A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE.
By JOHN RICHARD GREEN
With Coloured Maps, Genealogical Tables, and Chronological
Annals. Crown 8vo., price 8s. 6d.
MACMILLAN & CO., LONDON.
"I thank you very much for sending me Mr. Green's book. I have read it with genuine admiration. It bears marks of great ability in many ways. There is a vast amount of research, great skill in handling and arranging the facts, a very pleasant and taking style, but chief of all a remarkable grasp of the subject—many-sided as it is in its unity and integrity—which makes it a work of real historical genius. I am sure I wish it all the success it deserves; and you are quite at liberty to give my opinion about it to any one who asks it."—Extract from Letter of W. Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford.
"I think Mr. Green's 'Short History of the English People' admirably suited for students in the Universities and for the higher classes in schools. The object of the book, that of combining the history of the people with the history of the kingdom, is most successfully carried out, especially in the earlier part. It gives, I think, in the main, a true and accurate picture of the general course of English history. It displays throughout a firm hold on the subject, and a singularly wide range of thought and sympathy. As a composition, too, the book is clear, forcible, and brilliant. It is the most truly original book of the kind that I ever saw."—Extract from Letter of Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D., &c. &c.
"Rightly taken, the History of England is one of the grandest human stories, and Mr. Green has so taken it that his book should delight the general reader quite as much as it delights the student."—Extract from Letter of Professor Henry Morley.
"To say that Mr. Green's book is better than those which have preceded it, would be to convey a very inadequate impression of its merits. It stands alone as the one general history of the country, for the sake of which all others, if young and old are wise, will be speedily and surely set aside. It is perhaps the highest praise that can be given to it, that it is impossible to discover whether it was intended for the young or for the old. The size and general look of the book, its vividness of narration, and its avoidance of abstruse argument would place it among school-books; but its fresh and original views, and its general historical power, are only to be appreciated by those who have tried their own hand at writing history, and who know the enormous difficulties of the task."—Mr. Samuel R. Gardiner in the Academy.
"We know of no record of the whole drama of English history to be compared with it. We know of none that is so distinctly a work of genius.... Mr. Green's volume is a really wonderful production. There is a freshness and originality breathing from one end to the other, a charm of style, and a power, both narrative and descriptive, which lifts it altogether out of the class of books to which at first sight it might seem to belong. The range too of subject, and the capacity which the writer shows of dealing with so many different sides of English history, witness to powers of no common order.... The Early History is admirably done; the clear and full narrative which Mr. Green is able to put together of the earliest days of the English people is a wonderful contrast to the confused and prœ-scientific talk so common in most of the books which it is to be hoped that Mr. Green's volume will displace."—Pall Mall Gazette.