Challenges the received account of the way in which modern historical thought developed in the nineteenth century.

Mike Goode challenges received accounts of the development of modern historical thought, arguing that, in Romantic and Victorian Britain, struggles over historical authority were as much disputes over the nature of proper masculinity as they were contests over ideas and interpretations. Drawing on primary materials from such diverse fields as political economy, moral philosophy, medicine, antiquarian study, and visual satire, Goode uncovers a Romantic historical tradition - one most influentially realized by historical novels - which held that historians must be manly and sentimental in order...