Arcadia: The Dream of Perfection in Renaissance England by Adam Nicolson

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A fascinating depiction from award-winning author, Adam Nicolson, of a family and a country on the hinge of modernisation. Was our country once a better place? Has modernisation destroyed as much as it has improved? And can we see in an earlier Britain a way of living, an Arcadia, which now seems both ideal and remote? Through 16th- and 17th-century England, the changes of an approaching modernity accelerated. With the growing power of the state, the disruption of the traditional bonds of society, the breaking of communities and the marginalisation of the great families who had once balanced the power of the crown, the new mercantile, individualist world increasingly clashed with the communal and chivalric ideals of the old. To tell this story from the 1520s to the 1640s, Adam Nicolson takes a single great family, the Earls of Pembroke, their wives, children, estates, tenants and allies, and follows their high and glamorous trajectory across three generations of change, nostalgia, ambition, resistance and war. 'Arcadia' is a rich and detailed evocation of England on the hinge of medieval and modern, and in this wide-ranging book Adam Nicolson explores a world in transition, moving from the intrigues, alliances and vendettas of the court to the intricate, everyday business of rural communities managing their affairs in times of stress. It was an England caught up in its first taste of modernity, yet divided over how to react to it, split between the old and the new, the moment at which the world we have lost turned into the world it has now become.
Publication Details

Title: Arcadia: The Dream of Perfection in Renaissance England

Author(s):

  • Adam Nicolson

Illustrator:

Binding: Paperback

Published by: Harper Perennial: , 2009

Edition:

ISBN: 9780007240531 | 0007240538

400 pages. 12.9cm x 2.03cm x 19.81cm

  • ENG- English
Book Condition: Very Good
5359m

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What does the Book Condition Very Good mean? Good? Fair?
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Foxing - Wikipedia
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Age tanning, or browning, occurs over time on the pages of books. This process can show up on just the edges of pages, when this occurs it is sometimes referred to as "edge tanning." This kind of deterioration is commonly seen in books printed before the advent of acid-free paper in the 1980s.
r/BookCollecting - Is this mold or normal aging for a well used book?
 
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  • Trade Name: Book Express Ltd
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  • Address: 35 Nathan Terrace, Shannon, 4821, New Zealand.
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  • NZBN: 9429031911290

       

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