Balans is an independent publisher of quality non-fiction in the areas of history, politics, economy, biography, science, nature writing, memoirs, current affairs, religion and psychology. With our dedicated team, we publish approximately 40 new titles per year.
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One of our main goals is the consolidation of the Balearic Islands as a structured cultural market, the promotion of the islands' music, performing arts, literature and visual arts by means of grants, international actions and formative seminars in cultural affairs. The Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics coordinates, alone or in partnership with other departments of the Government of the Balearic Islands, the Institut Ramon Llull or the Institut Català d'Empreses Culturals, the institutional presence of the Balearic Islands in strategic events for the promotion of our culture overseas. Every year, our area of literature, thought, comics and illustration calls for grants to cover travelling and accommodation expenses of Balearic authors, and expenses for publishing books and producing promotional material for Balearic authors. Please, check our calls on our webpage for literature grants.
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Mary I, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, was Queen of England from 1553 until her death in 1558. For much of this time she ruled alongside her husband, King Philip II of Spain, forming a co-monarchy that put England at the heart of early modern Europe. In this book, Alexander Samson presents a bold reassessment of Mary and Philip's reign, rescuing them from the neglect they have suffered at the hands of generations of historians. The co-monarchy of Mary I and Philip II put England at the heart of early modern Europe. This positive reassessment of their joint reign counters a series of parochial, misogynist and anti-Catholic assumptions, correcting the many myths that have grown up around the marriage and explaining the reasons for its persistent marginalisation in the historiography of sixteenth-century England. Using new archival discoveries and original sources, the book argues for Mary as a great Catholic queen, while fleshing out Philip's important contributions as king of England.
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In "Mary Poppins kommt wieder" kehrt das zauberhafte Kindermädchen Mary Poppins zurück in den Kirschbaumweg 17, zur großen Freude von Jane und Michael. Nachdem das Leben der Familie Banks seit ihrem Weggang durch den Wind ein einziges Durcheinander war, bringt Mary Poppins erneut Stabilität und zauberhafte Abenteuer ins Leben der Kinder. Die Geschwister tauchen mit ihr in eine Welt voller magischer Momente und erleben außergewöhnliche Begebenheiten, die das Alltägliche in ein Spektakel verwandeln. Der Roman, ein unvergesslicher Klassiker von P.L. Travers, bezaubert erneut mit seiner Mischung aus Alltag und Magie und ist eine Hommage an die Fantasie und die kindliche Freude an der Entdeckung des Wunderbaren im Alltäglichen. Bezaubernde Fortsetzung: Die Rückkehr von Mary Poppins verspricht erneut eine Reise voller Magie und Abenteuer. Klassiker neu erleben: Ein zeitloser Klassiker, der Kinder und Erwachsene gleichermaßen fasziniert. Fördert die Fantasie: Die abenteuerlichen Geschichten fördern Kreativität und Vorstellungskraft junger Leser. Liebevolle Aufmachung: Teil einer schön gestalteten Reihe, die Klassiker in neuem Glanz präsentiert und sammelwürdig ist. Erziehungswerte: Vermittelt subtil Werte wie Respekt, Verantwortung und die Bedeutung von Familie.
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Hat etwa der Wind sie hergeweht, oder wie sonst soll sie so plötzlich vor der Haustür aufgetaucht sein? Jane und Michael wissen ganz genau, da geht irgendetwas nicht mit rechten Dingen zu, als das neue Kindermädchen Mary Poppins bei ihnen anklopft. Eitel ist sie und sehr energisch, aber dafür hat sie viel beachtlichere Vorzüge: Sie kann das Treppengeländer hinauf rutschen, mit Tieren sprechen, in Bildern verschwinden und noch vieles mehr. Im Kirschbaumweg 17 bricht eine Zeit unglaublicher Abenteuer an. Dekorative Sammlerausgabe des fantastischen, zeitlosen Kinderbuch-Klassikers über das zauberhafte Kindermädchen Mary Poppins.
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Am 15. Februar 1952 legte die ganze Nation zu Ehren des toten Königs eine Schweigeminute ein. Es war der Tag seiner Beerdigung. Ein denkwürdiger Tag auch für die sechsjährige Mary Ward, die mit ihren Eltern und dem jüngeren Bruder auf einem Kartoffelacker in Suffolk stand. Vom Hof her hörte sie das vertraute Krächzen ihres Perlhuhns Marguerite, dem sie eine erschütternde Entdeckung mitzuteilen hat: »Ich habe eine Neuigkeit für dich, Marguerite, ich habe ein Geheimnis, das ich dir anvertrauen möchte, mein Liebling. Ich bin nicht Mary, das ist ein Irrtum. Ich bin kein Mädchen. Ich bin ein Junge.« So hat sie angefangen, die lange Reise der Mary Ward. Wahrlich keine einfache Aufgabe für die Tochter einer armen Bauernfamilie im England der 50er Jahre. 30 Jahre dauerte es, bis Mary sein darf, der sie ist. Martin. Es gibt nur wenige, die sie begleiten, der Großvater, ihre geliebte Lehrerin. Die Reise verändert Mary, aber auch ihre Familie und die Beziehungen untereinander von Grund auf. Ein langer, schmerzhafter und harter Weg bis zu dem Tag, an dem – 1980 – Post in Nashville, Kentucky eintrifft: »Lieber Martin, bitte verzeih mir. Ich hoffe sehr, dass Du es kannst. Deine Mutter Estelle.«
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Am 15. Februar 1952 legte die ganze Nation zu Ehren des toten Königs eine Schweigeminute ein. Es war der Tag seiner Beerdigung. Ein denkwürdiger Tag auch für die sechsjährige Mary Ward, die mit ihren Eltern und dem jüngeren Bruder auf einem Kartoffelacker in Suffolk stand. Vom Hof her hörte sie das vertraute Krächzen ihres Perlhuhns Marguerite, dem sie eine erschütternde Entdeckung mitzuteilen hat: »Ich habe eine Neuigkeit für dich, Marguerite, ich habe ein Geheimnis, das ich dir anvertrauen möchte, mein Liebling. Ich bin nicht Mary, das ist ein Irrtum. Ich bin kein Mädchen. Ich bin ein Junge.« So hat sie angefangen, die lange Reise der Mary Ward. Wahrlich keine einfache Aufgabe für die Tochter einer armen Bauernfamilie im England der 50er Jahre. 30 Jahre dauerte es, bis Mary sein darf, der sie ist. Martin. Es gibt nur wenige, die sie begleiten, der Großvater, ihre geliebte Lehrerin. Die Reise verändert Mary, aber auch ihre Familie und die Beziehungen untereinander von Grund auf. Ein langer, schmerzhafter und harter Weg bis zu dem Tag, an dem – 1980 – Post in Nashville, Kentucky eintrifft: »Lieber Martin, bitte verzeih mir. Ich hoffe sehr, dass Du es kannst. Deine Mutter Estelle.«
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Mary Kelly, we are told, was not a feminist artist, but a feminist who made art. Designed to accompany a major retrospective at the Whitworth Art Gallery, this book contains essays and interviews which show the implications of that distinction and also the legacy of feminists and feminism in relation to art. Challenging and beautiful, Kelly's artworks address questions of sexuality, identity and historical memory in the form of large-scale narrative installations. The works are agilely discussed in contributions by some of the luminary feminist art scholars of our time, including Janet Wolff, Laura Mulvey, Carol Mavor and Amelia Jones, making this collection an essential new text in the discourse on art, feminism, psychoanalysis and representation.
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Women and madness in the early Romantic novel returns madness to a central role in feminist literary criticism through an updated exploration of hysteria, melancholia, and love-madness in novels by Mary Wollstonecraft, Eliza Fenwick, Mary Hays, Maria Edgeworth, and Amelia Opie. This book argues that these early Romantic-period novelists revised medical and popular sentimental models for female madness that made inherent female weakness and the aberrant female body responsible for women's mental afflictions. The book explores how the more radical authors-Wollstonecraft, Fenwick and Hays-blamed men and patriarchal structures of control for their characters' hysteria and melancholia, while the more mainstream writers-Edgeworth and Opie-located causality in less gendered and less victimized accounts. Taken as a whole, the book makes a powerful case for focusing on women's mental health in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century literary criticism.
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Die unerschrockene Mary wuchs in London zur Zeit der Industriellen Revolution auf und begeisterte sich früh für Maschinen, Wissenschaften und für Literatur. Mit 16 verliebte sie sich in einen Dichter und reiste mit ihm durch Europa. Eines Tages schrieb sie eine Gruselgeschichte, die zur besten aller Zeiten werden sollte: die Geschichte vom Monster Frankenstein, das durch Strom zum Leben erweckt wird. Little People, Big Dreams erzählt von den beeindruckenden Lebensgeschichten großer Menschen: Jede dieser Persönlichkeiten, ob Schauspielerin, Fußballer oder Bürgerrechtsaktivistin, hat Unvorstellbares erreicht. Dabei begann alles, als sie noch klein waren: mit großen Träumen. Für welches Alter sind diese Bücher gedacht? Für Babys das perfekte Geschenk zur Begrüßung in eine Welt voller Träume! Und Eltern werden in schlaflosen Nächten von diesen Büchern dazu ermutigt, das Vorlesen zu einem selbstverständlichen Teil des Lebens zu machen. Kleinkinder werden von den Illustrationen verzaubert sein – sie werden zahlreiche Dinge entdecken. Auch sind die Bücher großartige „Vokabeltrainer“! 3- bis 5-Jährige werden alles, Illustrationen und Texte, geradezu in sich aufsaugen! 6-, 8- und 10-Jährige haben ein ausgeprägteres Verständnis für die Illustrationen und die Bedeutung der Geschichte – es geht nicht nur darum, sich selbst zu akzeptieren und die eigenen Zukunftsträume zu verwirklichen, sondern auch darum, andere so zu akzeptieren, wie sie sind. Später: Die Bücher sind gute Geschenke zu jedem Anlass, denn die Träume der Kindheit können das ganze Leben lang Wirklichkeit werden.
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Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist offers the first critical appraisal of the work of Marie Duval (Isabelle Émilie de Tessier, 1847-1890), one of the most unusual, pioneering and visionary cartoonists of the later nineteenth century. It discusses key themes and practices of Duval's vision and production, relative to the wider historic social, cultural and economic environments in which her work was made, distributed and read, identifing Duval as an exemplary radical practitioner. The book interrogates the relationships between the practices and the forms of print, story-telling, drawing and stage performance. It focuses on the creation of new types of cultural work by women and highlights the style of Duval's drawings relative to both the visual conventions of theatre production and the significance of the visualisation of amateurism and vulgarity. Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist establishes Duval as a unique but exemplary figure in a transformational period of the nineteenth century.
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Offering a complete reading of English Literature throughout 1558-1689, this book demonstrates the continuity of Roman Catholicism in English Literature from the accession of Elizabeth I to the deposing of James II. Rist shows that poetry and plays promoted Roman Catholic ideas in a Biblicist age which established the Church of England through the Book of Common Prayer. From the very idea of literary works to chapters on the Eucharist, Purgatory, Christian worship and the Virgin Mary, Rist joins together major and minor authors of the era to present English Literature afresh. Important literary figures include William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Queen Henrietta Maria, John Donne, John Dryden, Robert Herrick, Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn.
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This book explores the ways in which the two leading sensation authors of the 1860s, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, engaged with nineteenth-century ideas about personality formation and the extent to which it can be influenced either by the subject or by others. Innovative readings of seven sensation novels explore how they employ and challenge Victorian theories of heredity, degeneration, inherent constitution, education, upbringing and social circumstance. Far from presenting a reductive depiction of 'nature' versus 'nurture', Braddon and Collins show the creation of character to be a complex interplay of internal and external factors. Drawing on material ranging from medical textbooks, to sociological treatises, to popular periodicals, Creating character shows how sensation authors situated themselves at the intersections of established and developing, conservative and radical, learned and sensationalist thought about how identity could be made and modified.
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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the most popular novels in western literature. It has been adapted and re-assembled in countless forms, from Hammer Horror films to young-adult books and bandes dessinées. Beginning with the idea of the 'Frankenstein Complex', this edited collection provides a series of creative readings that explore the elaborate intertextual networks that make up the novel's remarkable afterlife. It broadens the scope of research on Frankenstein while deepening our understanding of a text that, 200 years after its original publication, continues to intrigue and terrify us in new and unexpected ways.
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This book is our principal source for the history of the Kingdom of Sicily in the troubled years between the death of its founder, King Roger, in February 1154 and the spring of 1169. It covers the reign of Roger's son, King William I, known to later centuries as 'the Bad', and the minority of the latter's son, William II 'the Good'. The book illustrates the revival of classical learning during the twelfth-century renaissance. It presents a vivid and compelling picture of royal tyranny, rebellion and factional dispute at court. Sicily had historically been ruled by tyrants, and that the rule of the new Norman kings could be seen, for a variety of reasons, as a revival of that classical tyranny. A more balanced view of Sicilian history of the period 1153-1169 has been provided as an appendix to the translation in the section of the contemporary world chronicle ascribed to Archbishop Romuald II of Salerno, who died in April 1181. In particular the chronicle of Romuald enables us to see how the papal schism of 1159 and the simultaneous dispute between the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the north Italian cities affected the destiny of the kingdom of Sicily. In contrast to the shadowy figure of Hugo Falcandus, the putative author of the principal narrative of mid-twelfth-century Sicilian history, Romuald II, Archbishop of Salerno 1153-1181, is well-documented.
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A WOMAN THAT HATH IMPUDENTLY PASSED THE PART OF WOMANHOOD AND BEEN A GREAT SPOILER AND CHIEF COMMANDER AND DIRECTOR OF THIEVES AND MURDERERS AT SEA … SHE HATH BEEN THE MOTHER OF ALL REBELLIONS FOR FORTY YEARS … , the “Pirate Queen of Connaught,” was thus vilified by those English authorities who tried to bring stubborn, recalcitrant Ireland to its knees in the Sixteenth Century. Twice married, twice widowed, a passionate lover, gambler, pirate, sea captain, politician, mother of heroes, and, above all, a symbol of the indomitable human spirit and Irish independence. She was a force to be reckoned with by anyone – man, woman, even the sovereign of England, who tried to cross her path. AMAZING GRACE swaggered boldly across the world stage for more than seventy years. These were turbulent times of Henry VIII and “Bloody Mary” Tudor, and Queen Elizabeth – the age of discovery when the remnants of the Middle Ages were dying – except in the provinces of Ireland – and the Renaissance was in full flower – the days of the “discovery” of America by Spaniards, the exploration of Africa and India by Portugal, the launching of the Invincible Armada, and the great schism of two contending forces of western Christianity. Armed with courage and daring to match that of any man, AMAZING GRACE lived a life “larger than legend.” More sinner than saint, she is remembered throughout western Ireland more than four hundred years after her death, celebrated in story and song. In a time when women were very much “second class citizens,” GRACE O’MALLEY did not need a women’s rights organization – she was her own force, and if you tried to cross her, you’d best beware. Sir Henry Sidney, the English Lord Deputy of Ireland, said it best: “There came to me a most feminine sea captain called Grace O’Malley, with three galleys and 200 fighting men. She brought a husband with her, and she was, by sea and by land, well more than Mrs. Mate with him. This was a notorious woman in all the coasts of Ireland.” , nationally famous American trial lawyer, world traveler, whose books have been translated into Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, Hebrew, and German, and author of international bestsellers , , , and , lives in Carmel, California with his wife Lorraine, a writer and teacher. Together they have raised five grown children. Published by Pangæa Publishing Group, 402 Pages, 2019. 23 cm x 15 cm
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What a Wonderful World This Can Be is a ground-breaking picture book about how small acts can have big consequences. Author Mary-An tackles large topics like sustainability, bullying, and poverty, as well as incredibly heart-melting themes of kindness, bravery, and persistence. In this book, a little girl wonders at the wonderful world that is all around her. Although, she is slightly put out when she sees someone begging for food, or oil in the ocean, or even a bully at school—what can she do? One thing at a time! "One piece of trash picked out of the sea, one word of kindness to someone in need, one word to a bully, one hug to a friend, a thing one by one, though the things never end."
