Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland (1649-1709) was the closest confidant of William III and arguably the most important politician in Williamite Britain. Beginning his career in 1664 as page to William of Orange, his fortunes gained momentum with the Prince's rise to power in The Netherlands and Britain, emerging as William's favourite at court from the 1670s onwards. Taking a broadly chronological approach, the central concern of this book is not simply to provide a biographical account of Portland's life, but to explore wider political themes within a European context. By analysing Portland's role within William's government it shows how royal favourites could still wield considerable influence on European events and help shape royal policy, particularly with regard to foreign policy. By engaging with the question of why such a figure emerged, this study helps illuminate the workings of William's government and the central role of his foreign entourage. Drawing from archival material in England, Scotland, France and The Netherlands, it ties the history of post-Revolution Britain with political events in the Netherlands. It also analyses Anglo-Dutch political relations during the crucial period of the Nine Years War, Britain's first major commitment to a continental war since the sixteenth century. In so doing it connects Dutch and British historiography and significantly contributes to our understanding of British politics during the 1690s, both domestically and within an international context.

Volume IV of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings deals uniquely with the self-portraits of Rembrandt. In a clearly written explanatory style the head of the Rembrandt Research Project and Editor of this Volume, Ernst van de Wetering, discusses the full body of work of paintings and etchings portraying Rembrandt. He sets the different parameters for accepting or rejecting a Rembrandt self-portrait as such, whilst also discussing the exact working environment of Rembrandt and his apprentices. This workshop setting created a surroundings where apprentices could be involved in working on Rembrandt paintings making it more difficult to determine the hand of the master. Van de Wetering, who is one of the Rembrandt experts of our day and age, goes down to great detail to explain how the different self-portraits are made and what techniques Rembrandt uses, also giving an overview of which paintings are to be attributed to the Dutch Master and which not. In the additional catalogue the self-portraits are examined in detail. In clear and accessible explanatory text the different paintings are discussed, larded with immaculate images of each painting. Details are shown where possible, as well as the results of modern day technical imaging like X-radiography. This work of art history and art research should be part of every serious art historical institute, university or museum. Nowhere in the art history have all Rembrandt’s self portraits been discussed in such detailed and comparative manner by an authority such as Ernst van de Wetering. This is a standard work for decades to come.

Philip Webb (1831-1915) was a British architect known as a founder of the Arts and Crafts movement and also a key member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. He was an important figure in the literary and artistic world of the late-nineteenth century. Webb had a long association, both professionally and personally, with William Morris and his family as well as becoming treasurer of Morris's revolutionary Socialist League. They first met as trainees in the same architect's practice and remained collaborators throughout their lifetimes. Webb was responsible for the design of the hugely influential Red House, the Morris's first home. It was through Morris that Webb became connected with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, amongst others. Webb and Morris were also joint founders of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), the first organization to promote conservation rather than intrusive restoration. This comprehensive selection from Webb's surviving letters includes many important and previously unpublished letters to some of his closest associates. They reveal the wide range of his professional and personal interests. These four volumes will be of interest to art and architecture historians, scholars of Victorian history in general and of William Morris and the wider Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts movements in particular.

The first scholarly edition of the complete works of Jane Cavendish, this volume presents as complete a collection as possible of works and historical documents pertaining to a particularly compelling figure from the English Civil War. These include two manuscript poem and play collections, family letters to and from Jane, dating from after the Civil War years, and important estate papers. Jane Cavendish and her nearest sister, Elizabeth Brackley, are the only known collaborative female dramatists of the early modern period, and the co-composers of the first extant stage comedy by women in English. Most of Jane's extant verse and dramatic works were composed when the fighting of the English Civil War was at its most intense. Her works are, therefore, particularly valuable to both literary and historical researchers of the period because they simultaneously play with established literary conventions and convey much first-hand information about the conditions of aristocratic life during and immediately after the seventeenth-century national meltdown. The introduction offers as comprehensive a biography of Jane Cavendish as possible, focusing primarily on Jane's childhood, education, and conduct during the Civil War, as well as her married life after the war years. Of particular interest among the documents that follow is an account-book including entries from Jane's teenage years as well as her early married life; it portrays vividly what a young lady of her status owned in terms of clothes and jewels, as well as what a newly married woman had to acquire upon setting up a new household.