The Practice of History [Hardcover]

Geoffrey R. Elton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0631229795 | ISBN-13: 978-0631229797 | Edition: 2

The new edition of G. R. Elton's classic work is a wide-ranging, succinct and practical introduction for all students and general readers of history. It makes a major contribution to the question "what is history?".

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This original and important book on the study of history is now available in a new edition. G. R. Elton's classic work is a wide-ranging, succinct and practical introduction for all students and general readers, and it makes a major contribution to the question "What is history?"

This book sets out Elton's experience in the study, writing and teaching of history. The author perceived the work as a manifesto, an explanation of his faith and practice of the subject. The book has become a classic text for students and teachers since its first publication in 1969. This edition includes a new afterword by Richard Evans which assesses the book's relationship to Elton's work as a whole, its impact on the historical profession and its lessons for historians today.

About the Author

G. R. Elton was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University from 1983 to 1988. Among his numerous works are The Tudor Revolution in Government (1953), England under the Tudors (1955), Reform and Renewal (1973), The Parliament of England 1559–1581 and The English (Blackwell, 1992), and he was founding editor of the Blackwell History of the Modern British Isles. Professor Elton was President of the Royal Historical Society from 1972 until 1976 and honorary Vice-President from 1976 until his death in 1994.

Richard J. Evans is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. His many publications include Death in Hamburg (1987), Rituals ofRetribution (1996), In Defence of History (1997, reissued with a new Afterword 2001), and Tales from the GermanUnderworld (1998).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 2 edition (January 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631229795
• ISBN-13: 978-0631229797
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,077,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The conclusions of a disciplined thinker are worth reading, January 18, 2011

By 

Jordan Bell (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Practice of History (Hardcover)

"Meaningful interconnections in the particular, illuminating generalization beyond the individual case-- these are the marks that distinguish the inspired and inspiring historian from the hack." (p. 98) Regarding education: "The university must train the mind, not fill the untrained mind with multi-coloured information and undigested ideas, and only the proper study of an identifiable discipline according to the rules and practices of that discipline can accomplish that fundamental purpose." (p. 160) By being trained in any coherent discipline that requires effort and ability to follow rules, one becomes a better thinker in any field. "Since the whole of history... can never be got between the covers of one book, some means of rendering the material manageable must be found.... To transfer the universality of life on to paper, or even to comprehend it in the mind, is rarely possible, and without a main line of thought nothing results except the jumble which in fact is nearest to the common experience of life. This would be neither art, nor understanding, nor use. Issues and problems demand some sort of tunnel for their clarification." (p. 15) An important lesson I learned from this book is to let the topic guide your writing about it. Also, don't write history for historians and history for lay people; instead pick topics and write them as they require, and indeed some topics will only be useful for historians while others can be appreciated by lay people. Also, refusal to judge is amateurish (p. 17). Amateur history is written through "a veil woven out of strangeness and wonderment", and "cannot penetrate to fundamental explanation" (p. 18). One can read this book not just as instruction about how history should be done, but about how one should learn and do any scholarly discipline. See especially p. 19 for the intuition that a trained historian has, that his guesses are better than random because he understands setting, atmosphere, possibility, probability. His hunch "is in the nature of an inspired forecast which often leads to the discovery of evidence supporting it."

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Old fashioned but refreshing, April 3, 2005

By 

Tom Bird (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practice of History (Paperback)

Although many of the ideas espoused by Elton in this book are very old fashioned and narrow-minded, such as his views on revisionism and newer trends in source criticism, the majority of the book deals with the subject in a refreshingly straight-forward manner. The language is, on the whole, very clear and the methodical approach in which he puts forward his arguments is very persuasive. I recommend reading this along side another historiographical work such as E. H. Carr's 'What is History?' or Richard J. Evans' 'In Defence of History'.