The History of England from the Accession of James II. -- Complete Five Volume Hardcover Set -- Volumes I, II, III, IV, and V [1, 2, 3, 4, & 5] by Macaulay, Thomas Babington - 1859

Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company / Crosby, Nichols, Lee and Company, 1859. Reissue. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. Boards rubbed with minimal loss along spine edges, pencil name (E.R. Marvin) on front flyleaf of first volume, ink name and date (Arthur Tappan, 1860) on front flyleaf of second. 1859 Hard Cover. We have more books available by this author!. Complete in five volumes. xi, 551; xii, 540; xii, 620, 15-18; xi, 678, 19-24; viii, 335 pp. 8vo. Original brown blind-stamped cloth, gilt titles. Frontispiece of author engraved by D.L. Glover. Each volumed indexed individually, notes and extensive index of the entire work follows text of fifth volume. Fold-out of Lord Macaulay's Memoranda precedes text of fifth volume. "The History of England from the Accession of James the Second is the full title of the multi-volume work by Lord Macaulay more generally known as 'The History of England'. The history is famous for its brilliant ringing prose and for its confident, sometimes dogmatic, emphasis on a progressive model of British history, according to which the country threw off superstition, autocracy and confusion to create a balanced constitution and a forward-looking culture combined with freedom of belief and expression. This model of human progress has been called the Whig interpretation of history. Macaulay's approach has been criticised by later historians for its one-sidedness and its complacency. His tendency to see history as a drama led him to treat figures whose views he opposed as if they were villains, while his approved characters were presented as heroes. Macaulay goes to considerable length, for example, to absolve his hero William III of any responsibility for the Glencoe massacre. Macaulay's approach to writing history was innovative for his period. He consciously fused the picturesque, dramatic style of classical historians such as Thucydides and Tacitus with the learned and factual approach of his eighteenth century precursors such as Hume, following the plan laid out in his own earlier Essay on History." ABOUT THE AUTHOR: "Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PC (25 October 1800 - 28 December 1859) was a nineteenth-century English poet, historian and Whig politician and Member of Parliament for Edinburgh. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer, and on British history. The son and eldest child of Zachary Macaulay, a Scottish Highlander who became a colonial governor and abolitionist, Thomas was born in Leicestershire, England, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Macaulay was noted as a child prodigy. As a toddler, gazing out the window from his cot at the chimneys of a local factory, he is reputed to have put the question to his mother: "Does the smoke from those chimneys come from the fires of hell?" Whilst at Cambridge he wrote much poetry and won several prizes, including the Chancellor's Gold Medal in June 1821. In 1825 he published a prominent essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review. In 1826 he was called to the bar but showed more interest in a political than a legal career. He never married and had no children. In 1830 he became a Member of Parliament for the pocket borough of Calne. He made his name with a series of speeches in favour of parliamentary reform, attacking such inequalities as the exclusion of Jews. After the Great Reform Act was passed, he became MP for Leeds. Macaulay was Secretary to the Board of Control from 1832 until 1833. After the passing of the Government of India Act 1833, he was appointed as the first Law Member of the Governor-General's Council. He went to India in 1834. Serving on the Supreme Council of India between 1834 and 1838 he was instrumental in creating the foundations of bilingual colonial India, by convincing the Governor-General to adopt English as the medium of instruction in higher education, from the sixth year of schooling onwards, rather than Sanskrit or Arabic then used in the institutions supported by the East India Company. In the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Macaulay's criminal law system was enacted. It included the three major codes - The Indian Penal Code, 1860, the Criminal Procedure Code, 1872 and the Civil Procedure Code, 1909. The Indian Penal Code was later reproduced in most other British colonies -- and to date many of these laws are still in effect in places as far apart as Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. The term Macaulay's Children is used to refer to people born of Indian ancestry who adopt Western culture as a lifestyle, or display attitudes influenced by colonisers. The term is usually used in a derogatory fashion, and the connotation is one of disloyalty to one's country and one's heritage. This frame of mind or attitude is also referred to as Macaulayism. The passage to which the term refers is from his Minute on Indian Education, delivered in 1835. Returning to Britain in 1838, he became MP for Edinburgh. He was made Secretary at War in 1839. After the fall of Lord Melbourne's government Macaulay devoted more time to literary work, but returned to office as Paymaster General in Lord John Russell's administration. In 1841 Macaulay addressed the issue of copyright law. Macaulay's position, slightly modified, became the basis of copyright law in the English-speaking world for many decades. Macaulay argued that copyright is a monopoly and as such has generally negative effects on society. In the election of 1847 he lost his seat in Edinburgh. He attributed the loss to the anger of religious zealots over his speech in favor of expanding the annual grant to Maynooth College in Ireland, which trained young men for the Catholic priesthood; some observers also attributed his loss to his neglect of local issues. In 1849 he was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow, a position with no administrative duties, often awarded by the students to men of political or literary fame; he also received the freedom of the city. In 1852, the voters of Edinburgh offered to re-elect him to Parliament. He accepted on the express condition that he need not campaign and would not pledge himself to a position on any political issue. Remarkably, he was elected on those terms. However, he seldom attended the House, due to ill health; indeed his weakness after suffering a heart attack caused him to postpone for several months making his speech of thanks to the Edinburgh voters. He resigned his seat in January, 1856. Macaulay sat on the committee to decide on subjects from British history to be painted in the new Palace of Westminster. The need to collect reliable portraits of noted figures in British history for this project led to the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, which was formally established on 2 December 1856. Macaulay was amongst its founder trustees and is honoured as one of only three busts above the main entrance. He was raised to the Peerage in 1857 as Baron Macaulay, of Rothley in the County of Leicester but seldom attended the House of Lords. His health made work increasingly difficult for him. He died in 1859, leaving his major work, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second incomplete. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Macaulay's political writings are famous for their brilliant ringing prose and for its confident, sometimes dogmatic, emphasis on a progressive model of British history, according to which the country threw off superstition, autocracy and confusion to create a balanced constitution and a forward-looking culture combined with freedom of belief and expression. This model of human progress has been called the Whig interpretation of history. This philosophy appears most clearly in the essays Macaulay wrote for the Edinburgh Review. But it is also reflected in the History; the most stirring passages in the work are those that describe the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. Macaulay's approach has been criticised by later historians for its one-sidedness and its complacency. His tendency to see history as a drama led him to treat figures whose views he opposed as if they were villains, while characters he approved of were presented as heroes. Macaulay goes to considerable length, for example, to absolve his main hero William III of any responsibility for the Glencoe massacre. Macaulay's nephew, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, wrote a best-selling "Life and Letters" of his famous uncle, which is still the best complete life of Macaulay. His great-nephew was the Cambridge historian G. M. Trevelyan. During his first period out of office he composed Lays of Ancient Rome, a series of very popular ballads about heroic episodes in Roman history. The most famous of them, Horatius, concerns the heroism of Horatius Cocles. During the 1840s he began work on his most famous work, 'The History of England from the Accession of James the Second', publishing the first two volumes in 1848, the next two volumes appearing in 1855. At first, he had planned to bring his history down to the reign of George III. After publication of his first two volumes, his hope was to complete his work with the death of Queen Anne in 1714. However, at his death in 1859, he had finished only one further volume. A sixth, bringing the History down to the death of William III, was completed by his sister, Lady Trevelyan, after his death.