Volume 3, Number 7 · November 19, 1964
Spoiled Kings
By J.P. Kenyon
The Tragedy of Charles II in the years 1630-1660
by Hester W. Chapman
Little, Brown, 416 pp., $5.75
The Stuarts in Love
by Maurice Ashley
Macmillan, 284 pp., $5.95
English history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has always attracted a breed of elegant, highly-educated, but essentially amateur historians who are the direct descendants of industrious nineteenth-century divines like Archdeacon Coxe and Robert Blencowe, or literary ladies like Mrs. Julia Cartwright Addy. They have a great reverence for original authorities (though they avoid unpublished manuscripts), but they either cannot or will not read the learned journals of the professional historians, or their monographs and indeed their knowledge of historical writing in general over the last twenty years often has curious and erratic gaps. This gives many of their books a curiously faded air, like the last fashionable novel on the table of one of Lord Macaulay's young ladies. Their contribution to the sum of knowledge is minimal.
Review, 1809 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |