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Britain

Rescuing the Eighteenth-Century Church of England from the Enormous Condescension of Posterity

by Emily Rutherford I think I’ve found the biggest gap in the secondary literature of all time. As long ago as 1860, the Oxford priest and historian Mark Pattison noticed that historians tended to overlook the Church of England in… Continue Reading →

British History and the Question of Relevance: Dispatches from the Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies

by Emily Rutherford Jo Guldi and David Armitage’s History Manifesto continues to make headlines within academic circles. Deborah Cohen and Peter Mandler’s critique (about which I wrote in January) has now appeared in the American Historical Review, with a reply… Continue Reading →

Science, Mysticism, and Dreams in Alice᾽s Adventures in Wonderland

by guest contributor Stephanie L. Schatz There can be something naïvely reductive and crassly materialistic about empirical analysis—especially if it relates to phenomena also commonly described as mystical, supernatural, transcendental, or sublime. Like the experimenters in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle… Continue Reading →

Finding Feelings in Intellectual History

by guest contributor Michael Duffy One of the consequences of advances in historical writing and theorization, at least in my neck of the woods, has been that we write about institutions as if feelings did not exist in them. Cambridge,… Continue Reading →

The French Reformer and the Church of England: The Limits of Early Modern Ecumenism

by Madeline McMahon Pierre Du Moulin (1568 – 1658) was, paradoxically, an irenic and ecumenical controversialist. As a prominent minister in the French reformed church, Du Moulin wrote almost one hundred polemical pamphlets and books against Protestants and Catholics alike… Continue Reading →

Why Are All the Costume Dramas Edwardian?, or, History and Popular Memory

by Emily Rutherford When the World War I-era miniseries Parade’s End, based on the novels of Ford Madox Ford, was being broadcast on the BBC, a British friend asked me, “Why are all the costume dramas Edwardian?” It’s true: the… Continue Reading →

Histories of Tithes: Religious Controversy and Changing Methodologies

by Madeline McMahon In December 1618, the talented scholar John Selden was called before King James to answer for the publication of his Historie of tithes (London: William Stansby, 1618). Selden’s work on tithes (literally, the “tenth” of all goods… Continue Reading →

The Sounds of History

by John Raimo So far as writing history goes, the British historian G.M. Young wrote, “The secret is to treat every document as the record of a conversation, and go on reading till you hear the people speaking.” This characterization… Continue Reading →

Annotations and Generations (II)

by guest contributor Frederic Clark Adam Winthrop died in 1623—seven years before his son John would board the Arbella and sail to Massachusetts. John Winthrop’s son, John Jr., was studying abroad at Trinity College Dublin at the time. His father… Continue Reading →

Annotations and Generations

by guest contributor Frederic Clark The history of reading has recently witnessed an explosion of interest, doing much to transform and reinvigorate the practice of intellectual history. Although recent histories of reading range across every conceivable genre and period, early… Continue Reading →

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