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The idea of history in early Stuart England : erudition, ideology, and the 'light of truth' from the accession of James I to the Civil War

A global history of history

A global history of historical writing, thought and the development of the historical discipline from the ancient world to the present. This is a definitive guide to human efforts to recover, understand and represent the past, bringing together different historical traditions and their social, economic, political and cultural contexts. Daniel Woolf offers clear definitions of different genres and forms of history and addresses key themes such as the interactions between West and East, the conflict of oral, pictographic, and written accounts of the past and the place of history in society and in politics. Numerous textual extracts and illustrations in every chapter capture the historical cultures of past civilizations and demonstrate the different forms that historical consciousness has taken around the world. The book offers unique insights into the interconnections between different historical cultures over 3000 years and relates the rise of history to key themes in world history.

Reading history in early modern England

This book focuses on the 'after-life' of historical texts in the period between the arrival of printing in England and the early eighteenth century. Whereas previous studies of historical writing during this period have focused on their authors and on their style or methodology, this work examines the history book from a number of other perspectives. The intent is to situate the study of history books within the current literature on the history of the book and the history of print culture. After discussing the process whereby the inheritance of the medieval chronicle was broken down into a variety of different historical genres during the sixteenth century, the author turns to the questions of how and why history books were read, who owned them, the borrowing and lending of them, their production and printing, and methods for marketing and distributing them.