Past into Print: The Publishing of History in Britain 1850-1950
© 2009
Past into Print explores history books and periodicals as sites of conflict and compromise in order to question how and why historical knowledge is created. Using primary documents and the history books of the period, Leslie Howsam combines two distinct strands of scholarship: the history of the book and publishing and the development of history as a scholarly discipline.
Howsam examines the relationships of historians and their publishers through correspondence and readers reports to reveal the assumptions that drove historical projects, which in turn came to shape the careers of writers, the reputations of publishing houses, and the values of a discipline. The first systematic exploration of the publishing history of history, Past into Print uncovers the ways in which historical writing was mediated by the book trade and traces how mid-Victorian narrative certainties gave way to twentieth-century disciplinary anxieties.
Product Details
- Division: Scholarly Publishing
- World Rights
- Page Count: 192 pages
- Dimensions: 7.1in x 0.8in x 9.9in
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Reviews
'Howsam provides not only a better and more rounded understanding of the development of British history as a practice and discipline, it opens up a realm of issues, themes, and questions that ought to be explored by all modern historians when they think about what they do and have done.'
Stephen Heathorn
Canadian Journal of History, vol45: Autumn2010 -
Author Information
Leslie Howsam is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Windsor.
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Table of contents
Preface: Narrative and Discipline
Chapter 1. Every Schoolboy Knows: Publishing the Narrative of England's Liberty, 1850-1863
The Life Cyel of the History-Book Reader
The Agency of the Publisher
Tension between Professional and Popular Accounts of the Past
History Books as Material Objects
Nursery Histories and Their Competition
New Editions of Old Titles
Chapter 2. Quality and Profit: New Histories of England, 1863-1880
Alexander MacMillan and the Historians
The Clarendon Press (Oxford) and the Historians
The Pitt Press (Cambridge) and the Historians
Chapter 3. Breaking the Drowsy Spell of Narrative, 1880-1914
Seeley and the Reading Public
Browning and the Publishers
New Formats for History: Periodicals and Series
Acton and the Cambridge Modern History
New Blood at Oxford
Chapter 4. Historians and Publishers in an Age of War and Revolution, 1914-1929
Revisions and Reiterations
Ernest Barker at Oxford
Belligerents and Ex-Belligerents, A Series
Imagining an Oxford History of England
More Histories at Cambridge
The Cambridge Collaborative Histories
The Power Sisters and Cambridge Histories for Children
London Publishers 1914-1929
Chapter 5. Knowledge in the Marketplace, 1930-1950
The Cambridge Collaborative Histories
History from the Oxford University Press
History Books: Text, Object, Context
Epilogue: History, Out of Print
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Subjects and Courses