The New Teaching of History / With a reply to some recent criticisms of The Outline of History

Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
H. G. WELLS
Cassell and Company, Ltd
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1921
Copyright in U.S.A.—H. G. W.
The New Teaching of History
With a Reply to some Recent Criticisms of The Outline of History
For the better part of three years the writer of these notes has been occupied almost entirely in an intensely interesting enterprise. He has been getting his own ideas about the general process of history into order and he has been setting them down, having them checked by various people, and publishing them as a book, The Outline of History , which both in America and Europe has had a considerable vogue. In volumes or in complete sets of parts it has already found over two hundred thousand purchasers; it is still being bought in considerable quantities, and it is being translated and published in several foreign languages; it is quite possible that it has sufficiently interested almost as many people to read it through as it has found purchasers to take the easier step of buying it.
This Outline of History did not by any means contain all the history the writer himself would like to know or ought to know, and much less did it profess to condense all history for its readers. But it did attempt to sketch a framework, which people might have in common, and into which everyone might fit his own particular reading and historical interests. It did try to give all history as one story. And the largeness of the measure of its success is certainly much more due to the widespread desire for such an Outline than to any particular merit of the particular Outline the writer produced. So far as reception goes, almost any enterprising person might have succeeded as the writer has succeeded. He was, as people say, “meeting a long-felt want.” But his years of work in meeting it have necessarily made him something of a specialist in historical generalities, and the adventure of making and spreading the Outline abroad has been full of interesting and suggestive experiences. Some of the criticism to which the Outline has been subjected affords an opportunity for profitable comment. To “answer” all its critics would be a preposterously self-important thing to do, but, from the point of view of our general education, some of them do repay examination. And accordingly he is setting down these present notes to the Outline ; partly comments upon the educational significance of its general reception and partly a consideration of the mental attitudes, the moral and intellectual pose, into which it has thrown certain of its critics.