Edward Augustus Freeman (1823 1892) was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, and one of the pre-eminent historians of his generation. Politics was a constant interest for Freeman, who was also a regular contributor to the Saturday Review. While he wrote on a variety of historical topics, from ancient Greece to the German Federation, and had a great interest in architecture, this six-volume work, published between 1867 and 1879, was his magnum opus. Freeman reconsiders how the history of the Conquest is understood and examines its causes and results. Volume 5 considers the effects of...

English historian Henry Thomas Buckle (1821 62) was born into the family of a wealthy London merchant. A child of delicate health, and tutored privately at home, he never attended university. Nevertheless, it was clear that he was meant for intellectual pursuits and by the age of twenty he was a formidable chess player. With his love of books and reading, he set out on an ambitious plan to write a fourteen-volume history of civilisation, and at the same time to put historical research on a more scientific basis. The work would have included a greater number of countries, but due to his early...

Sir Frederick Morton Eden (1766 1809) was an English writer and a pioneer social researcher. Eden studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and subsequently worked in banking and insurance, inheriting a baronetcy from his father, who had been the governor of the American province of Maryland, in 1784. Arguing that poverty could not be tackled without knowing what it actually meant to be poor, this innovative three-volume work is an attempt to define what poverty meant in concrete terms. It is packed with data from across England, divided by county, and covering factors such as food prices, wages,...

The sinologist George Thomas Staunton (1781 1859) learned Chinese as a child and accompanied his father on a trip to China in 1792 where, though the Ambassador's page, he was the only member of the delegation who could speak to the emperor in Chinese. A career in the East India Company's Canton factory followed, and he translated many texts between Chinese and English, including this penal code, published in 1810, which was its first translation into any European language. The 'Fundamental Laws' was the legal code of the Qing Dynasty (1644 1911), and contained more than 1,000 statutes....

Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779 1859) was a Scottish diplomat and colonial administrator. After joining the civil service of the East India Company in 1796 he was appointed the first British envoy to the Court of Kabul in 1808. In 1819 he was appointed the Governor of Bombay, and after his retirement in 1827 he devoted his life to historical and literary studies. First published in 1815, this volume contains Elphinstone's detailed description of the Kingdom of Afghanistan. Elphinstone describes the geography, economy and political situation of the kingdom and provides a brief account of Afghan...

Informed by a lifetime of foreign service, this 1815 work remains one of the most influential histories of Persia.

Sir Frederick Morton Eden (1766 1809) was an English writer and a pioneer social researcher. Eden studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and subsequently worked in banking and insurance, inheriting a baronetcy from his father, who had been the governor of the American province of Maryland, in 1784. Arguing that poverty could not be tackled without knowing what it actually meant to be poor, this innovative three-volume work is an attempt to define what poverty meant in concrete terms. It is packed with data from across England, divided by county, and covering factors such as food prices, wages,...

Sir Frederick Morton Eden (1766 1809) was an English writer and a pioneer social researcher. Eden studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and subsequently worked in banking and insurance, inheriting a baronetcy from his father, who had been the governor of the American province of Maryland, in 1784. Arguing that poverty could not be tackled without knowing what it actually meant to be poor, this innovative three-volume work is an attempt to define what poverty meant in concrete terms. It is packed with data from across England, divided by county, and covering factors such as food prices, wages,...

The product of a lifetime spent in India and the Middle East, for over a century this two-volume work by Sir John Malcolm (1769 1833), first published in 1815, remained the most trusted chronicle of Persia. Translated into French, German and Persian, the detailed and diverse contents earned its diplomat author an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Oxford. Although learned, Malcolm's narrative is informed by personal experiences acquired while serving as an envoy and secretary to the governor general, a position which clearly shaped his views on the country's political...

First published in 1813, this comprehensive dictionary of maritime terminology in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was designed as a reference work for shipbuilders and navigators. Compiled by the naval historian William Burney, it is a revised and expanded version of the classic Universal Marine Dictionary originally published in 1769 by the poet and lexicographer William Falconer (1732 89). It provides over 800 pages of technical data on shipbuilding, navigation, the operation of ships, weaponry and provisions, as well as historical, legal and medical information, and even...