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Tudor Cornwall
Tudor Cornwall, Portrait Of A Society
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
450 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
A.L. Rowse
276 books13 followersAlfred Leslie Rowse, CH FBA, known professionally as A. L. Rowse and to his friends and family as Leslie, was a prolific Cornish historian. He is perhaps best known for his poetry about Cornwall and his work on Elizabethan England. He was also a Shakespearean scholar and biographer. He developed a widespread reputation for irascibility and intellectual arrogance.
One of Rowse's great enthusiasms was collecting books, and he owned many first editions, many of them bearing his acerbic annotations. For example, his copy of the January 1924 edition of The Adelphi magazine edited by John Middleton Murry bears a pencilled note after Murry's poem In Memory of Katherine Mansfield: 'Sentimental gush on the part of JMM. And a bad poem. A.L.R.'
Upon his death in 1997 he bequeathed his book collection to the University of Exeter, and his personal archive of manuscripts, diaries, and correspondence. In 1998 the University Librarian selected about sixty books from Rowse’s own working library and a complete set of his published books. The Royal Institution of Cornwall selected some of the remaining books, and the rest were sold to dealers.
One of Rowse's great enthusiasms was collecting books, and he owned many first editions, many of them bearing his acerbic annotations. For example, his copy of the January 1924 edition of The Adelphi magazine edited by John Middleton Murry bears a pencilled note after Murry's poem In Memory of Katherine Mansfield: 'Sentimental gush on the part of JMM. And a bad poem. A.L.R.'
Upon his death in 1997 he bequeathed his book collection to the University of Exeter, and his personal archive of manuscripts, diaries, and correspondence. In 1998 the University Librarian selected about sixty books from Rowse’s own working library and a complete set of his published books. The Royal Institution of Cornwall selected some of the remaining books, and the rest were sold to dealers.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 8, 2013
Dear old, damned old, AL Rowse. What a strange man he was - totally at odds with 99% of mankind, but obsessed with the history of mankind. This is a brilliant account of Cornwall at a critical time in its (and England's) history. Rowse's contempt for the common people - the "silly, simple people", the "idiot people" - is evident, but then, on the last page of this fine book, totally mitigated (in my view at least) by these very moving sentences:
'When you consider the superstitions and the imaginings of the old Cornish country-folk up to my grandmother's day, how their lives were swaddled in them from the cradle to the grave, their daily actions in large part determined by them - so many things you would not think of doing, like starting a journey on a Friday, or looking at the moon through a pane of glass, or failing to wear something new on Whitsunday - their minds haunted by ghosts and fears, you have a fair idea of what the minds of these people in the sixteenth century were like. It was a life full of shadows that frightened them and dangers that might come home to them; how much more so in those days when their fears had the sanction, and even the corroboration, of the elect and the intelligent: when a uniform religion existed to enforce its lessons and draw the moral. However, no doubt it filled up life for them, made it more interesting and exciting, more mysterious and incalculable; it added a dimension to it, where the modern uneducated, rid of their fears and ghosts, are apt to find life empty and void of meaning.
'Impossible as it is to reconstruct at all fully those vanished lives, we may reflect that they as we felt the heat of noonday, lay down tired with their labour at night, watched the stars come out over the familiar hillsides and hang the night with creation; they too heard the wind in the trees, the smouldering seas lapping our coasts in summer, or thundering upon the rocks in winter. Or perhaps their lives were for the most part of sterner, simpler stuff, their lot harder, filled almost wholly with labour and endurance, the struggle to wrest a living from the soil, the begettng of their children, birth, marriage, death. In the end their lives can never be wholly without interest for us: for they were our forefathers.'
Tudor Cornwall is probably the best, and certainly the best-written, Cornish history I have read. And anyone inspired by Hilary Mantel to learn more about Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell will find much in it of fascination.
'When you consider the superstitions and the imaginings of the old Cornish country-folk up to my grandmother's day, how their lives were swaddled in them from the cradle to the grave, their daily actions in large part determined by them - so many things you would not think of doing, like starting a journey on a Friday, or looking at the moon through a pane of glass, or failing to wear something new on Whitsunday - their minds haunted by ghosts and fears, you have a fair idea of what the minds of these people in the sixteenth century were like. It was a life full of shadows that frightened them and dangers that might come home to them; how much more so in those days when their fears had the sanction, and even the corroboration, of the elect and the intelligent: when a uniform religion existed to enforce its lessons and draw the moral. However, no doubt it filled up life for them, made it more interesting and exciting, more mysterious and incalculable; it added a dimension to it, where the modern uneducated, rid of their fears and ghosts, are apt to find life empty and void of meaning.
'Impossible as it is to reconstruct at all fully those vanished lives, we may reflect that they as we felt the heat of noonday, lay down tired with their labour at night, watched the stars come out over the familiar hillsides and hang the night with creation; they too heard the wind in the trees, the smouldering seas lapping our coasts in summer, or thundering upon the rocks in winter. Or perhaps their lives were for the most part of sterner, simpler stuff, their lot harder, filled almost wholly with labour and endurance, the struggle to wrest a living from the soil, the begettng of their children, birth, marriage, death. In the end their lives can never be wholly without interest for us: for they were our forefathers.'
Tudor Cornwall is probably the best, and certainly the best-written, Cornish history I have read. And anyone inspired by Hilary Mantel to learn more about Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell will find much in it of fascination.
June 4, 2014
Rowse was the preeminent scholar on Cornwall and Tudor England. Therefore this book can be considered the bible on the subject. as with all his works it is thoroughly researched and well written. Cornwall was a world apart from the rest of England due to the Tamar River gorge which created a divide from the whole of England. The Cornish people developed unique language, culture, dress and mythology.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews