Samuel Rawson Gardiner And The Idea Of History

A study of an eminent historian of seventeenth-century Britain and his work, showing its continued importance for all those working on the period. Samuel Rawson Gardiner [1829-1902] is the colossus of seventeenth-century historiography. His twenty-volume history of Britain from 1603 to 1656 and his many editions of key texts still serve to underpin almost all study of the Civil Wars and of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Yet, despite his importance, his work has often been reduced by historians of historiography to simple caricature, in which his personal politics and his denominational allegiances got the better of his worthy empiricism. This book seeks to challenge the inadequate view of him and his work, offering a rich contextualisation by locating his writings within a wide range of literary and philosophical milieux, British and continental European. In so doing it not only suggests new ways of looking at Victorian historiography in general, but also proposes a new approach to the growing history of historical writing. Mark Nixon is an independent scholar and museum curator.

Samuel Rawson Gardiner's 'Historical Biographies' provides a series of biographies of prominent figures from history, including Oliver Cromwell and William Laud. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in the lives and times of these important historical figures. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Two eminent scholars of historiography examine the concept of national identity through the key multi-volume histories of the last two hundred years. Starting with Hume’s History of England (1754–62), they explore the work of British historians whose work had a popular readership and an influence on succeeding generations of British children.

Historians and the Church of England explores the vital relationship between the Church of England and the development of historical scholarship in the Victorian and Edwardian era. It draws upon a wide range of sources, from canonical works of history to unpublished letters, from sermons to periodical articles, to give a clear picture of the influence of religion upon the rich and flourishing world of English historical scholarship. The result is a radically revised understanding of both historiography and the Church of England. It shows that the main historiographical topics at the time-the nation, the constitution, the Reformation, and (increasingly) socio-economic history-were all imprinted with the distinctively Anglican concerns of leading historians. It brings to life the ideas of time, progress, and divine providence which structured their understanding of the past. It also shows that the Church of England remained a 'learned church', concerned not just with narrowly religious functions but also scholarly and cultural ones, into the early twentieth century: intellectual secularization was a slower and more fragmented process than accounts focused on natural science (especially Darwinism) to the exclusion of the humanities have led us to believe. This is not just the history of a coterie of scholars, but also of a wealth of texts and ideas that had a truly global circulation at a time when history was second only to the Bible (and perhaps the novel) in its cultural status and readership.