Past into Print: The Publishing of History in Britain, 1850‐1950

Citation

Baker, W. (2010), "Past into Print: The Publishing of History in Britain, 1850‐1950", Library Review, Vol. 59 No. 5, pp. 370-371. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242531011047064

Leslie Howsam delivered the 2006 Lyell Lectures in Bibliography at Oxford University. These five lectures form the foundation for the five chapters of her Past into Print: The Publishing of History in Britain, 1850‐1950. Howsam observes in her preface that the book “is about the publishing history of history; it tells a story of how knowledge of the past was captured in books and periodicals, in Britain between 1850 and 1950”. Her approach is based “upon the importance of history and history books in Victorian and Edwardian culture”. Howsam draws upon letters and reports from “the University Presses, and of several other publishers” and the “archival collection” of historians' papers (pp. x, xii).

The first chapter, “Every schoolboy knows: publishing the narrative of England's liberty, 1850‐1863”, and other chapters examine “four interconnected themes: the life cycle of the reader; the agency of the publisher: the tension between academic and popular accounts of the past; and the materiality of the history book” (pp. 2‐3). The second chapter, “Quality and profit: new histories of England, 1863‐1880”, highlights the activities of three publishers, Macmillan, the Clarendon Press Oxford and the Pitt Press Cambridge, and their relations with historians such as J.B. Bury, William Stubbs, E.A. Freeman and non‐academic affiliated writers of history such as John Richard Green, Charlotte Yonge, Charles Kingsley and others. The third chapter, “Breaking the drowsy spell of narrative, 1880‐1914”, looks at the writing of J.R. Seeley, Oscar Browning, Lord Acton and others who pioneered what Howsam refers to as “the scientific approach to historical study and the importance of paying serious attention to recent periods, [that] reinforced Seeley's argument about turning narrative into problems” (p. 53). There is, too, welcome attention to publishers' editors such as Richard Wright and Philip Lyttleton Gell at the Clarendon Press.

Howsam's fourth chapter “Historians and publishers in an Age of War and Revolution, 1914‐1929” takes her analysis through the First World War and its immediate aftermath. She concentrates on authors such as Adolphus William Ward who became Master of Peterhouse and at Cambridge “became indispensable to the University Press both before and after Acton's death” in 1902. Significantly, Howsam notes that Ward, who died in 1924, was especially stricken by the War: he “loved German culture and regarded contemporary militarism as an aberration” (p. 79). The fifth chapter encompasses two decades. “Knowledge in the marketplaces, 1930‐1950” concentrates on the “gap between popular and academic (or professional) history”, the “Cambridge collaborative histories” and “History from the Oxford University Press”. This chapter also has material on “History books: text, object, context”; “History as text”; “History books as material objects” and “The social and cultural processes of book‐making”. In her “Epilogue: history out of print”, Howsam recaps and notes that she has “set about connecting historiography with the history of the book” (p. 127).

There are however limitations in Past into Print: The Publishing of History in Britain, 1850‐1950. Howsam concentrates too exclusively upon Oxford and Cambridge and insufficiently upon London, the publishing centre of the 1850‐1950 period, and there is very little if any evidence from the provinces other than Oxford and Cambridge. Further, her title is misleading. Notably absent from her narrative are discussions of Scotland, Wales and Ireland: Dublin and Edinburgh were very active centres of publishing activity. There too is perfunctory reference to the Colonial market: the history of India and school histories are mentioned (pp. 53‐4, 92‐4 for instance), but it is difficult to find discussion of the other markets and readerships in a period of considerable expansion in publishing outlets.

Howsam's book is nicely designed by John Trevitt and typeset in Scotch Roman. The text is accompanied by black and white illustrations of title pages, individual pages and interestingly author portraits: see for instance the 16 mugshots of the “Makers of Cambridge Histories” (pp. 66‐7). The front jacket illustration is from Oscar Browning's True Stories from English History (1886) of “King Alfred and his Mother”. The back jacket illustration is the front page of Harold F.B. Wheeler, edited, new quarterly History, volume one, the fourth number. This was initially published in 1912 but became a publishing victim of the First World War.

Howsam's book concludes with double‐columned “notes” (pp. 129‐54). These are followed by a “chronology: events, appointments and publications” beginning in 1849 with the publication of the first volume of Macaulay's History of England and concluding “After 1950 C.H. Roberts becomes Secretary OUP 1954‐74” (pp. 155‐61). Her “bibliography” is divided into “manuscript collections” cited, “published primary sources” and “secondary sources” (pp. 162‐77). There is a short “index” (pp. 178‐82) to this work representing work in progress rather than the definite account of Past into Print: The Publishing of History in Britain, 1850‐1950. As such, it provides a useful addition to library shelves.