things to keep an eye out for
Miranda Kaufmann, whose articles I've linked to a couple of times, has a book called Black Tudors coming out in 2016:
http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/blog/my-first-book-black-tudors-will-be-published-by-oneworld-in-autumn-2016
Unlike Imtiaz Habib's book (Black Lives in the English Archives 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible), which I found interesting (and helpful when I was doing some research for a professor into some Hollar engravings), this book sounds like it's going to be organized, at least in part, around the specific individuals that Kaufmann has found evidence about. So that's exciting!
And a related link that's still being updated:
The Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section - Black and Asian Entries
http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/baentries.htm
(from the site: People of African and Asian origin have lived in Britain for at least two thousand years but this aspect of our heritage has been largely forgotten. Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section has launched a project to find Black and Asian Londoners in the records we hold. We invite all our readers to participate and let us know their findings, either in our reading room or by e-mail. So far we have found 550 entries, the earliest in 1573/4 and the latest in 1939.)
I feel like there's an entire novel in one of the earliest entries:
St Botolph Bishopsgate: 25 September 1586, baptism of ‘Elizabeth, a negro child, born white, the mother a negro’ (GL Ms 4515/1) (underlining mine)
But then, I feel that way about a lot of these entries. I may be particularly partial to this one, in part because I love St Andrew Undershaft (I kind of decided once that a character of mine used to go to church there…):
St Andrew Undershaft: 2 February 1688/9, baptism of ‘Grace Man a Blackmore daughter of Peter Man and Mary his wife’ (GL Ms 4107/2 f.136v)
http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/blog/my-first-book-black-tudors-will-be-published-by-oneworld-in-autumn-2016
Unlike Imtiaz Habib's book (Black Lives in the English Archives 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible), which I found interesting (and helpful when I was doing some research for a professor into some Hollar engravings), this book sounds like it's going to be organized, at least in part, around the specific individuals that Kaufmann has found evidence about. So that's exciting!
And a related link that's still being updated:
The Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section - Black and Asian Entries
http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/baentries.htm
(from the site: People of African and Asian origin have lived in Britain for at least two thousand years but this aspect of our heritage has been largely forgotten. Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section has launched a project to find Black and Asian Londoners in the records we hold. We invite all our readers to participate and let us know their findings, either in our reading room or by e-mail. So far we have found 550 entries, the earliest in 1573/4 and the latest in 1939.)
I feel like there's an entire novel in one of the earliest entries:
St Botolph Bishopsgate: 25 September 1586, baptism of ‘Elizabeth, a negro child, born white, the mother a negro’ (GL Ms 4515/1) (underlining mine)
But then, I feel that way about a lot of these entries. I may be particularly partial to this one, in part because I love St Andrew Undershaft (I kind of decided once that a character of mine used to go to church there…):
St Andrew Undershaft: 2 February 1688/9, baptism of ‘Grace Man a Blackmore daughter of Peter Man and Mary his wife’ (GL Ms 4107/2 f.136v)