The Hollow Crown (Penguin History of Britain) (Paperback)

by Miri Rubin (Author) "If we are to appreciate the scale of devastation which the Great Famine of 1315-22 brought to the British Isles, as it did to the..." (more)
Key Phrases: parish gentry, Prince of Wales, Margaret of Anjou, King of France (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
There is no more haunting, compelling period in Britain's history than the later middle ages. The extraordinary kings - Edward III and Henry V, the great warriors, Richard II and Henry VI, tragic inadequates killed by their failure to use their power, and Richard III, the demon king. The extraordinary events - the Black Death that destroyed a third of the population, the Peasants' Revolt, the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Agincourt. The extraordinary artistic achievements - the great churches, castles and tombs that still dominate the landscape, the birth of the English language in "The Canterbury Tales". For the first time in a generation, a historian has had the vision and confidence to write a spell-binding account of the era immortalised by Shakespeare's history plays. "The Hollow Crown" brilliantly brings to life for the reader a world we have long lost - a strange, Catholic, rural country of monks, peasants, knights and merchants, almost perpetually at war - but continues to define so much of England's national myth.

About the Author
Miri Rubin is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London. Her previous books include Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture and Gentile Tales: Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews. She is currently writing a cultural history of the Virgin Mary for Penguin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140148256
• ISBN-13: 978-0140148251
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #668,973 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting historical information, needs water though., June 5, 2005

By	David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages (The Penguin History of Britain, 10) (Paperback)

There's a minor misstep in Miri Rubin's The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages. Perhaps it's a problem with the entire Penguin History of Britain collection, I'm not sure, as I haven't read any other examples. The problem is a matter of audience: as in, I can't really tell what audience it's for. The preface states that it's intended not primarily for historians, but for those "historians" outside the universities. These would be people like curators of museums, history teachers in the public schools, those guarding historical sites, and those who publish amateur research, that sort of thing. It also seems to be intended as history for the general public, those who may have an interest in history but aren't really experts in it. This is all well and good, but the problem is that the book is way too dry for the layman and the information is probably already known to a great deal of amateur historians.

Thus, the book seems to miss its target and be the wrong thing to the wrong people. The Hollow Crown has a great deal of detailed information about life in Great Britain from 1307 to 1485. It covers everything from daily serf life to how churches greatly influenced the daily life of both commoners and the nobility. It covers economics, agriculture, politics, and everything in between. For the historian who is just starting out, there is a lot of good information about British daily life in this book, and it becomes a valuable informational tool for the beginner. It could also be greatly useful for any writer who wants to set a book in this time period, as there is a lot of background information that would make a setting seem realistic. That was actually the first thing that occurred to me as I was reading it.

The book is divided into chapters separated by the monarch at the time (the only chapter containing two monarchs is the one dealing with Henry IV and Henry V, but there is a reason for that. Their rules were so much the same in exploits and aims that they almost must be studied together. Thus, we get to see how life was different under each of these kings. Probably most interesting, Rubin provides us with the political fall-out (both by the nobility and the common man) when a king is deposed rather than chosen as an heir (Henry the IV was a prime example of that). Rubin is at her most interesting when she is talking about the politics of the day, and I found that the book picked up my interest level when she was talking about them.

Of course, learning about the daily life of these people can be interesting too, but here Rubin falls down a bit. These sections are very dry, and while she is imparting good information, they were a real struggle to get through. Each aspect of life gets its own section within the chapter, and she uses a lot of information she gathered from local records. These records could be on food production (what was grown and exported where) or they could be marriage records or other ecclesiastical court documents. She discusses the role of the clergy, both in religious instruction and legal matters, and about how some peasants grew tired of the constant corruption in the churches at times. Rubin tries to tie these sections together and relate them to each other, but a lot of times it just seems like Rubin's listing a bunch of things to illustrate her point and then she moves on to the next one. I can almost see her say, "Ok, I've got food production done. Now on to the clergy, and then local courts." It doesn't help that her prose style doesn't really make these sections grab your attention, though she does try.
Each chapter starts with an introduction, giving a general overview of that monarch's reign. Rubin then leaves the king for the moment, except where he (or his queen) had an impact on daily life (such as a section on Edward III and chivalry). She then ends the chapters detailing the politics of the king, various foreign adventures he had and what he did with his monarchy before dying (or being deposed, as two of them were). These sections on the king are the most interesting of the bunch, as we see how Britain related to the rest of the world (which we also do when Rubin discusses trade, but that's not as interesting). As the turbulence of the late 1400s hits, the book becomes almost fascinating, as she covers a lot of the political intrigue that took place during the Wars of the Roses (which term, interestingly, she only uses once, and this is when she says that Shakespeare christened the dynastic wars "the Wars of the Roses"). She also glosses over the Richard III controversy, pertaining to the killing of the two young princes. She says that he was blamed for it, but she doesn't come down on one side or the other.

The Hollow Crown is obviously well-researched, and Rubin works very hard to show it. While there are no footnotes or end notes, she does provide a chapter-by-chapter list "essay on further reading" for the most heavily used sources, and she provides a complete bibliography of her sources on her web site. This is actually the first time I've ever seen something like that, where the author actually tells you to go to a web site for more complete information on the book you are reading, but I guess it is a sign of the times. Seeing as the book is already quite long, I can see why enclosing a complete bibliography in the book itself would be difficult.

Overall, am glad I read The Hollow Crown, but it was a chore to get through at times. Rubin's style (or maybe it's the content) doesn't really lend itself to popular reading and I almost put it down once or twice. But I did ultimately find myself reading to the end and finding the information valuable. I just wish the reading experience itself had been more pleasurable.

David Roy

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, informative, but difficult reading, August 15, 2005

By	Victor A. Vyssotsky "mandvav" (Orleans, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages (The Penguin History of Britain, 10) (Paperback)

This book gives an admirable portrayal of diplomacy, politics, economics, social arrangements, and life styles in 14th and 15th Century England; I learned a great deal from it. However, it assumes considerable familiarity with both English history and European history of that period, and in several places I found myself lacking background for understanding the significance of what Rubin relates. For example, although I'm familiar with some of the course of the Hundred Years War, I found myself lacking background on details of Edward III's campaigns needed to follow Rubin's discussion. Likewise, I wish I understood what parcels of England were controlled by such magnates as the Duke of Lancaster, whose lands were scattered across much of England, but I don't happen to know that. In a few cases where I do happen to have the requisite knowledge I found myself wondering what fraction of readers will. For example, her treatment of the years in which the "black death" initially reduced population in England, and in Europe overall, by perhaps a third, assumes considerable familiarity with the onset and spread of that pandemic and with its varying impact on diferent regions; I happen to have studied this recently, but how many readers will have recently refreshed their knowledge of that topic?

My other problem with the book is that Rubin uses quite a number of words without definition that were current in the period she discusses, but which had already fallen out of use by the end of the 16th Century; I found my vocabulary inadequate to grasp the meaning of a number of these. The book would benefit greatly by a glossary; not everyone has the OED, and those who do may by somewhat irritated in reading this book to have to consult the OED every few pages to find out how some word was used in the 14th Century.

On the other hand, Rubin's careful discssion of Wycliffe, of "Lollards", and of "Lollardy", enabled me to grasp for the first time in my life the complexities of that topic as it applies to England. In this, and in various other respects, I learned much.

I'm glad to have this book, and will undoubtedly read it again, but I wish it weren't such a tough read for me. Before I do read it again, I'll have to turn to other books to fill the gaps in my knowledge that made Rubin's book hard for me to follow.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My kingdom for an editor, May 31, 2006

By	FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

The book 'The Hollow Crown', by Miri Rubin, is a fascinating text. It covers the mid-to-late Plantagenet time, beginning after the pivotal time of famine in the early 1300s, continuing up to the beginning of the Tudor era - this is a time that may be best known generally thanks to Shakespeare's plays, although the plays do exhibit poetic license taken by Shakespeare to heighten both the dramatic art and the political regime of the Tudors.

This is an interesting period, with the dynastic stability of Edward I giving way over the generations to inter-family strife, better known now as the Wars of the Roses. Rubin's chapter divisions follow the reigns of the major monarchs in rough outline: Edward II, Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV & V (combined into one chapter), Henry VI, and the finish (Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, and into Henry VII's reign). As this is a fairly standard way of dividing British history, it makes things accessible to the general reader as well. Within these broad divisions, however, Rubin carries various themes across the periods as needed - economic, geopolitical, cultural and other kinds movements and shifts are reflected by more than the rise and fall of particular monarchs. Rubin also takes a fairly even-handed approach, without taking sides in particular controversies (Was Henry IV's rise to power a legitimate one? Was Richard III's reign legitimate, and did he have the princes in the Tower murdered? - Rubin references such controversies without taking a partisan stance).

As others have noted in their reviews of this book, it wants a good editor, and unfortunately modern publishers have been cutting back on their editorial services to authors under the mistaken reasoning that computer editors can do an adequate job - alas, such is not the case for scholarly writing, and Rubin's text is most assuredly scholarly writing. Despite the fact that Rubin states in her introduction that this is not intended as a book for other professional historians, the reading can be heavy-going and detail-oriented at times, but other parts have a wonderful narrative flow.

I am one who can never get enough of history, and perhaps now qualify (as a newly-hired adjunct professor of history) as one of the professional historians for which this book was not intended, but I am very glad to have read it. Rubin's scholarship is careful, and her final essay, a narrative bibliography of sorts, is in itself a pleasure to read. Rubin lists the extended bibliography on her professional webpage (Queen Mary College, University of London, search for her name among the staff), and this is a wonderful resource for further reading as well. There are useful maps, some colour plates in the centre, and a genealogical chart tracing Edward II to Henry VII. The index is well done (always a plus in scholarly writing).

Perhaps one element that sets this apart from many standard histories is the concentration on issues of daily life and work of the common folk by Rubin - many royal and official histories detail the great movements of state or the personalities of the high and mighty, with only glancing care toward the greater mass of people living during the times. Rubin gives good account of the way in which people worked, traveled, traded, and acted in religious, social and political ways. This is an element not to be missed.