FROUDE, James Anthony.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

History of England First editions. Published over a period of 14 years, Froude's history was a great success from the publication of the first pair of volumes, it "at once established Froude's claim to rank among the greatest English prose writers of the nineteenth century" (DNB). It was rapidly reprinted, and continued to "command a large sale" well into the twentieth century. Despite Froude's extensive research into the primary sources, many of his interpretations were controversial at the time, and have no doubt contributed to the overshadowing of his reputation by the other monumental historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Gibbon, Carlyle and Macaulay. However, this would be to misunderstand his sense of the rôle of the historian; "Indeed, Froude himself hardly seems to have regarded truth as attainable in history. He quotes with approval Talleyrand's remark, 'Il n'y a rien qui s'arrange aussi facilement que les faits,' and elsewhere compares the facts of history to the letters of the alphabet, which by selection and arrangement can be made to spell anything… 'The most perfect English history which exists is to be found, in my opinion, in the historical plays of Shakespeare.'"

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