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Recommended Books
J.M.R.Bennett, Christ
Church, Oxford reviews a Continuum Books, Series
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, introduced
and selected by Ruth Scurr (Continuum: London and New York, 2010), 195 pp.
ISBN 978 0826440525
J. A. Froude, The Reign
of Mary Tudor, introduced and selected by Eamon Duffy (Continuum: London and New York, 2009), 167 pp.
ISBN 978 1441186850
T. B.
Macaulay, History of England, introduced and selected by John Burrow (Continuum: London and New York, 2009), 174
pp.
ISBN 978 144113748
William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, introduced and selected by J.H. Elliott
(Continuum: London and New York, 2009), 152 pp.
ISBN 9781441146991
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In
the introduction to his Religion, Politics and Society in Britain 1066-1272, Henry Mayr-Harting recalls how a Sunday
broadsheet once declined to publish his review of an edition of analytical essays examining the reign of Richard I, on the
grounds that he had not ‘told the story’. Historians of all periods are today inclined to shy away from bold attempts
at ‘telling the story’, for a host of well-known reasons. Free of the mixed blessings of modern academic conditions,
such reticence did not affect the Victorian historians, some of the greatest of whom are now presented to a new generation
of readers by the Continuum publishing group. Private scholars, they sought, and in these instances deservedly won, fame,
riches and reputation from their magnificent narrative histories. The principal works of Carlyle, Froude, Macaulay and Prescott
are today most likely to be read not by the eagerly receptive publics which first greeted them, but by undergraduates and
their teachers: Macaulay and Carlyle more so than Froude or, in Britain, Prescott. It is regrettable that their principal
audience today should be so narrow. They remain not only classics of English literature: they may also profitably be read
as exhilarating evocations of the subjects they describe and, more indirectly, for what they reveal of the societies in which
they were composed.
Continuum’s new editions will hopefully enlarge the readership of these richly rewarding texts, by
offering short selections from multivolume studies that are today mainly out of print, prefaced by brief introductory essays
and lists of suggested secondary studies. They may be of interest to academics in search of readily-available set texts for
first-year historiography courses, but their chief audience will surely and appropriately be the general readers for whom
they were originally intended. They are inappropriate for higher-level or scholarly use. The editors omit the authors’
footnotes. They have moreover made selections, not reproductions or abridgements: the editors have not each provided a continuous
expanse of the original prose, nor can they, in under two hundred pages, provide balanced samples of all sides of the authors’
narrative interests. To focus attention on the main thrust of the vivid episodes they bring into prominence, they remove detail,
truncate chapters, even merge paragraphs. This is desirable, given the stated purpose of the series, and is usually accomplished
seamlessly. But this additional layer of editorial involvement, made without citations, does mean that readers are not always
hearing the voice of the author in all its fullness (one might uncharitably say verbosity). For that, readers will have to
turn to the original texts.
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