. The Social Topography of a Rural Community: Scenes of Labouring Life in Seventeenth-Century England Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 472. $130.00 (cloth).
William Cavert
Jon Elster. America Before 1787: The Unraveling of a Colonial Regime Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. 488. $45.00 (cloth).
Kate Kaitcer
Reeju Ray. Placing the Frontier in British North-East India: Law, Custom, and Knowledge Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 224. $90.00 (cloth).
Bérénice Guyot-Réchard
Alison Knight. The Dark Bible: Cultures of Interpretation in Early Modern England Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 338. $100.00 (cloth).
Mary Morrissey
Lee Michael-Berger. Modern Murders: The Turn-of-the-Century's Backlash Against Melodramatic and Sensational Representations of Murder, 1880–1914 Routledge Studies in Cultural History. New York: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 184. $160.00 (cloth).
Elizabeth Prevost
Jane Freebody. Work and Occupation in French and English Mental Hospitals, c. 1918–1939 Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. 378. Open Access (eBook).
Sarah Chaney
Jill Rappoport. Imagining Women’s Property in Victorian Fiction Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 240. $85.00 (cloth).
Mary Jean Corbett
Jon Silverman and Robert Sherwood. Safe Haven: The United Kingdom's Investigations into Nazi Collaborators and the Failure of Justice Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 336. $40.00 (cloth).
Siobhan Amy Hyland
Meredith Veldman. The British Jesus, 1850–1970. Routledge Studies in Modern British History. London: Routledge, 2022. Pp. 414. $170.00 (cloth).
Carol Engelhardt Herringer
Emma Gleadhill. Taking Travel Home: The Souvenir Culture of British Women Tourists, 1750–1830 Gender in History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. Pp. 290. $38.60 (cloth).
Laura Engel
Ester Lo Biundo. London Calling Italy: BBC Broadcasts During the Second World War Studies in Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. Pp. 224. $120.00 (cloth).
Thomas Hajkowski
Mark Mckerracher and Helena Hamerow, eds. New Perspectives on the Medieval ‘Agricultural Revolution’: Crop, Stock and Furrow Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022. Pp. 304. $64.99 (paper).
Thomas Pickles
Philip J. Stern. Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023. Pp. 408. $35.00 (cloth).
Timothy Alborn
Ren Pepitone. Brotherhood of Barristers: A Cultural History of the British Legal Profession, 1840–1940 Modern British Histories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 216. $95.00 (cloth).
Leslie Howsam
Laurence M. Geary. The Land War in Ireland: Famine, Philanthropy and Moonlighting Cork University Press, 2023. Pp. 300. $45.00 (cloth).
Brian Casey
Arthur McIvor. Jobs and Bodies: An Oral History of Health and Safety in Britain London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. Pp. 304. $34.95 (cloth).
Paul Almond
Stacey Hynd. Imperial Gallows: Murder, Violence and the Death Penalty in British Colonial Africa, c.1915–60. Empire's Other Histories Series London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. Pp. 261. $103.50 (cloth).
Andrew Novak
James Grande and Brian H. Murray, eds. Scripture and Song in Nineteenth-Century Britain New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Pp. 248. $120.00 (cloth).
Martin V. Clarke
David Scott Gehring. A European Elizabethan: The Life of Robert Beale, Esquire Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. Pp. 304. $115.00 (cloth).
Jonathan McGovern
Andrew G. Miller. Patronage, Power, and Masculinity in Medieval England: A Microhistory of a Bishop’s and Knight’s Contest over the Church of Thame Microhistories. London: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 246. $160.00 (cloth).
Felicity Hill
Kathleen Murphy. Captivity’s Collections: Science, Natural History, and the British Transatlantic Slave Trade Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Pp. 256. $29.95 (paper).
Chris Blakley
Matt Houlbrook, Katie Jones, and Ben Mechen eds. Men and Masculinities in Modern Britain: A History for the Present Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023. Pp. 332. $36.95 (cloth).
Linsey Robb
John Tolan. England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023. Pp. 264. $45.00 (cloth).
Emma Cavell
Adam Parkes. Modernism and the Aristocracy: Monsters of English Privilege Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 336. $100 (cloth).
Laura Mayhall
Eleanor Reed. Woman’s Weekly and Lower Middle-Class Domestic Culture in Britain, 1918–1958: Making Homemakers Liverpool English Texts and Studies 99, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2023. Pp. 280. $150.00 (cloth).
Lucy Rosalyn Sharp
Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash. Beyond Deviant Damsels: Re-evaluating Female Criminality in the Nineteenth Century Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 272. $110.00 (cloth).
Jo Turner
Charlotte Lydia Riley. Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain. London: The Bodley Head, 2023. Pp. 384. $35.00 (cloth).
Radhika Natarajan
Caitriona McCartney. The Sunday School Movement in Britain: 1900–1939 Woodbridge. Studies in Modern Religious History. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2023. Pp. 226. $115.00 (cloth).
Stephen G. Parker
Jacqueline M. Burek. Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain’s Long Twelfth Century Writing History in the Middle Ages, 10. York: York Medieval Press, 2023. Pp. 281. $125.00 (cloth).
Emily A. Winkler
Georgia Oman. Higher Education and the Gendering of Space in England and Wales, 1869–1909 Genders and Sexualities in History Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. 264. $89.49 (ebook).
Claire Jones