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This is a major work - the most substantial modern treatment (in English or French) of the early history of Normandy, before Duke William's conquest of England in 1066. The Normans were accepted across Europe as an extraordinary and significant phenomenon in their own day - chroniclers registered their land-hungry aggression, their duplicity and their spectacular success in a variety of geographical arenas, and the Normans themselves revelled in their notoriety. They still, necessarily, loom large in medieval history courses today. They are central to the history of Britain: they became the rulers of Sicily and Southern Italy: they provided much of the leadership of the First Crusade: as the most powerful of the feudatories of the French crown, the relations of the Norman dukes with the French king were a defining factor in the development of Capetian France: and, because of the wealth of records which survive, Normandy and the Normans have a central place in the study of medieval systems and institutions, e.g. the ongoing historiogaphical deconstructions and reinterpretations of 'Feudalism'.
Above all, both in their day and ours, there is the constant lure of 'the Norman Myth' - whether one accepts them as something unique (as their contemporaries did), or, as Professor Bates argues here, that they were not in fact 'special' placing their early development squarely within a general northern French context, and seeing their features and achievements as deriving from the common stock of Carolingian tradition. This study was first published in 1982, when David Bates was a young man, then a Lecturer at Cardiff. It went out of print in 1989, after the first printing had been exhausted (sales c. 2500 at that point), since it was to be revised and updated in the light of his work on William the Conqueror's charters etc. The promised Second Edition did not in fact materialise because Bates did not have the time to do it justice. He is now ready, and anxious, to return to it.
In the interim, he has become a major 'name' among medieval historians, and will shortly become a familiar one amongst committed general readers of medieval history, since he is now at work on a major new biography of William the Conqueror for the high-profile English Monarchs series with Yale University Press (to replace David C. Douglas' classic volume in the same series, which has held sway since 1966). The new edition will not have to establish itself, as the first edition did, but will be eagerly awaited as a major desideratum: and it will have the commercial clout of a new book, since - unavailable for 12 years already - libraries etc will need to replace their copies, quite apart from the scholarly need for the update. There should be pretty good initial potential for a supporting trade sale, if Blackwell cares to follow that up: and, while we have not included any figures for this here, there should be a good opportunity for a solid bookclub deal to help things along with the first printing. What may be the problem for Blackwells is the ongoing sale - running at c.
250/200 a year with the First Edition, although the Second Edition should have a greater clout - which may be tiresomely just under the threshold of what is appealing to you. However, there will be a regular outflow to serious students - this is emphatically not just a library book in the longer term. The subject will not lose its drawing power, nor (for a long while anyway) Bates' book its status within it. It should be good for another 25 years at least. So an important book, already established as such: initially very saleable, and in the long term as steady and reliable a seller as one could reasonably expect at this level in a subject as (necessarily) fragmented as History. A trouble-free opportunity for the right publisher. But is that Blackwells?
