Volume 31, Number 20 · December 20, 1984
No Entrance
By David Cannadine
An Open Elite? England 1540–1880
by Lawrence Stone, by Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone
Oxford University Press, 566 pp., $39.95
One reason why most historians don't write very much is that they have a fulltime job keeping up with the vast output of the few who do. Among these prodigy producers, whom it would be more impolitely accurate to call Cliomaniacs, Lawrence Stone can be particularly distinguished partly by the range, quality, and audacity of his work, and partly by the impassioned and varied responses which it invariably, and deliberately, provokes. His major work comprises four huge volumes, which together add up to more than 2,500 pages—a million words on a millennium of English history.[1] Any average, ambitious, energetic, and intelligent historian would be happily contented with completing one of these weighty books: but even four such monsterpieces do not exhaust Stone's tireless energy. In between there have appeared another four books;[2] three edited volumes, in two cases with substantial contributions by Stone himself;[3] dozens of articles and essays, some of very considerable length;[4] and, as readers of this journal have ample cause to know, scores of coruscating, combative, and controversial reviews.
Review, 4142 words
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