Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Preface ix
4. List of Abbreviations xix
5. Introduction: “The More Permanent and Peaceful Scenes of Social Life” 3
6. THE ENGLISH PARNASSUS
7. 1. David Hume and the Vocabularies of British Historiography 33
8. 2. Hume and the Politics and Poetics of Historical Distance 60
9. NARRATIVES AND READERS
10. 3. Tensions and Accommodations: Varieties of Structure in Eighteenth-Century Narrative 81
11. 4. History, the Novel, and the Sentimental Reader 103
12. LIVES, MANNERS, AND “THE HISTORY OF MAN”
13. 5. Biography and the History of Private Life 131
14. 6. Manners and the Many Histories of Everyday Life: Custom, Commerce, Women, and Literature 147
15. 7. Conjectural History: A History of Manners and of Mind 171
16. CONTINUITIES
17. 8. James Mackintosh: The Historian as Reader 193
18. 9. Burke, Mackintosh, and the Idea of Tradition 220
19. LITERARY HISTORY, MEMOIR, AND THE IDEA OF COMMEMORATION IN EARLY NINETEENTH- CENTURY BRITAIN
20. 10. “The Comedy of Middle Life”: Francis Jeffrey and Literary History 259
21. 12. William Godwin and the Idea of Commemoration 322
22. Conclusion. Historical Distance and the Reception of Eighteenth-Century Historical Writing 342
23. Bibliography 351
24. Index 367