Summary

Works prior to this book focused on Bede as not only a European, but also as an English scholar, historian, scientist, or a biographer of saints, and have used a traditional approach towards his explanation of the Bible. Bede's interpretation of his work, its continuous progress, and the reasons behind his hurried appointment to an authority almost as high as the Church Fathers are all topics examined within the text. Essays are by Roger Ray, Faith Wallis, Calvin B. Kendall, George Hardin Brown, Scott DeGregorio, Arthur G. Holder, Lawrence T. Martin, Walter Goffart, and Joyce Hill.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: The New Bede
• Who Did Bede Think He Was?
    Roger Ray
• Bede And The Ordering Of Understanding
    Alan Thacker
• Si naturam quaeras: Reframing Bede’s “Science”
    Faith Wallis
• The Responsibility of Auctoritas: Method and Meaning in Bede’s Commentary on Genesis
    Calvin B. Kendall
• Bede’s Neglected Commentary on Samuel
    George Hardin Brown
• Footsteps of his Own: Bede’s Commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah
    Scott DeGregorio
• Christ as Incarnate Wisdom in Bede’s Commentary on the Song of Songs
    Arthur G. Holder
• Bede’s Originality in his Use of the Book of Wisdomin his Homilies on the Gospels
    Lawrence T. Martin
• Bede’s History in a Harsher Climate
    Walter Goffart
• Carolingian Perspectives on the Authority of Bede
    Joyce Hill
• Bibliography
• Contributors

Author

Scott DeGregorio is Professor of Medieval Renaissance, Classical, and Biblical Literature at the University of Michigan-Deerborn. Besides Innovation and Tradition, he has also been involved with Bede: On Ezra and Nehemiah and Bede, the Monk, as Exegete: Evidence from the Commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah, among others.

Reviews

"Innovation and Tradition in the Writings of the Venerable Bede demonstrates the vitality of current scholarship and testifies to a remarkable unity in diversity of critical perspectives on Bede the exegete, "scientist," social reformer, and pedagogue, as well as historian. The Bede who emerges from these new essays was a leading light not only of early England, but also of medieval European culture at large."
Christopher A. Jones, Ohio State University

"This collection of essays (together with an excellent, up-to-date bibliography running to over thirty pages) is testament to the strength and vitality of Bedan studies."
Deborah McGrady, Speculum

Summary

James E. Cathey's Hêliand: Text and Commentary is a simply unique, wonderfully encompassing, and helpful text, and nothing quite like it exists anywhere in the world. The commentary portion of the book consists of an interweaving of interpretation and philological consideration. This work presents the reader with explanatory commentary that encompasses both the scientific and the poetic and treats them both with equal felicity. The volume also contains something that is exceptionally valuable and cannot be found in English: a compact and serviceable grammar of Old Saxon and an appended glossary that defines all of the vocabulary found in this edited version of the Hêliand.

Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• The Historical Setting of the Hêliand
  • The Saxons
  • The Early Missions
  • The Arian and Moslem Threats
  • The English Mission
  • Charlemagne and Europe
  • Charlemagne and the Saxons
  • Consolidation of Power
  • Semantic Hurdles to the Task of Conversion
• The Work
  • Hêliand Verse
  • The Dating of the Hêliand and the Prefatio
  • The Manuscripts
  • The Fitten
• A Comparison of the 'M' vs 'C' Manuscripts
• Excerpts from the text of the Hêliand
  • Introduction
  • Elizabeth's Child
  • The Birth of John
  • Mary's Child
  • The Birth of Jesus
  • Signs of Jesus' Birth
  • Jesus in the Temple
  • The Three Wise Men
  • Herod's Threat
  • The Flight to Egypt
  • John the Baptist
  • The Baptism of Christ
  • The Tempting of Christ
  • Jesus Returns to Galilee
  • The Sermon on the Mount
  • Admonitions
  • Hearing the Sermon
  • Swearing Oaths
  • The Lord's Prayer
  • Lilies of the Field
  • Pearls before Swine
  • Bad Tree - Bad Fruit
  • The Narrow Gate
  • A House upon Sand
  • Lambs among Wolves
  • Entering Heaven
  • Water to Wine
  • Reward and Punishment
  • Raising the Dead
  • Calming the Storm
  • The Sower and the Seed
  • Interpretation
  • The Wheat in the Field
  • Herodias' Daughter Dances
  • The Death of John
  • Jesus Walks on Water
  • Saint Peter's Keys
  • The Transfiguration
  • Fishing for Coins
  • The Rich Man and Lazarus
  • Workers in the Vineyard
  • Going to Jerusalem
  • The Blind Men
  • Entering Jerusalem
  • A Thane's Duty
  • Judgment Day
  • Raising Lazarus
  • Jesus as Threat
  • Apocalypse
  • Washing Feet
  • Jesus Identifies the Betrayer
  • Jesus in Gethsemane
  • The Capture of Christ
  • Peter Denies His Lord
  • The Fate of a Bad Thane
  • Pilate
  • The Death of Judas
  • Christ before Pilate
  • Christ before Herod
  • The Second Hearing before Pilate
  • Pilate's Offer
  • Satan's Attempt and Pilate's Wife
  • Pilate's Soldiers Take Jesus
  • The Crucifixion
  • The Death of Jesus
  • The Burial
  • The Resurrection
• Commentary to the Readings
• References
  • A Brief Outline of Old Saxon Grammar
  • The Sound Systems of Primitive Germanic and Old Saxon
  • Old Saxon Reflexes of Germanic Vowels
  • Strong Noun Declension
  • Weak Noun Declension
  • Pronouns
  • Adjective Declensions
  • Comparison of Adjectives
  • Adverbs
  • Numerals
  • Verbal Types
  • Verb Conjugations
• Glossary

Author

James E. Cathey is Professor Emeritus of German and Scandinavian studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research interests include Germanic linguistics, Scandinavian languages, Finnish, and Old Saxon. He teaches several classes in these areas at the university, along with Swedish.

Reviews

"As someone who has taught the Hêliand and had to go to unheard of lengths of photocopying to bring together diverse and difficult to find texts, I cannot tell you how genuinely helpful Cathey's work will be. It will be the version for students in North America, and quite probably abroad as well."
G. Ronald Murphy, Georgetown University

"...a useful addition to texts available for budding philologists."
Tom Shippey, The Times Literary Supplement

"As a means of introducing students to this fascinating world and challenging text, Cathey's study should prove to be valuable, and one may hope that its publication will indeed contribute to growth in the interest of English speakers for the Old Saxon world."
John M. Jeep, Speculum

Summary

On May 19, 1920, gunshots rang through the streets of Matewan, West Virginia, in an event soon known as the “Matewan Massacre.” Most historians of West Virginia and Appalachia see this event as the beginning of a long series of tribulations known as the second Mine Wars. But was it instead the culmination of an even longer series of proceedings that unfolded in Mingo County, dating back at least to the Civil War. Matewan Before the Massacre provides the first comprehensive history of the area, beginning in the late eighteenth century continuing up to the Massacre. It covers the relevant economic history, including the development of the coal mine industry and the struggles over land ownership; labor history, including early efforts of unionization; transportation history, including the role of the N&W Railroad; political history, including the role of political factions in the county’s two major communities—Matewan and Williamson; and the impact of the state’s governors and legislatures on Mingo County.

2008 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award Finalist

Contents

0. May 19, 1920 1
1. “Bleeding Mingo”: 1895–1911
2. The Progressive Era?
3. The Williamson-Thacker Coalfield Falls Behind
4. World War I and The Rise of Class Tensions
5. The Massacre: Before and After
6. Conclusion: The Matewan Myth
7. Bibliography
8. Index

Author

Rebecca “Becky” Bailey’s family roots are in McDowell and Mercer Counties in West Virginia. She first learned about Matewan through stories her coal miner grandfather told about witnessing Sid Hatfield’s murder. Later, when she came to West Virginia University to study public history, she was hired to help collect oral histories in Matewan and Mingo County. She wrote Matewan Before the Massacre because she could not let the story go.

Reviews

"A close-up history of economic and political factions struggling for control of the southern West Virginia coalfields. You couldn’t create fiction with this much drama."
Ronald L. Lewis, author Transforming the Appalachian Countryside

"[Bailey] has saved from oblivion the massacre's local social, economic, and political context."
Paul Salstrom, The Journal of Southern History

"Bailey's study contributes to the breadth of work in Appalachian studies that is recontextualizing the complexities and nuances of Appalachian communities."
Erica Lies, Oral History Review

"...fascinating."
Steve Fesenmaier, The Charleston Gazette

"Rebecca J. Bailey's book makes early twentieth-century Mingo County come alive and emphasizes the significance of local history."
Ginny Young, West Virginia History

Summary

One of the great triumphs of nineteenth-century philology was the development of the wide array of comparative data that underpins the grammars of the Old Germanic dialects, such as Old English, Old Icelandic, Old Saxon, and Gothic. These led to the reconstruction of Common Germanic and Proto-Germanic languages. Many individuals have forgotten that scholars of the same period were interested in reconstructing the body of ancient law that was supposedly shared by all speakers of Germanic. Stefan Jurasinski's Ancient Privileges: Beowulf, Law, and the Making of the Germanic Antiquity recounts how the work of nineteenth-century legal historians actually influenced the editing of Old English texts, most notably Beowulf, in ways that are still preserved in our editions. This situation has been a major contributor to the archaizing of Beowulf. In turn, Jurasinski's careful analysis of its assumptions in light of contemporary research offers a model for scholars to apply to a number of other textual artifacts that have been affected by what was known as the historische Rechtsschule. At the very least, it will change the way you think about Beowulf.

Contents

• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction: “The Forests of Germany”: Legal History and the Inheritance of Philology
• Jakob Grimm, Legal Formalism, and the Editing of Beowulf
• “Public Land,” Germanic Egalitarianism, and Nineteenth-Century Philology
• The Ecstasy of Vengeance: Nineteenth-Century Germanism and the Finn Episode
• Feohleas Gefeoht: Accidental Homicide and the Hrethel Episode
• Conclusions: Law and the Archaism of Beowulf
• Works Cited

Author

Stefan Jurasinski is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at SUNY Brockport. With R.D. Fulk, he is the editor of The Old English Canons of Theodore (forthcoming from the Early English Text Society). He is currently at work on a monograph entitled Secular Law and the Old English Penitentials as well as a collaborative edition of The Laws of Alfred and Ine.

Reviews

"This is a book of distinction. It is sober, lucid, precise, and illuminating. Even those with little interest in Old English may learn from its comments on the psychology of scholars, for whom inertia is so potent, and the echoing of one’s predecessors so very soft an option. Ancient Privileges, therefore, is an outstanding achievement, greatly to the credit of its author and of West Virginia University."
Yearbook of English Studies

"This summary of Jurasinski’s arguments cannot do justice to the range of his evidence from the murky territory of nineteenth-century scholarship. Jurasinski proves himself to be a worthy successor of Allen Frantzen in challenging the appeals to consensus and authority that Frantzen believes have undermined much current writing about this poem."
Journal of English and Germanic Philology

"Jurasinski makes a major contribution to Beowulf studies with the publication of his monograph, Ancient Privileges."
Year’s Work in English Studies

"This book will make a notable contribution to the fields of Beowulf studies, Anglo-Saxonism, legal history, and nineteenth-century intellectual history."
Lisi Oliver, author The Beginnings of English Law

Summary

John Alexander Williams’s West Virginia: A History is widely considered one of the finest books ever written about our state. In his clear, eminently readable style, Williams organizes the tangled strands of West Virginia's past around a few dramatic events—the battle of Point Pleasant, John Brown’s insurrection in Harper’s Ferry, the Paint Creek labor movement, the Hawk’s Nest and Buffalo Creek disasters, and more. Williams uses these pivotal events as introductions to the larger issues of statehood, Civil War, unionism, and industrialization. Along the way, Williams conveys a true feel for the lives of common West Virginians, the personalities of the state’s memorable characters, and the powerful influence of the land itself on its own history.

Contents

• 1. Point Pleasant
• 2. Harpers Ferry
• 3. Droop Mountain
• 4. Tug Fork
• 5. Paint Creek
• 6. Hawks Nest
• 7. Buffalo Creek
• 8. Montani semper . . .
• Epilogue: Back to Blair Mountain
• Acknowledgments
• Index
•  
• Original Maps by Harold Faye West Virginia Contemporary
• Creation of West Virginia: Counties and Railroad Lines

Author

John Alexander Williams received his doctorate in history from Yale University in 1966, having studied with the eminent American historian, C. Vann Woodward. He taught at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Chicago before joining the Department of History at West Virginia University in 1972. He is now professor of history at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, having also directed the Center for Appalachian Studies for seven years. He is also the author of West Virginia and the Captains of Industry, a West Virginia University Press classic.

Summary

The first period of the twentieth century—that stretch of years beginning in the 1870s and ending with the United States’ entry into World War I—is known as the Gilded Age. This was the era of the “Robber Barons” and the origin of modern America. These were the years in which developments in coal, steam, oil, and gas forged our national infrastructure. West Virginia and the Captains of Industry show how the excesses of the Gilded Age and the latitude our government accorded industrialists of the time created an impact on the fragile economy of our new state that accounts for much of the political and economic landscape of modern West Virginia. Gracefully written and thoroughly researched, West Virginia and the Captains of Industry has become a classic work of West Virginia history since its first publication by the West Virginia University Press in 1975. Anyone interested in the history of our state must read this revised edition; then again, so must anyone interested in the future of West Virginia.

Contents

• Acknowledgements
• 1. The New Dominion
• 2. The Politics of Coal
• 3. "The Great Cake Walk"
• 4. The Choice of the People?
• 5. The Boundless Resources
• 6. Reation and Reform
• 7. Years of Jubilee
• Appendix
• Notes
• Essay on Sources
• Index
• Maps
•  West Virginia Counties and Cities
•  West Virginia Railroads, ca. 1890–1910
• Photographs
•  Johnson Newlon Camden
•  Henry Gassaway Davis
•  Stephen Benton Elkins
•  Nathan Bay Scott

Author

John Alexander Williams received his PhD in history from Yale University in 1966, having studied with the eminent American historian, C. Vann Woodward. He taught at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Chicago before joining the Department of History at West Virginia University in 1972. He is now professor of history at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, having also directed the Center for Appalachian Studies for seven years.

Summary

As Volume One in the Sancta Crux/Halig Rod series, this collection of new research offers fascinating glimpses into how the way the cross, the central image of Christianity in the Anglo-Saxon period, was textualized, reified, visualized, and performed. The cross in early medieval England was so ubiquitous it became invisible to the modern eye, and yet it played an innovative role in Anglo-Saxon culture, medicine, and popular practice. It represented one of the most powerful relics, emblems, and images in medieval culture because it could be duplicated in many forms and was accessible to every layer of society. The volume speaks to critical issues of cultural interpretation for Anglo-Saxonists, medievalists of all disciplines, and those interested in cultural studies in general.

Contents

-3. Abbreviations
-2. Acknowledgements
-1. Introduction
      Karen Louise Jolly, University of Hawai'i at Ma¯noa
      Catherine E. Karkov, University of Leeds
      Sarah Larratt Keefer, Trent University
0. Dedication: George Hardin Brown
     Rosmary Cramp, Durham University
1. Reading and Speaking the Cross
   • Bede and the Cross
       George Hardin Brown, Stanford University
   • Preaching the Cross: Texts and Contexts from the Benedictine Reform
       Joyce Hill, University of Leeds
   • At Cross Purposes: Six Riddles in the Exeter Books
       Jill Frederick, Minnesota State University, Moorhead
2. The Cross as Image and Artifact
   • In Hoc Signo: The Cross on Secular Objects and the Process of Conversion
       Carol Neuman de Veguar, Ohio Wesleyan University
   • The Cross in the Grave: Design or Devine?
       Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Win Stephens, University of Manchester
   • A Chip Off the RoodL The Cross on Early Anglo-Saxon Coinage
       Anna Gannon, Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University
   • Crosses and Conversion: The Iconography of the Coinage of Viking York ca. 900
       Mark Blackburn, Fitzwilliam Museeum, Cambridge
3. Performing the Cross
   • The Performance of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England
       Sarah Larratt Keefer, Trent University
   • Hallowing the Rood: Anglo-Saxon Rites for Consecrating Crosses
       Helen Gittos, University of Kent
   • Prayers and/or Charms Addressed to the Cross
       R.M. Liuzza, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
   • Reading the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England
       William Schipper, Memorial University, St. John's Newfoundland
4. Contributors
5. Index

Author

Karen Louise Jolly is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She currently has a book in progress titled Pastoral Care and Liturgical Experimentation in Tenth Century Northumbria: Aldred’s Additions to the Durham Ritual.

Catherine E. Karkov is a professor at the School of Fine Art, Art History and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds in England.

Sarah Larratt Keefer is a professor at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. Her primary area of interest lies in Anglo-Saxon England, between AD 600 and 1100.

Summary

The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History first appeared in 1963, a little book by a man with no training as either a writer or a historian. Since then, this volume has become an essential sourcebook, consulted and quoted in nearly every study of coal field history. The surprising impact and durability of the book are due to both the information in it and the personality behind it. Through the first half of the twentieth century, William Purviance Tams lived coal. Rising from a young coal engineer to a senior coal baron, Tams stood at the center of Southern West Virginia industrialization. When he sold his company in 1955, Tams was the last of the old owner-operators, men with no personal or financial interest outside of coal. Tams wrote a book which could only have come from an ultimate insider. The everyday work of mining coal is here—laying track, blasting, and loading the coal. So is the everyday business of coal, from sinking shafts and ventilating the work area, to administering a town and keeping the workers happy.

Tams gives the financial details of the volatile business, and offers capsule biographies of the other major developers of the Southern West Virginia coal fields. It was a passion for Tams. He never married and tended his business and his town with paternal care. After retirement, this industrial baron spent his final decades in a modest bungalow in his little coal-camp community, watching the town he had built fade back into the mountains. It is W. P. Tams’s passion and attitude, as much as his place at the center of history, which make The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia worth reading nearly forty years after its first publication. Tams’s 1963 account of his career, The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia, offers a unique perspective on the business and the life of coal mining. The book is especially valuable for its account of the daily life and work of the miners, engineers, and families in the mines and in the mining towns. Our reprint of this fascinating and important book combines Tams’s original work with a new introduction by Ronald D. Eller, author of Miners, Millhands, & Mountaineers.

Contents

• Introduction (by Ronald D Eller)
• Preface
• Introduction
• Location and Early Development
• Finances and Organization
• Work in the Mines at the Turn of the Century
• The Gulf Smokeless Coal Company
• Personalities in Smokeless Coal Fields
• Place Names in the Smokeless Coal Fields
• Statistical Table

Summary

The essays in this book use the nine-line poem known as Cædmon’s Hymn as a lens on the world of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. A cowherd who is given a divine gift, Cædmon retells the great narratives of Christian history in the traditional form of Anglo-Saxon verse. An immense amount has been written about this episode, much of it concentrating on the hymn’s significance in the history of English literature. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to what the story of Cædmon and his hymn might tell us about the material, as well as the textual, culture of Bede’s world. The essays in this collection seek to connect Cædmon’s Hymn to Bede’s material world in various ways. Each chapter begins with the hymn and moves from the text to the worlds of scientific thought, settlements and social hierarchy, monastic reform, and ordinary things. The connections explored here are a sampling of the material concerns Cædmon’s Hymn raises.

Contents

• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Material Differences: The Place of Cædmon's Hymn in the History of Anglo-Saxon Vernacular Poetry
     Daniel P. O'Donnell, University of Lethbridge
• Literary Contects: Cædmon's Hymn as a Center of Bede's World
     Scott DeGregorio, University of Michigan Dearborn
• Cædmon's Created World and the Monastic Encyclopedia
     Faith Wallis, McGill University
• All Created Things: Material Contexts for Bede's Story of Cædmon
     Allen J. Frantzen, Loyola University Chicago
• Cædmon's World: Secular and Monastic Lifestules and Estate Organization in Northern England, A.D. 650-900
     Christopher Loveluck, University of Nottingham
• Changes and Exchanges in Bede's and Cædmon's World
     John Hines, Univeristy of Cardiff
• Bibliography
• Index

Author

Allen J. Frantzen is Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago and has been a Loyola University scholar since 2000. He is also the founding director of the Loyola Community Literacy Center.

John Hines is Professor at Cardiff University in Great Britain. He is currently working on a major and interdisciplinary cultural history of Anglo-Saxon England to provide a substantial and comprehensive discussion of life and conditions in the period from the Anglo-Saxon settlements to the Norman Conquest.

Summary

2008 Recognition of Excellence, AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers Competition
2007 ForeWord Magazine Finalist in History
2007 ForeWord Magazine Silver Winner in History
2007 Winner, AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers Competition
2008 Washington Book Publishers Book Design and Effectiveness Second Place Award, Illustrated Cover or Jacket and Illustrated Text

The Potomac Canal: George Washington and the Waterway West is a history of a new nation’s first effort to link the rich western agricultural lands with the coastal port cities of the east. The Potomac Canal Company was founded in 1785, and was active until it was overtaken by the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company in 1828. During its operation, the canal system was used to ship flour from mills in the foothills of Appalachia to the tidewater of the Chesapeake, where the flour was shipped to the Caribbean as trade for sugar and other goods. This trade soon became the basis of agricultural wealth in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle and throughout the Appalachian Piedmont. Coal was also shipped via the canal system from the upper reaches of the Potomac River to workshops at Harpers Ferry and beyond. This industrial trade route laid the foundation for what would eventually become the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Contents

• Chapter 1 - Early Proposals for a Potomac River Navigation · 1754-1775
• Chapter 2 - George Washington and the Early Development of the Potomac River
                        Navigation · 1784-1790
• Chapter 3 - Building the Little Falls and Great Falls Bypass Canals · 1791-1802
• Chapter 4 - The Shenandoah River Navigation · 1790-1890
• Chapter 5 - Other Canals of the Potomac River Basin · 1802-1828
• Chapter 6 - Workers of the Potomac Company · 1785-1828
• Chapter 7 - Operating the Potomac River Navigation · 1802-1828
• Chapter 8 - Maintaining the Potomac River Navigation · 1810-1828
• Chapter 9 - The Demise of the Potomac River Company · 1820-1828
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index

Author

Robert J. Kapsch, PhD, Hon. AIA, ASCE, holds doctorates in American studies, engineering, and architecture, as well as master’s degrees in historic preservation and management. For fifteen years, Dr. Kapsch was chief of the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, the U.S. government’s premier documentation program. He is the author of several books on historic architecture and engineering, including Canals, an illustrated history of American canals.

Reviews

"This beautiful coffee-table book with a plethora of full-color illustrations tells this story with academic acumen, aesthetic acuity, and great vitality."
George Brosi, Appalachian Heritage

"This new volume is a beautiful book, but it is so much more. . . .I recommend his work as a most reliable place to start understanding the Potomac project or early canals in general."
John Lauritz Larson, The Journal of Southern History

"Here it is at long last: the definitive work on what the National Park Service and the 1803 company logo call the Patowmack Canal. . . .It fills a serious gap in the history of American canals and should be of interest to social, political, business, and labor historians; historians of technology; industrial archaeologists; and those interested in the Early Republic."
John Austen, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology

"Beautifully illustrated with architectural drawings of the canal and numerous paintings of the surrounding countryside, Kapsch's book serves as a rich source of primary material on both the early history of canal building in America and the Potomac River valley."
August Nigro, West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional History