Download or read book The Funeral Effigies of Westminster Abbey written by Anthony Harvey and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Westminster Abbey contains a unique and important group of effigies, some familiar, many little-known, including kings, queens, statesmen and national heroes, ranging in time from the middle ages to the early nineteenth century. They derive from a time when an effigy of the dead monarch, statesman or national hero played an important part in funeral ritual, offering a visible likeness as a focus to the ceremonial of the funeral. This richly illustrated book, which is the first substantial publication on the effigies since 1936, is both a history of the collection and of the origins and development of the funeral effigy, and a full descriptive catalogue of the twenty-one examples in the Abbey. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.