Historical Writing in Britain, 1688-1830 explores a series of debates concerning the nature and value of the past in the long eighteenth century. The essays investigate a diverse range of subjects including art history, biography, historical poetry, and novels, as well as addressing more conventional varieties of historical writing.

Historical Writing in Britain, 1688-1830 explores a series of debates concerning the nature and value of the past in the long eighteenth century. The essays investigate a diverse range of subjects including art history, biography, historical poetry, and novels, as well as addressing more conventional varieties of historical writing.

Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors 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 Bibliography Index