Elizabeth Harris

It is February 1194. A desperately ill man is making for Hawkenlye Abbey in the hope of a miracle cure. In his delirium he sees the Virgin Mary and, sinking to his knees, he begins to pray. She is the last person he will ever see. The winter cold intensifies and the Vale lake freezes over. It is only when the thaw sets in that a corpse is discovered in the icy waters, its skull crushed by a lethal blow. With no clues on the body but an apothecary's remedy, Abbess Helewise asks her trusted friend Sir Josse d'Acquin to find out the man's identity. As Josse sets out on his mission, a party of sick people arrive seeking help, and their sickness looks terrifyingly like plague . . .

This major new work explores the British encounter with Buddhism in nineteenth century Sri Lanka, examining the way Buddhism was represented and constructed in the eyes of the British scholars, officials, travellers and religious seekers who first encountered it. Tracing the three main historical phases of the encounter from 1796 to 1900, the book provides a sensitive and nuanced exegesis of the cultural and political influences that shaped the early British understanding of Buddhism and that would condition its subsequent transmission to the West. Expanding our understanding of inter-religious relations between Christians and Buddhists, the book fills a significant gap in the scholarship on Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka by concentrating on missionary writings and presenting a thorough exploration of original materials of several important pioneers in Buddhist studies and mission studies.

This complete, definitive, and richly illustrated survey of small nineteenth-century printing presses, written by a former curator at the Smithsonian Institution, is the first history of these machines. There was, in those days, a small printing press for every purpose. And there were innumerable boys and men eager to make their fortunes by investing in one, printing for a local clientele, and, with luck, building a printing or publishing empire. Printing was the most widespread, and competitive business of nineteenth-century America. Every city had not only its big presses for printing catalogues, books, and newspapers, but also countless smaller presses for printing small jobs – the pamphlets, posters, handbills, stationery, cards, and tickets that gave the century so much of its color. Several of the names we now count as giants of the publishing industry: Scribner, Doubleday, George Houghton of Houghton Mifflin, and Donald Brace of Harcourt Brace started out not as publishers, but as small-job printers, running their own shops and working humble, everyday, manually-operated presses.

The structure and content of the Johannine prologue determine the structure and content of the whole Gospel. Elizabeth Harris demonstrates that a type of prologue found in ancient Greek literature could be the literary convention behind John 1.1-18.

A grove of huge oak trees in the Wealden forest is felled. And, as if some ancient curse is being brought alive, the man who wielded the axes meets with a violent end. The Sheriff claims the Forest People did it, but Abbess Helewise believes a supernatural solution is too easy an answer. She consults Josse d'Acquin, whose manor house in the Weald is now being renovated, and he, concerned about the safety of two girls from the abbey, enters the forest himself - to find something in this ancient part of Britain that terrifies even him.

Shortly before his unexpected coronation, King Richard passed a law letting all of England's prisoners go free. Shortly afterwards a young nun is found, gruesomely murdered. Richard swiftly employs an old military colleague of his, Josse d'Acquin, to unravel this hideous mystery. Who could have wanted to kill this innocent young novice, and, more worryingly, why? Josse goes to Hawkenlye Abbey to find out the answers to these questions. He is having little success until meets the Abbess Helewise, a woman who quickly proves herself to be his equal, both as an amateur sleuth, and as a figure the community can rely on during this turbulent time for England. This duo have to find the murderer, and find him quickly, or they'll have the King of England to answer to...

Based on interviews with Buddhists living in both the West and the East, this is an accessible overview of the Buddhist tradition, which draws on personal insights, scholarly and non-scholarly, to cover both the doctrines and practices of the faith.

This book demonstrates that a type of prologue found in ancient Greek literature could be the literary convention behind John 1.1-18. The structure and content of the Johannine prologue determine the structure and content of the whole Gospel. It provides the reader with seminal statements about the cosmic situation and God's plan for mankind, statements which are explicated thereafter. This function of the prologue is explored through the three historical personages mentioned in that largely metaphysical construction about the Logos: John, Moses and Jesus Christ. The person and mission of Jesus Christ, cryptically stated in the prologue, are explicated through three christological expressions: 'the Son of Man', 'I am', and 'the Son (of God)'. These require the Logos-creator conception in the background to give them theological coherence.