Surviving the "Essex" tells the captivating story of a ship's crew battered by whale attack, broken by four months at sea, and forced - out of necessity - to make meals of their fellow survivors. Exploring the Rashomon-like Essex accounts that complicate and even contradict first mate Owen Chase's narrative, David O. Dowling examines the vital role of viewpoint in shaping how an event is remembered and delves into the ordeal's submerged history - the survivors' lives, ambitions, and motives, their pivotal actions during the desperate moments of the wreck itself, and their will to reconcile those actions in the short- and long-term aftermath of this storied event. Mother of all whale tales, Surviving the "Essex" acts as a sequel to Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, while probing deeper into the nature of trauma and survival accounts, an extreme form of notoriety, and the impact that the story had on Herman Melville and the writing of Moby-Dick.

Essex is a remarkable county with a fascinating history, but how well do you know it? This fun, easy-to-use book contains 500 quiz questions in 50 rounds which are designed to test your knowledge about Essex. They range in difficulty from very easy to very hard and they cover topics as diverse as history, ancient buildings, scenes, waterways, transport, towns and villages, local claims to fame, towers, fortifications, the seaside, people, sport, writers, industry, science and islands. There are also some anagrams and some cryptic questions for you to try. Fourteen of the rounds are picture rounds. Can you recognise the places in them? This book can be used to test your own knowledge or the knowledge of your family members and friends. It can also be used in more competitive team quiz challenges in a village hall or a pub. You can even take it with you on a journey and test your knowledge of the places you visit as you go. The book can also be used as an educational tool, providing ideas for places to visit, as the answers include background information on all the topics covered. There is much of interest in Essex and this book will help you uncover it and learn about many aspects of the county’s long and interesting history. Enjoy discovering or rediscovering the many fascinating places in the best county in the country!

Gill Blanchard's practical and informative handbook will help you to trace your ancestors in the traditional counties of East Anglia Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex and it will give you an insight into their lives. As well as guiding the researcher to historical records held in all the relevant archives, she explores the wealth of other resources that add the 'flesh to the bones' of our ancestors' lives. She describes how fascinating information can be discovered about the places they lived in and the important historical events they lived through, and she traces the life stories of notable people from all backgrounds who shaped the regions development over the centuries. Her account highlights the diversity of this part of England but also focuses on its common features and strong sense of identity. It introduces a wide array of research resources that will be revealing for readers who want to find out about their ancestors who lived here.

Analyses the attitudes of Essex and his followers towards war, religion, and domestic politics; examines Essex's impact on Elizabethan political culture

A Rural Society after the Black Death is a study of rural social structure in the English county of Essex between 1350 and 1500. It seeks to understand how, in the population collapse after the Black Death (1348-1349), a particular economic environment affected ordinary people's lives in the areas of migration, marriage and employment, and also contributed to patterns of religious nonconformity, agrarian riots and unrest, and even rural housing. The period under scrutiny is often seen as a transitional era between 'medieval' and 'early-modern' England, but in the light of recent advances in English historical demography, this study suggests that there was more continuity than change in some critically important aspects of social structure in the region in question. Among the most important contributions of the book are its use of an unprecedentedly wide range of original manuscript records (estate and manorial records, taxation and criminal-court records, royal tenurial records, and the records of church courts, wills etc.) and its application of current quantitative and comparative demographic methods.

This comparison of the archaeological evidence from the fourth to seventh centuries AD in the Chilterns and Essex regions focuses on the considerable body of place–name data from the area. The counties of Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Essex, and parts of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire are included.