Samuel Rawson Gardiner and the Idea of History

A study of an eminent historian of seventeenth-century Britain and his work, showing its continued importance for all those working on the period. Samuel Rawson Gardiner [1829-1902] is the colossus of seventeenth-century historiography. His twenty-volume history of Britain from 1603 to 1656 and his many editions of key texts still serve to underpin almost all study of the Civil Wars and of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Yet, despite his importance, his work has often been reduced by historia