Douglas, David C. (General Editor). English Historical Documents Volume X . 1714 - 1783 , London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957.

First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. Heavy book standard postage charge, no extra will be asked for. Dust jacket complete except price clipped. Original cloth with bright gil titling on spine. No ownership inscription. xxvii, 972 pages clean and tight. Edited by D. B. HORN, M.A., D.Litt. Professor of History, University of' Edinburgh, and MARY RANSOM E, M.A., Lecturer in History, University of Birmingham. When historians speak of the eighteenth century they usually mean the years covered by this volume and not the years 1701 to i 800. The reign of Anne is best regarded as a period of transition between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The eighties and nineties saw the irrevocable triumph of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, which between them were to determine the character and content of the nineteenth century. The years from 1714 to 1783 therefore present the quintessence of the eighteenth century when at its highest point of development and least modified by residuary traces of its predecessor or the coming shadow of its successor. The traditional tendency has been to regard this era as a rather dull interlude between the romantic, epoch-making struggles of the seventeenth century and the tremendous moral and material progress which the Victorians prided themselves had been accomplished in their own age. They spoke of it as the age of reason or the age of common sense: literary historians talked of the peace of the Augustans. Politics had ceased to be a life and death struggle and had become a game played for their own advantage alike by Whig magnate and Tory squire, who paid at best lip service to the voice of the people they claimed to represent. The fierce, spiritual exaltation of Anglican and Puritan had sunk after Anne's death into a tolerant Deism; religious enthusiasm had become bad form, and the bishops were content to take their orders from the masters of the State. Yet underneath this appearance of stability changes no less fundamental than those of the seventeenth century were going on. Revolutions usually raise as many questions as they settle and the Revolution of 1688 was no exception. Indeed, the political system established by that Revolution was still largely indeterminate in 1714. The eighteenth century saw Scotland develop more rapidly than in any other period of her history. In Wales there was a powerful educational and religious revival. In Ireland the forces which were to end by driving Eire out of the British Commonwealth of Nations were already in existence. (Book ref. 128386)  £20.00

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