The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in English History, Vol. 1: To 1688

by Lacey Baldwin Smith, Jean Reeder Smith

The Past Speaks provides primary documents arranged thematically to address a number of historical problems from Saxon times to the Major government. Volume I includes new treatment of women in the Middle Ages, sixteenth-century family life, the religious causes of the English Civil War, and seventeenth-century millenarianism. Volume II includes new selections on the impact of the French Revolution, Victorian sexuality, and trench warfare in World War I, and new chapters on political and economic issues between the two world wars and the end of the British Empire.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics

418 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Lacey Baldwin Smith was an historian and author specializing in 16th century England. He was the author of Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty and Catherine Howard: A Tudor Tragedy, among other books.

Born in Princeton, New Jersey, Smith taught at Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University. He received two Fulbright awards, two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and other awards.He was considered one of the “big name” historians, yet his writing was considered to be as entertaining as it was erudite. He lived in Vermont during his retirement, dying at Greensboro at the age of 90.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1972.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

We used this book in my first Teaching Assistant assignment, at the beginning of my PhD program. It is a very good teaching tool for introducing undergraduates to sources and controversies in history. It covers English/British history from the earliest written records through 1688, the so-called “Glorious Revolution.” More modern English history is no doubt covered in a later volume, but I was never called upon to teach that period.

The chapters are arranged chronologically, making it easy to assign successive readings in for course discussion. Each one begins with a short introduction to the period and documents covered and then presents a series of primary documents. In general, the length of the chapters has been nicely standardized, so that students can count on having approximately the same amount of reading each week. The documents chosen represent a good range of familiar and obscure, political, religious, literary, and occasionally more personal documents like letters or court records. At the end of each chapter are discussion questions that get students thinking about different ways to interpret documents, eg: does a manual of courtly manners indicate that people were behaving as it advises or that there were concerns that not enough people were?

This probably isn’t a book many people (except the most dedicated teachers) will read for their amusement or interest, but as a teaching text, it has quite a bit of merit, and would seem worth keeping, in spite of its age, unless something far superior is now available.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in English History, Volume I: To 1688
by Lacey Baldwin Smith
required text for college courses on history, which i used to keep interested in college