Franklin Library: BARBARA TUCHMAN :PLAGUE: BLACK DEATH: 1300s

Description: Franklin Library leather edition Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century," a Limited edition, Illustrated with Photographs from the period, one of the FIRST EDITION SOCIETY series, published in 1978. Bound in deep hunter green leather, the book has moire silk end leaves, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, a satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition. Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, who lived from 1912---1989, was an American historian and author who twice won the PULIZER PRIZE. She was a graduate of RADCLIFFE COLLEGE and from 1933-1945 worked as a research assistant for the Institute of Pacific Relations. "A Distant Mirror" focuses on the crises of the late Middle Ages which caused widespread suffering in Europe in the 14th century. Between 1348-1350, one third of the population living between India and England died on the plague. When the 14th century opened, France was supreme. Her superiority in chivalry, learning, and Christian devotion was taken for granted, and as traditional champion of the Church, her monarch was accorded the formula of "Most Christian King." The people of his realm considered themselves the chosen objects of divine favor through whom God expressed his will on earth. Children on the whole were left to survive without great concern in the first five or six years. If children survived to age seven, their recognized life began, more or less as miniature adults. About half the population was under twenty-one, and about one-third under fourteen. A boy of noble family was left for his first seven years in the charge of women, who schooled him in manner and to some extent in letter. From age eight to fourteen, the noble's son was sent as a page to the castle of a neighboring lord, in the same way that boys of lower orders at seven or eight were sent to another family as apprentices or servants. A page or even a squire as a grown man assisted his lord to bathe and dress, took care of his clothes, waited on him at table while sharing a noble status. In return for free labor, the lord provided a free school for the sons of his peers. The boy learned to ride, to fight, and to hawk, the three chief physical elements of noble life, to play chess and backgammon, to sing and dance, play an instrument, and compose, and other romantic skills. Book learning had little place in this program, although a young noble, depending on his bent, could learn geometry, law, elocution, and in a few cases Latin. Noble daughters were taught reading and writing in French and Latin, music, and some medicine and first aid. Men of the non-clerical classes had abandoned the gown for divided legs clad in tights. They were generally clean-shaven, although chin beards and mustaches came in and out of fashion and a thick hairy chest was a sign of virility and manliness. Women used cosmetics, dyed their hair, plucked it to broaden their forehead, and plucked their eyebrow too. Tuchman recounts the histories of the Hundred Years' War, the Black Plague, the Papal Schism, pillaging mercenaries, antisemitism, popular revolts including the Jacquerie in France, the liberation of Switzerland, the Battle of the Golden Spurs, and various peasant uprisings. She also discusses the advance of the Islamic Ottoman Empire into Europe, which ended in the disastrous Battle of Nicopolis. Yet Tuchman's scope is not limited to political and religious events. She begins with a discussion of the Little Ice Age, a change in climate that reduced average temperatures in Europe well into the mid-19th century, and describes the lives of all social classes, from nobility and clergy to the peasantry. Much of the narrative is woven around the life of the French nobleman ENGUERRAND de COUCHY who was born in 1340, seven years before the BLACK DEATH began in Southern Italy. Coucy died in 1397. A French noble who married ISABELLA, the eldest daughter of EDWARD III of England, Coucy had ties to both France and England, and was therefore close to much of the action. 735 pages, including Notes and an index----a GORGEOUS book! I offer Combined shipping.

Price: 39.95 USD

Location: Walnut Ridge, Arkansas

End Time: 2024-11-21T14:12:29.000Z

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