Margarette Lincoln

Perfection looks at the history of British women’s search for beauty from 1650, taking in body shape, makeup, teeth, hair, spa towns and sea bathing, diet and exercise, hygiene, and skin.

Through first-hand accounts, and reports of physicians, quacks and advertising, this book captures women’s lived experience of consuming beauty products, and the excitement – and trauma – of adopting the latest fashion trends.

Order here. See review here. View Podcast here. View UTube lecture here

The unruly riverside parishes of London were home to everyday Londoners who helped to build a global trading metropolis and played essential roles in the effort that eventually enabled Britain to defeat Napoleon. This rich study immerses readers in a forgotten maritime world of which only traces remain. Filled with episodes of violence, smuggling, pilfering from ships on the river and destabilizing radicalism, this account also celebrates men and women in maritime trades, shipwrights and the early trade union movement, wives who managed the home while husbands were at sea, and those who built London’s first docks. it examines the lives of ordinary people who made the growth of Britain’s sea power unstoppable in the age of the Pacific explorer James Cook and Admiral Nelson.

“A fine book that valuably extends our understanding of London's river and its place in British history.”

Jerry White, Literary Review, May 2018

London HIstorians

Goodreads

Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2019

This book shows how pirates were portrayed in their own time, in trial reports, popular prints, novels, legal documents, sermons, ballads and newspaper accounts. It examines how attitudes towards them changed with Britain’s growing imperial power, exploring the interface between political ambition and personal greed, between civil liberties and the power of the state.

This is an innovative study of naval women who stayed at home while their men went to sea. It focuses on the second half of the eighteenth century, a period when Britain was almost continuously at war, and looks at different social groups from the aristocratic elite to the labouring and criminal poor, including insights into the lives of prostitutes and petty thieves.

Published to coincide with the 2015 exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, this book explores the public and personal worlds of Pepys, not only a famous diarist whose description of the Fire of London is unequaled but also an energetic and talented man who rose from modest beginnings to become the greatest naval administrator of the age. The book had an introduction by Claire Tomalin, Pepys’s biographer, and essays by experts on every aspect of Pepys’s life and world.

In 1759, at the age of nineteen, Mary Lacy went to sea dressed as a man. Her autobiography (first published in 1773) describes her sea-faring adventures and gives a fascinating insight into the hardships of ordinary sailors in the 18th-century navy. My introduction gives the historical context for her remarkable account.

This thrilling narrative tells the true story of Fanny Loviot, a wealthy, young French girl who was kidnapped at sea by pirates. My introduction gives the background to her voyage and capture, including details of the Californian Gold Rush.

In the eighteenth century, Britain became a great imperial power through war and its ability to maintain a strong navy. While there have been many political and military histories of the navy in this period looking at key battles and personalities, aspects of naval administration and life below decks, this book was the first study of the navy in a cultural context. It explores the place of the navy in the formation of public attitudes to war and peace, nation and empire, race and gender.

The English East India Company was one of the most powerful commercial companies ever to have existed. This first multi-disciplinary history of the Company commemorates its four-hundredth anniversary, exploring its origins, operation, and influence.

(Jointly edited with Huw Bowen and Nigel Rigby)

This volume was produced to mark the bicentenary commemorations of the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). With an introduction by N.A.M Rodger and essays by leading international experts, Nelson & Napoléon explores the political, social and cultural contexts for one of the most significant naval battles in history.

Maritime Empires: British Imperial Maritime Trade in the Nineteenth Century provides a wide-ranging and comprehensive picture of Britains sea trade at the height of empire. It explores such topics as cultural exchange, Afro-European commercial relations, the transportation of horses and the impact of new technologies. It considers the sailors who manned the ships, the settlers who moved overseas, and the major ports of the Imperial world.

(Jointly edited with David Killingray and Nigel Rigby)

This volume looks at the exploration of the Pacific in the eighteenth century by western Europeans. Essays take as their point of departure Cook's first voyage in the Endeavour (1768-71). Contributors re-evaluate its political and social context, look at the expectations and outcomes of the event, and focus on the scientific and cultural issues emerging from this and subsequent Pacific voyages.

I introduce this new edition of the most famous of all pirate books, Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates. The volume tells the stories of Blackbeard, Kidd, and other infamous seafarers of the Golden Age of piracy.