‘Highly Recommended. All levels/Libraries.’
M. Reardon, Choice Magazine vol 55:07:2018
"[If I Lose Mine Honour I Lose Myself] illuminates not just the flexibility and inconsistency of early modern notions of honor and the ways in which these ideals were constantly being deployed and redefined in daily practice, but equally the ubiquity and character of interpersonal strife among the dynastic families of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English elite."
Fara Dabhoiwala, Princeton University, American Historical Review, June 2019
"In studying honour not just as a representational strategy but also as a point of entry into a range of other subjects, the book offers much of interest to a wide variety of scholars, not just those who focus expressly on honour and the self-presentations of the elite."
K. J. Kesselring, Dalhousie University, The English Historical Review, vol 134 no 568
"Thomas’s book sheds fresh light on honor culture: a vitally important and yet still understudied subject in early modern English, and more generally European, history. It takes seriously the notion that honor was a social virtue, something that helped guide and give meaning to individual and collective action, and details the peacekeeping and community-maintaining aspects of honor culture and the overlapping honor responsibilities of men and women. The study also makes a major methodological intervention: the case for reading mentalities through family papers is powerfully made and expertly executed and, as such, may serve as a model for future studies. Finally, it also advances our theoretical conception of honor and honor culture by means of a lucid and systematic analysis across disciplines of the specialist literature on the concept. Much more than a crucial study of English elite culture, "If I lose mine honour" is an important intervention in early modern European cultural history."
Brendan Kane, Department of History, University of Connecticut
"This book offers a valuable reconsideration and reexamination of early modern honour. As Thomas proves, although honour was a slippery and changeable concept in the early modern period, it was nonetheless critical to the elite women and men who sought to understand and embody it. If we are to better understand the lives and experiences of early modern people, we must consider honour as both practice and ideology. Thomas employs a wide and revealing range of early modern sources, from personal correspondence to philosophical treatises, and from commonplace books to suits from the Court of Chivalry, demonstrating not only a range and depth of scholarship, but a lively and perceptive creativity. Thomas’ analyses of femininity and masculinity are especially astute, offering a much-needed explanation of the ways that honour influenced constructions of early modern gender identity."
Amanda Herbert, Folger Shakespeare Library
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