The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture 1500-1730

by Daniel Woolf

Overview

Woolf details here the ways in which English men and women first became seriously aware of and interested in their own and the world's past. Previous works have focused exclusively on the writings of a small minority of historians, yet, through using a variety of manuscript and printed sources, this study examines the wider 'historical culture' within which historical and antiquarian studies could emerge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199257782
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/12/2003
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.20(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

Preface
Conventions
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: The Past and the Present
1. Consciousness of Change
2. Old and New
Part II: The Ancestral Past
3. The Cultivation of Heredity
4. The Genealogical Imagination
Part III: The Tangible Past
5. Varieties of Antiquarianism
6. Seeing the Past
7. The Archaeological Economy
Part IV: The Past Remembered
8. Ways of Remembering
9. Popular Beliefs about the Past
10. Oral Tradition
Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"The Social Circulation of the Past is...a groundbreaking interpretation of English culture over more than two centuries."—Michael Galgano, James Madison University

"The Social Circulation of the Past merits close study by scholars and students as it models meticulous scholarship with a rich narrative. Woolf constructs a compelling argument for an environment in which historical scholarship found avid, interested readers and students of the past to produce a unique historical culture."—History

From the Publisher