Reviews: The Study of History: A Bibliographical Guide, the English Idea of History from Coleridge to Collingwood, the Changing Face of English Local History, Arthur and the English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English Life and Literature, Enacting Gender on the English Renaissance Stage, Shakespeare's Feminine Endings, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics 1627–1660, New Stories for Old:

Abstract

‘The conviviality of the narrative premise’ is Steven Earnshaw’s felicitous phrase for the theme that suffuses this book. It is ‘a crawl through the drinking places of English literary history,’ in the company of Chaucer, Langland, Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, Pepys, Ned Ward (author of The London Spy), Goldsmith, Gray, Fielding, Cowper, Crabbe, Dickens, Eliot (G.), Hardy, Eliot (T. S.), Coppard, Hampson, Hamilton, Orwell and Amis (M.). It also ‘attempts to weave a pattern out of the strands of “pub”, English literature and England’. It is a labour of love, the product of years of hoarded references and inspired cups and we must be grateful. It will become a standard resort for literary scholars seeking quotable material on pubs (Piers Plowman ‘pissed a pottel in a pater-noster while’), and for anyone who likes to savour ‘the pub moment’ through the medium of print.