The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
10 best books like The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (John Mandeville): The Treasure of the City of Ladies, Piers Plowman, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, The Journals, The Death of King Arthur, Two Lives of Charlemagne, The Portable Greek Historians: The Essence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Le Morte D'Arthur - Volume I, A Celtic Miscellany: Translations from the Celtic Literatures, The Protestant Reformation
| Author | Christine de Pizan |
| ISBN | 0140449507 |
Written by Europe’s first professional woman writer, The Treasure of the City of Ladies offers advice and guidance to women of all ages and from all levels of medieval society, from royal courtiers to prostitutes. It paints an intricate picture of daily life in the courts and streets of fifteenth-century...
| Author | William Langland |
| ISBN | 0393975592 |
Astonishing in its cultural and theological scope, William Langland's iconoclastic masterpiece is at once a historical relic and a deeply spiritual vision, probing not only the social and religious aristocracy but also the day-to-day realities of a largely voiceless proletariat class. E. Talbot...
Composed in medieval Iceland, Hrolf's Saga is one of the greatest of all mythic-legendary sagas, relating half-fantastical events that were said to have occurred in fifth-century Denmark. It tells of the exploits of King Hrolf and of his famous champions, including Bodvar Bjarki, the 'bear-warrior':...
| Author | James Cook |
| ISBN | 0140436472 |
"No man ever did more to alter and correct the map of the Earth," writes Percy Adams in his new Introduction, than James Cook, the Scotland-born British naval commander who rose from humble beginnings to pilot three great eighteenth-century voyages of discovery in the then practically uncharted Pacific....
Recounting the final days of Arthur, this thirteenth-century French version of the Camelot legend, written by an unknown author, is set in a world of fading chivalric glory. It depicts the Round Table diminished in strength after the Quest for the Holy Grail, and with its integrity threatened by the...
| Author | Einhard |
| ISBN | 0140442138 |
Two revealingly different accounts of the life of the most important figure of the Roman Empire
Charlemage, known as the father of Europe, was one of the most powerful and dynamic of all medieval rulers. The biographies brought together here provide a rich and varied portrait of the king from...
The Portable Greek Historians: The Essence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius
I had tried to read this book before, and made it through this time. It certainly isn’t the most exciting reading, but it’s a good sample of some of the ‘greats’ of history. I enjoy reading about Classical history, so hearing from the mouth of those of the time is especially interesting. Herodotus...
| Author | Thomas Malory |
| ISBN | 1401307809 |
Le Morte d'Arthur (originally spelled Le Morte Darthur, Middle French for "the death of Arthur"[1]) is a reworking of existing tales by Sir Thomas Malory about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. Malory interprets existing French and English...
| Author | Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson |
| ISBN | 0140442472 |
Including works from Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Breton and Manx, this Celtic Miscellany offers a rich blend of poetry and prose from the eighth to the nineteenth century, and provides a unique insight into the minds and literature of the Celtic people. It is a literature dominated...
| Author | Hans J. Hillerbrand |
| ISBN | 0061313424 |
Originally published more than forty years ago, this important collection brings together the works and writings of the revolutionary minds behind the Protestant Reformation. It remains a major resource for teachers, students and history buffs alike. Over the decades, however, modern scholarship...
| Author | Helen Waddell |
| ISBN | 0486414361 |
This is that strangeness, without which beauty is not made perfect.
This is the wonky cousin of The White Goddess from Robert Graves. Rampant rolls of verse citation seep and suggest all the anxious influence of the ancients, particularly the Irish, who survived the initial pillage from the...
| Author | Jean Froissart |
| ISBN | 0140442006 |
The Chronicles of Froissart (1337-1410) are one of the greatest contemporary records of fourteenth-century England and France. Depicting the great age of Anglo-French rivalry from the deposition of Edward II to the downfall of Richard II, Froissart powerfully portrays the deeds of knights in battle...
| Author | Jean de Joinville |
| ISBN | 0140441247 |
Two famous, firsthand accounts of the holy war in the Middle Ages translated by Margaret R. B. Shaw
Originally composed in Old French, the two chronicles brought together here offer some of the most vivid and reliable accounts of the Crusades from a Western perspective. Villehardouin's Conquest...
| Author | Snorri Sturluson |
| ISBN | 0140441832 |
This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror. It was a battle that led to his death and marked the end of an era in which...
| Author | Gerald of Wales |
| ISBN | 0140444238 |
Gerald of Wales was among the most dynamic and fascinating churchmen of the twelfth century. A member of one of the leading Norman families involved in the invasion of Ireland, he first visited there in 1183 and later returned in the entourage of Henry II. The resulting Topographia Hiberniae is an extraordinary...
The Romance of Arthur: An Anthology of Medieval Texts in Translation
| Author | James J. Wilhelm |
| ISBN | 0815315112 |
Since their first appearance, the three volumes of "The Romance of Arthur" have become the standard anthologies of Arthurian literature. Now, combined into a single convenient volume, the New, Expanded Edition of "The Romance of Arthur" covers nearly a thousand years of translated texts in a broad...
Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor
| Author | David Abulafia |
| ISBN | 0195080408 |
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Sicily, King of Jerusalem, has, since his death in 1250, enjoyed a reputation as one of the most remarkable monarchs in the history of Europe. His wide cultural tastes, his apparent tolerance of Jews and Muslims, his defiance of the papacy, and...
| Author | Ross E. Dunn |
| ISBN | 0520243854 |
When I met Professor Dunn, he was already being called America's foremost authority on Ibn Battuta. As we discussed our mutually favored subject, I will never forget how he commented, "I believe I can say that I know just how a Maliki scholar in the 14th century would think."
Ibn Battuta's name...
| Author | Sidney Painter |
| ISBN | 0070648433 |
(Fourth Edition, copywrite 1983)
by Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter
This is the most boring book I ever tried to read. I have plodded through it for almost a year because I wanted to learn the subject matter, but with a ho-hum presentation of the Magna Carta story at about the two-thirds...
Dream Visions and Other Poems
| Author | Geoffrey Chaucer |
| ISBN | 0393925889 |
Contexts connects the poems to their classical and medieval foundations and includes works by Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Boethius, Dante, and Boccaccio, among others From the wealth of scholarly work available, the editor has chosen for Criticism six essays that address the poems central themes. Contributors...
| Author | Frances Stonor Saunders |
| ISBN | 0060777303 |
A vibrant history of Italy in the cataclysmic fourteenth century as seen through the life of a brilliant military strategist and bandit lord
At the dawn of the Renaissance, hordes of mercenaries swooped down on the opulent city-states of Italy and commenced to drain them dry. The greatest...
| Author | Michael Prestwich |
| ISBN | 0300071574 |
Edward I—one of the outstanding monarchs of the English Middle Ages—pioneered legal and parliamentary change in England, conquered Wales, and came close to conquering Scotland. A major player in European diplomacy and war, he acted as peacemaker during the 1280s but became involved in a bitter...
