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The Sorcerer's Tale
Faith and Fraud in Tudor England
Alec Ryrie
224 pages
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15 black and white halftones
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196x129mm
978-0-19-922996-3
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Hardback
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09 October 2008
Price:
£12.99 £3.24
Please note, this offer price only applies to individual customers when ordering direct from Oxford University Press, while stock lasts. No further discounts will apply. If you are a bookseller, please contact your OUP sales representative.
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- The strange and previously unknown story of Gregory Wisdom - physician, magician, and consummate con-man
- Takes us on a whirlwind journey through Tudor London, from the cut-throat world of early modern medicine to the ganglands of fraud and organized crime; from Kabbalistic conjurors to street-corner wizards
- Lays bare the intimate connections between Tudor England's dignified public face and its rapacious underworld
- Highlights the important hidden links between the disparate worlds of medicine, magic, organized crime and religion in sixteenth-century England
An earl's son, plotting murder by witchcraft; conjuring spirits to find buried treasure; a stolen coat embroidered with pure silver; crooked gaming-houses and brothels; a terrifying new disease, and the self-trained surgeon who claims he can treat it.
This is the world of Gregory Wisdom, a physician, magician, and consummate con-man at work in sixteenth-century London. In this book, Alec Ryrie uses previously unknown documents to reconstruct this extraordinary man's career. The journey takes us through the cut-throat business of early modern medicine,
down to Tudor London's gangland of fraud and organized crime; from the world of Renaissance magi and Kabbalistic conjurers to street-corner wizards; and into the chaotic, exhilarating religious upheavals of the Reformation.
On the way, we learn how Tudor England's dignified public face and its rapacious underworld were intimately connected to each other. Gregory Wisdom's career is an object lesson in how to conjure up wealth and respectability from nothing in a turbulent age. And it provides a unique glimpse into a world intoxicated with new ideas, where it was impossible to know quite what to believe - or who to trust.Readership: All those interested in the history of crime and the
underworld in Shakespeare's London and in the history of magic and medicine.
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Alec Ryrie, Reader in Church History, University of Durham
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"This book is aimed at the general reader, but its conclusion will make academics take notice." - J. P. D. Cooper, TLS "Fascinating insight into a lost and lurid world." - Daily Telegraph "The author lets his story unfold with considerable flair." - Owen Davies, BBC History Magazine "A Tudor story that glitters with wit and erudition. Ryrie has produced a veritable nugget of gold." - Leanda de Lisle, History Today "'a Tudor story that glitters with wit and erudition. Ryrie has produced a veritable nugget of gold.'" "" - History Today "He excavates many nuggets of fascinating information." - Literary
Review "The book illuminates various shady pathways of Tudor political and social history, and the author lets his story unfold with considerable flair." - BBC Music Magazine. "He excavates many nuggets of fascinating information." - Literary Review "It would be hard not to love this book. It relates a fascinating, neglected story; it is wonderfully well written." - Jonathan Wright, The Tablet
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Chronology
Foreword
1: The Nobleman
2: The Physician
3: The Underworld
4: The Magician
5: The Preacher
6: Conclusion: Barbarians at the Gates
Appendix: Gregory Wisdom's Will
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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