Binding: Hardback | Condition: Fine |
Beautiful Heron heirloom edition of Macaulay's controversial history of England, published from 1848 to 1855, starting from the ascension of James II to peace of Ryswick in 1697. Produced in stunning lambskin leather with 23ct gold tooling to covers and to page edge. With sewn headbands and silken bookmarkers and silk endpapers. This history is fascinating not only for the turbulent time depicted but for Macaulay's ebullient style and the controversy that later surrounded it. A strident believer in progress and in Whig politics, critics damned the work for its whiggish interpretation of history. Recent scholarship, however, suggests that there is not so much a liberal bias, rather it merely reflects the age, as J.W. Burrows argued: 'If this was sectarian it was hardly, in any useful contemporary sense, polemically Whig; it is more like the sectarianism of English respectability.' These copies have infinitesimal shelf-wear and the gold page edge has kept interiors crisp and clean. On volume one there is slight scratching to the page edge. Fine overall.
