Alfred Hiatt Knihy

Focusing on fifteenth-century England, the book examines the practice of forgery from the Norman Conquest to the early sixteenth century, highlighting its cultural significance. Hiatt explores the influence of humanism on the acceptance of forgeries and analyzes key documents, including John Hardyng's chronicle and charters from Crowland Abbey and the University of Cambridge. A significant portion is dedicated to the Donation of Constantine, involving various European writers, while also addressing the diverse audiences for forgeries, including producers, approvers, and critics.

Terra Australis - the southern land - was one of the most widespread concepts in European geography from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, although the notion of a land mass in the southern seas had been prevalent since classical antiquity. Despite this fact, there has been relatively little sustained scholarly work on European concepts of Terra Australis or the intellectual background to European voyages of discovery and exploration to Australia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through interdisciplinary scholarly contributions, ranging across history, the visual arts, literature and popular culture, this volume considers the continuities and discontinuities between the imagined space of Terra Australis and its subsequent manifestation. It will shed new light on familiar texts, people and events - such as the Dutch and French explorations of Australia, the Batavia shipwreck and the Baudin expedition - by setting them in unexpected contexts and alongside unfamiliar texts and people. The book will be of interest to, among others, intellectual and cultural historians, literary scholars, historians of cartography, the visual arts, women's and post-colonial studies.