Pelican History of England explained

The Pelican History of England is multi-volume, multi-author work published by the Pelican non-fiction imprint of Penguin Books between 1950 and 1965. It was edited by Jack Morpurgo (1918–2000).^[1] The series is said to have "shaped the historical thinking of generations".^[2]

Series

The Pelican history was originally planned to comprise eight volumes covering the period "from the Roman invasion to the outbreak of the First World War".^[3] While the overall tone was optimistic and progressive, broadly reflecting the Whig interpretation of history, the series was not doctrinaire. As Morpurgo wrote, "each author has been left to decide what he himself considers significant and interesting ... the business of discovering comparison and conclusion, and of adapting the lessons of history to our own times, is left, for the most part, to the reader."

The first three volumes were published in 1950, starting with Bindoff's Tudor England, a fourth in 1951 and three more in 1952. The last to appear was Richmond's volume on Roman Britain, which was published in 1955.^[4] A decade later it was decided to add a twentieth-century volume, written by David Thomson and initially covering the period from 1914 to 1963, later extended to 1979.

All volumes were regularly reprinted — often annually — but the amount of revision varied. The books by Bindoff and Plumb were reissued unchanged for four decades. At the other extreme, the Myers volume went through eight editions and two less extensive revisions. Penguin commissioned other historians to revise the two books by Thomson and the one by Richmond, but the "now-dated series" was reaching the end of its useful life.^[5] In 1988 Penguin appointed David Cannadine to edit a successor series, which would become the Penguin History of Britain (1996–2018).^[6]

Reprints of the Pelican volumes were now less frequent and eight of the nine titles in the final configuration of the series were reissued for the last time in 1990 or 1991. The third edition of Richmond's Roman Britain, completed by Malcolm Todd, appeared as a coda in 1995.

Titles

• Roman Britain (1955), by Ian Richmond
• The Beginnings of English Society (1952), by Dorothy Whitelock
• English Society in the Early Middle Ages (1951), by Doris Mary Stenton
• England in the Late Middle Ages (1952), by A.R. Myers (1912–1980)
• Tudor England (1950), by Stanley Bindoff
• Two books have filled the seventeenth century slot in the series:
  • England in the Seventeenth Century (1952), by Maurice Ashley, which was retired in 1977
  • Stuart England (1978), by J.P. Kenyon
• England in the Eighteenth Century (1950), by J.H. Plumb
• England in the Nineteenth Century (1950), by David Thomson
• England in the Twentieth Century (1965), by David Thomson

See also

• Bibliography of European history
• Oxford History of England (1936–1965)

Notes and References

1. "Professor Jack Morpurgo", The Times, 4 October 2000, p. 25
2. Paul Laity, "Pelican books take flight again", The Guardian, 25 April 2014. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
3. Jack Morpurgo, "Editorial Note", in Stanley Thomas Bindoff, Tudor England (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1950). A version of this note appeared in all early editions of the series.
4. Detailed publication histories are recorded in the colophon of each volume.
5. David Walker, "Rewriting History", The Independent, 16 October 1996. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
6. Peter Ghosh, "How We Got to Where We Are", London Review of Books, 26 November 1996. Retrieved 21 March 2024.