Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewJeremy Black's Charting the Past is a useful book....For someone new to the field, wishing a guide through the immense thickets of historical writing and its assorted contexts, Black has provided a good start, and fodder for investigation of some of the more obscure writers he usefully brings to light.
-- Daniel Woolf * H-Net.org *
Charting the Past is an enjoyable and informative read that enriches an understanding of eighteenth-century England and serves as a useful primer for further study and research.
* Journal of British Studies *
Table of ContentsPreface
List of Abbreviations
1. The World of History
2. Purposes, Narratives, Methods
3. A Historical World of Partisan Strife: The Early Eighteenth Century
4. Contrasting Approaches: Burnet and Astell
5. The Unstable Past: Dissenters and History
6. History Suited to Mid-Century Struggle
7. From the New Reign to the Crisis of Empire, 1760-1776
8. Empire as Historical Narrative: Gibbon and the Descent of Civilizations
9. History in the Age of Burke
Conclusions: Bringing the Past into the Present
Selected Further Reading
Index