Rowland Prothero, Baron Ernle (1851 1937) was an author, land agent and politician, whose public career was particularly concerned with agricultural matters. During the First World War he served as President of the Board of Agriculture, organising a significant increase in agricultural production by bringing more land into cultivation and mobilising the labour of the Women's Land Army and prisoners of war. As food shipping from overseas was increasingly interrupted by enemy submarines, this was vital to the national food supply, and many of his reforms were reinstated in 1939 1945. The Land...

William Henry Hudson (1841 1922) was an Argentinian-born American naturalist and author, who moved to England in 1874, and became known for his writings on natural history, both Argentine and English, and for his work with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He travelled the country, observing wildlife and rural life in general, and won high praise both for his work as a naturalist and for his literary style. A Shepherd's Life, published in 1910, contains his impressions of the Wiltshire Downs - the people, places, wildlife and history - which are enhanced by numerous...

James Mackintosh (1765 1832) was a Scottish lawyer, liberal philosopher, politician, journalist and historian. His most famous work, Vindiciae Gallicae (1791), was a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. Burke considered it the best answer to his essay, and, together with Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, the most significant. However, subsequent events in France caused Mackintosh to reconsider his views on the French Revolution, and he later became an admirer of Burke. He argued for gradual democratic reform in England to prevent radical upheaval. The Historical Sketch,...

Edited by Marie Camille Ragut (1797 1870), long-serving archivist in the library of Macon in Bourgogne, this cartulary is a collection of local records detailing day-to-day life in medieval France. This version was published in 1864 following Ragut's discovery of an authentic copy in the Macon archives, the original long since destroyed in religious riots. The book contains 633 charters that span a period of six centuries, including records on the topography, customs, people, and the rise of the feudal system in Macon. Dating from 593 to 1220, the ancient documents are reproduced in their...

Barrington combines an emotive chronicle of personal hardship with a rare account of society, crime and punishment in colonial Australia.

John Charnock (1756 1807) was a professional naval biographer and historian. After completing his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, he joined the Navy as a volunteer and began to research historical and contemporary naval affairs. This six-volume work, first published between 1794 and 1798, contains biographies of over two thousand post-captains and admirals who served in the Navy between 1660 and 1793. Charnock researched this monumental project using collections of historical naval biographies made available by his friend Captain William Locker, lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Hospital....

John Charnock (1756 1807) was a professional naval biographer and historian. After completing his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, he joined the Navy as a volunteer and began to research historical and contemporary naval affairs. This six-volume work, first published between 1794 and 1798, contains biographies of over two thousand post-captains and admirals who served in the Navy between 1660 and 1793. Charnock researched this monumental project using collections of historical naval biographies made available by his friend Captain William Locker, lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Hospital....

An 1899 account of the role of privateers in winning the American War of Independence and building the American Navy.

Marie-Louise Victoire de Donnissan, Marquise de la Rochejaquelein (1772 1857) was brought up at Versailles, a god-daughter to Louis XVI. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, she married her cousin, the Marquis de Lescure. After the execution of the king, she accompanied Lescure to La Vendee where a Royalist insurrection was waged from 1793 to 1796. Widowed in 1793, she later married Lescure's cousin, Louis, Marquis de La Rochejacquelein, brother of one of the Royalist leaders. Her memoir, first published in 1815 and translated and reprinted many times, remains one of the most authentic...

Sir Thomas Brassey (1836 1918), later Earl Brassey, was a politician with a particular interest in maritime affairs. He was a keen sailor, and his wife's accounts of their many voyages (also reissued in this series) were bestsellers. He subsequently became a Lord of the Admiralty and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Brassey's Naval Annual was for many years the authoritative survey of worldwide navies. This five-volume survey of the state of the British Navy was published between 1882 and 1883. Brassey was much involved with questions of the modernisation and reform of the Navy, at a time...