Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain

(Hardback)

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Description

Eighteenth-century Britain saw an explosion of interest in its own past, a past now expanded to include more than classical history and high politics. Antiquaries, men interested in all aspects of the past, added a distinctive new dimension to literature in Georgian Britain in their attempts to reconstruct and recover the past. Corresponding and publishing in an extended network, antiquaries worked at preserving and investigating records and physical remains in England, Scotland and Ireland. In doing so they laid solid foundations for all future study in British prehistory, archaeology and numismatics, and for local and national history as a whole. Naturally, they saw the past partly in their own image. While many antiquaries were better at fieldwork and recording than at synthesis, most were neither crabbed eccentrics nor dilettanti. At their best, as in the works of Richard Gough or William Stukeley, antiquaries set new standards of accuracy and perception in fields ranging from the study of the ancient Britons to that of medieval architecture. Antiquaries is the definitive account of a great historical enterprise.

Reviews

'This well-written and extensively researched book contributes much to our understanding of antiquarianism and its relationship with later sciences and methods of historical scholarship...It should spur greater interest in studying the close relationship that existed between the human sciences and the natural sciences during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.' ~ Matthew R. Goodrum, BJHS, vol 39/3, Sept 2006 -- Matthew R. Goodrum
"An invaluable study" Northern History

Author Bio

Rosemary Sweet is Professor of Urban History and Director of the Centre of Urban History at the University of Leicester. She is the author of The English Town, 1680-1840 and The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth-Century England.