Historical writing in Britain, 1688-1830 : visions of history / edited by Benjamin Dew, Senior Lecturer, University of Portsmouth, UK, Fiona Price, Reader in English Literature, University of Chichester, UK.

Historical Writing in Britain, 1688-1830 is concerned with developments in historical discourse during the long eighteenth century. The collection investigates a number of interrelated themes: the contested and unstable nature of generic boundaries surrounding historical literature; history's contribution to changing notions of national identity; and the ways that history operated as a site for the articulation of new forms of community. In order to capture the diversity of the period's understanding of history, a variety of subjects are considered including historical poetry, the historical novel, biography, and art history, as well as more conventional, 'classical' modes of historical writing. Taken together, the chapters in the volume demonstrate that eighteenth-century history shaped, and was shaped by, a series of revolutionary changes in ideas regarding historical genre, nationhood, and identity.

1. Introduction: Visions of History; Ben Dew and Fiona Price -- 2. Female Worthies and the Genres of Women's History; Philip Hicks -- 3. Reading the past: women writers and the afterlives of Lady Rachel Russell; Amy Culley -- 4. Constructing the 'English School': Contested Narratives of Nation in the Writing of Richard Graham and Bainbrigg Buckeridge; Caroline Good -- 5. An Economic Turn?: Commerce and Finance in the Historical Writing of Paul de Rapin Thoyras, William Guthrie and David Hume; Ben Dew -- 6. 'Caledonian plagiary': The Role and Meaning of Ireland in The Poems of Ossian; Dafydd Moore -- 7. Tracing a Meridian through the Map of Time: Fact, Conjecture and the Scientific Method in William Robertson's History of America; Charlotte Roberts -- 8. Lyricist in Britain; Mathematical Empiricist in France: Volney's Divided Legacy; Sanja Perovic -- 9. Making History: Social Unrest, Work and the Post-French Revolution Historical Novel; Fiona Price -- 10. Don Quixote and the Sentimental Reader of History in the works of William Godwin; Noelle Gallagher -- 11. Fictions of History, Evangelical Whiggism, and the Debate over Old Mortality in Scotland and Nova Scotia; Valerie Wallace.

Includes bibliographies and index.

"Historical Writing in Britain, 1688-1830 is concerned with developments in historical discourse during the long eighteenth century. The collection investigates a number of interrelated themes: the contested and unstable nature of generic boundaries surrounding historical literature; history's contribution to changing notions of national identity; and the ways that history operated as a site for the articulation of new forms of community. In order to capture the diversity of the period's understanding of history, a variety of subjects are considered including historical poetry, the historical novel, biography, and art history, as well as more conventional, 'classical' modes of historical writing. Taken together, the chapters in the volume demonstrate that eighteenth-century history shaped, and was shaped by, a series of revolutionary changes in ideas regarding historical genre, nationhood, and identity"--

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