The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain: History, Rhetoric, and Fiction, 1500–1800

Woodrow Wilson Center Press

by Donald R. Kelley (Editor), David Harris Sacks (Editor)

These essays by some of the most distinguished historians and literary scholars in the English-speaking world explore the overlap, interplay, and interaction between supposedly truthful history and fact-based fiction in British writing from the Tudor period to the Enlightenment. Despite the many theoretical questions posed, the discussions primarily focus on concrete works, including those of Thomas More, John Foxe, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Edward Gibbon.

392 pages, Hardcover

First published September 13, 1997