Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Her travel book History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817) recounts the continental tour she and Shelley took in 1814 following their elopement and then recounts their summer near Geneva in 1816.

Antonio Buero Vallejo: …Historia de una escalera (1950; History of a Stairway), for which he was awarded the Lope de Vega, an important literary prize. The play portrays the frustrations of apartment house tenants in a slum in Madrid. His one-act play produced in the same year, Palabras en la arena (“Words in…

Bernard Bosanquet: … he proceeded to his own History of Aesthetic (1892) and Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915). Both reflect his belief that aesthetics can reconcile the natural and the supernatural worlds. As elsewhere in his work, Bosanquet revealed his distaste for the materialism of his day and favoured the neo-Hegelian antidote, which…

bildungsroman: …Wieland’s Geschichte des Agathon (1766–67; History of Agathon). It was followed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–96; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), which remains the classic example of the genre. Other examples are Adalbert Stifter’s Nachsommer (1857; Indian Summer) and Gottfried Keller’s Der

Sadakichi Hartmann: Hartmann published the two-volume A History of American Art (1901; new rev. ed., 1932) and many other works advocating the recognition of avant-garde art and artists. The Sadakachi Hartmann Archive is kept at the University of California, Riverside, where a number of his out-of-print volumes have been edited for…

Aristotle: Travels: …book later known, misleadingly, as The History of Animals, to which Aristotle added two short treatises, On the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals. Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite…

Armenian literature: Medieval decline: The History of Armenia by the catholicos (patriarch) John VI Draskhanakertzi is of great value for its account of Arab relations with Armenia, for the author was himself an important participant in the later events he describes. At the turn of the 10th to the 11th…

Armenian literature: Medieval decline: The History of Armenia by Aristakes Lastivertzi, relating the fall of the Bagratid kingdom (1045), the destruction of Ani (1064), and the victories of the Seljuq Turks, is almost as much a prose elegy as a history.

Moses of Khoren: …autobiographical details contained in the History of Armenia, which bears his name as author. His claims to have been the disciple of Isaac the Great (Sahak) and Mesrop Mashtots, to have studied in Edessa and Alexandria after the Council of Edessa (431), and to have been commissioned to write his…

art criticism: Foundations of art criticism in antiquity and the Middle Ages: In his seminal book History of Art Criticism (1936), Lionello Venturi asks: “What is criticism if not a relationship between a principle of judgment and the intuition of a work of art or of an artistic personality?” The principle of judgment can be informed by general ideas about art,…

Julius von Sachs: His Geschichte der Botanik vom 16. Jahrhundert bis 1860 (1875; History of Botany 1530–1860) remains an indispensable guide to the history of botany and to the first stages in the emergence of plant physiology as a separate discipline. Sachs was also influential in establishing the importance…

John Milton: Works on history and theology: History of Britain (1670) was long in the making, for it reflects extensive reading that he began as a very young man. Presumably because he initially contemplated an epic centring upon British history and the heroic involvement of the legendary king Arthur, Milton researched early…

James Mill: …1819, two years after Mill’s History of British India appeared, he was appointed an official in India House, despite his drastic criticisms in the History of British rule in India. He rose gradually through the ranks until he was appointed head of the examiner’s office in 1830. The History, his…

Buddhism: Traditional literary accounts: …in his Chos ’byung (“History of Buddhism”) differs from other traditional accounts only by its listing of the later Mahayana doctrines as part of Shakyamuni’s teachings on earth. All in all, the unity of the mythological and quasi-historical interpretations of the life and death of the “historical” Buddha, in…

François-Xavier Garneau: Garneau’s Histoire du Canada (1845–48), predominantly a political and military account of early Quebec, includes tales of pioneering men and women and descriptions of the major civil, political, and religious leaders. An attempt to conserve Quebec’s religion, language, and laws, the work met with great success…

Huang Yong Ping: …to Random Instructions (1985) and The History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes (1987)—show his own iconoclastic vision. For the latter piece, Huang questioned the East-West division taught in standard art history textbooks by placing one on Chinese…

Feng Youlan: His two-volume History of Chinese Philosophy (1934; rev. ed., 1952–53), which utilized Western historical methods, established his reputation and was the standard general history of Chinese philosophy until the late 20th century.

Étienne Gilson: …which were summed up in History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955). Among his most charming books is L’École des muses (1951; The Choir of Muses), a study of writers whose works were inspired by love for a woman.

probability and statistics: A new kind of regularity: >History of Civilization in England. Interestingly, probability had been linked to deterministic arguments from very early in its history, at least since the time of Jakob Bernoulli. Laplace argued in his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1825) that man’s dependence on probability was simply a consequence…

Joseph Genesius: …biographical accounts of patriarchs, the History of Constantinople covers the Byzantine Empire from the reign of Leo the Armenian (813) to the death of Basil I in 886.

Peter Høeg: …om det tyvende århundrede (1988; The History of Danish Dreams), established his reputation in Denmark. The work ranges over three and a half centuries and includes elements of magic realism, experimenting with the narrative voice and wreaking havoc with notions of time and materiality. Høeg followed his debut with Fortællinger…

Adolf von Harnack: …work, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (1886–89; The History of Dogma), is a monument of liberal Christian historiography. In this work, Harnack traced the origin and development of Christian dogma, which he understood to be the authoritative system of Christian doctrine that had formed by the 4th century ce. His thesis was…

Joseph Schumpeter: His History of Economic Analysis (1954; reprinted 1966) is an exhaustive study of the development of analytic methods in economics. His other books include Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (1911; The Theory of Economic Development) and Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist…

Canadian literature: From settlement to 1900: Her History of Emily Montague (1769) is an epistolary romance describing the sparkling winter scenery of Quebec and the life and manners of its residents.

David Hume: Morals and historical writing: His History of England, extending from Caesar’s invasion to 1688, came out in six quarto volumes between 1754 and 1762, preceded by Political Discourses (1752). His recent writings had begun to make him known, but these two brought him fame, abroad as well as at home.…

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron Macaulay: …historian best known for his History of England, 5 vol. (1849–61); this work, which covers the period 1688–1702, secured his place as one of the founders of what has been called the Whig interpretation of history. He was raised to the peerage in 1857. Macaulay’s biography of John Bunyan appeared…

Catharine Macaulay: …in 1760, she began her History of England from the Accession of James I to That of the Brunswick Line, published in eight volumes between 1763 and 1783, in which she championed the Parliamentary cause, condemned Oliver Cromwell as a tyrant, and found her own republican ideals reflected in the…

James Anthony Froude: …English historian and biographer whose History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 12 vol. (1856–70), fundamentally altered the whole direction of Tudor studies. He was immensely prolific, producing also novels and essays.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky: …not interrupt research upon his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, which appeared in 8 volumes (12 in the 1892 edition) from 1878 to 1890 to considerable praise. Lecky’s claim to impartiality was not inconsistent with a desire to refute the very different views expressed by James Anthony Froude,…

Leopold von Ranke: The search for objectivity.: … 1852); and, in 1859–69, the Englische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, 1875)—each consisting of several volumes that, although partly rendered obsolete by later research, are still worth reading today for their great narrative skill. In these works, too, Ranke…

Frederic William Maitland: His best-known work, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2 vol. (1895), was written with Sir Frederick Pollock; it became a classic and was widely cited simply as “Pollock and Maitland.” Among Maitland’s other writings are Bracton’s Note-Book (1887), an edition of the…

literature: National and group literature: His History of English Literature (5 vol., 1863–69) is an extensive elaboration of these ideas. It is doubtful that anyone today would agree with the simplistic terms in which Taine states his thesis. It is obvious that Russian literature differs from English or French from German.…

William John Courthope: His History of English Poetry (6 vol., 1895–1910) traces the development of English poetry in relation to the age in which it was written. He also continued Whitwell Elwin’s edition of Alexander Pope’s poetical works and wrote Joseph Addison, a life of the essayist, in both…

Sir Leslie Stephen: His greatest learned work was History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876). His philosophical study The English Utilitarians (1900) was somewhat less successful, though it is still a useful source. His philosophical contribution to the rationalist tradition, Science of Ethics (1882), attempted to wed evolutionary theory to ethics,…

Robert H. Lowie: …it at some length in The History of Ethnological Theory (1937). Included among the ideas he advanced was the suggestion that religion and mythology may originate in dreams that have some kind of biological basis. He also conjectured that cultural selection is an aspect of natural selection.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky: …its companion study, the two-volume History of European Morals (1869), which explored themes initiated in the former work—the declining sense of the miraculous, the aesthetic expressions of religious belief, and the complex relationship of society and morality. Pervading it was a desire to show the “natural causes” underlying the prevalence…

Edwin G. Boring: …to write his best-known work, A History of Experimental Psychology (1929, 2nd ed. 1950), which established him as one of the first historians of the field in the United States. Boring also wrote The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness (1933) and Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology (1942).

thug: …is found in Ẓiyāʾ-ud-Dīn Baranī, History of Fīrūz Shāh, dated about 1356.) The thugs would insinuate themselves into the confidence of wayfarers and, when a favourable opportunity presented itself, strangle them by throwing a handkerchief or noose around their necks. They then plundered and buried them. All this was done…

Francesco Guicciardini: …and his Storie fiorentine (History of Florence) from 1378 to 1509. The latter constitutes one of the major sources for the history of the republican regime after 1494 and reveals Guicciardini’s gifts for historical analysis and narrative. Elected in 1511 as Florentine ambassador to King Ferdinand of Aragon, he…

Henri Martin: …an author of a famous history of France that included excerpts from the chief chroniclers and historians, with original expository passages filling the gaps.

Henri Martin: …work, together with the continuation, Histoire de France depuis 1789 jusqu’à nos jours, 6 vol. (1878–83; “History of France from 1789 to Our Time”), gives a complete history of France and superseded earlier such works. Martin was a staunch republican and sat in the National Assembly as deputy for Aisne…

Gabriel Daniel: …he wrote a pioneering work, Histoire de France depuis l’établissement de la monarchie française (1st complete ed., 1713; ed. by P. Griffet, 1755–60; The history of France from the time the French monarchy was establish’d, 1732). He also wrote Histoire de la milice française, 2 vol. (1721; “History of the…

J.B. Bury: His History of Freedom of Thought probably best expresses his conception of history as the record of man’s rational struggles and progress. In addition to providing high standards of scholarly excellence, he was one of the first English historians to participate in the revival of Byzantine…

Alain-René Lesage: Lesage’s Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (1715–1735; The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane) is one of the earliest realistic novels. It concerns the education and adventures of an adaptable young valet as he progresses from one master to the next. In the service of…

George Grote: …devoted himself entirely to the History of Greece, which was published in 12 volumes between 1846 and 1856; it ended with the events of 301 bc. It was quickly recognized (in the original or in translation) as the best Greek history in any language, and its authority remained unchallenged for…

Jacob Burckhardt: Works of Jacob Burckhardt: , History of Greek Culture, 1963)—and some essays in art history: Erinnerungen aus Rubens (1898; “Suggestions on Rubens”), Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte von Italien (1898; “Contributions to the Art History of Italy”). Of particular significance are two later posthumous publications. Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (1905; Force and Freedom: Reflections…

Henry Esmond, historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, published in three volumes in 1852. The story, narrated by Esmond, begins in 1691 when he is 12 and ends in 1718. Its complexity of incident is given unity by Esmond and his second cousin Beatrix, who stand out against a background of

Edward Westermarck: …book was the influential The History of Human Marriage (1891), in which he advanced his ideas on primitive marriage and society. His most important work, however, is considered to be The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 2 vol. (1906–08), in which he proposed a theory of ethical relativity…

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy: …five volumes during 1923–30; the History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927) became the standard text in the field. The Transformation of Nature in Art (1934) and Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought (1946) are collections of essays expressing his views on the relationship of art to life, traditional…

Celtic literature: Late period: …all available material on the history of Ireland to 1616, directed by Michael O’Clery. Geoffrey Keating produced the first historical (as opposed to annalistic) work in his Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (written c. 1640; History of Ireland) as well as some fine verse in both old and new meters and…

biblical literature: The modern period: …Kaufmann (1890–1963) produced the encyclopaedic History of Israelite Religion from Its Beginnings to the End of the Second Temple (8 vol., 1937–56) in Hebrew that pursues a path involving a radical revision of current biblical criticism and interpretation. Mosheh Zevi Hirsh Segal (died 1968) dealt with a wide area of…

Italian literature: The Risorgimento and after: …Storia della letteratura italiana (1870–71; History of Italian Literature). His main tenet was that literature was to be judged not on its intellectual or moralistic content so much as by the spirit of its “form,” and the role of the critic was to discover how this form had been unconsciously…

Francesco Guicciardini: …of the most important contemporary history of Italy, Storia d’Italia.

race: Transforming race into species: In a book titled The History of Jamaica (1774), Long asserted that “the Negro” was “void of genius” and “incapable” of civilization; indeed, he was so far inferior as to constitute a separate species of mankind. Long’s work was published as a defense of slavery during a period of…

Engelbert Kämpfer: …first published in English (The History of Japan, 1727) after his death and appeared in the original German only after additional translations into Latin, Dutch, and French had already appeared. Kämpfer’s manuscripts are in the British Museum.

Meyer Waxman: Waxman’s principal work, History of Jewish Literature, 4 vol. (1930–41; 2nd ed., 5 vol., 1938–60), summarizes and evaluates the various fields of Jewish literature from the end of biblical times to the mid-20th century. His religious studies include the Handbook of Judaism (1947) and Judaism—Religion and Ethics (1958),…

John Arbuthnot: …1727 under the composite title Law is a Bottom-less Pit; or, The History of John Bull, and it established and popularized for the first time the character who was to become the permanent symbol of England in cartoon and literature. An edition by A.W. Bower and R.A. Erickson was published…

Thomas More: Early life and career: More’s History of King Richard III, written in Latin and in English between about 1513 and 1518, is the first masterpiece of English historiography. Though never finished, it influenced succeeding historians. William Shakespeare is indebted to More for his portrait of the tyrant.

Sophie von La Roche: …first and most important work, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771; History of Lady Sophia Sternheim), was the first German novel written by a woman and is considered to be among the best works from the period in which English novels, particularly those of Samuel Richardson, had great influence on…

history of Liechtenstein, a survey of important events and people in the history of Liechtenstein from ancient times to the present. The Rhine plain has always been the focus of settlement. For centuries the valley was occupied by two independent lordships of the Holy Roman Empire, Vaduz and

historiography: History of science: …in this vein, Lynn Thorndike’s A History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923–58), discussed two seemingly distinct approaches that share the belief that human practice can affect the natural world. Distinguishing between the two approaches requires criteria—effectiveness and rationality—that are essentially modern. Sorting out what was scientific work can easily…

Michael Critobulus: His History of Mehmed the Conqueror covers only the first 17 years (1451–68) of Mehmed’s 30-year reign, but it remains a vividly descriptive and authoritative source for scholars of Byzantium.

Cyril Stanley Smith: His book, A History of Metallography: The Development of Ideas on the Structure of Metals Before 1890 (1960), was based on this work.

Latin American literature: Historiographies: The History of Mexico). Translated into Spanish as Historia antigua de México in the early 19th century, it manifests the Classical erudition of Jesuits in Mexico City and signals the evolution of Creole consciousness. A lawyer and theologian, Antonio Sánchez Valverde wrote important essays on…

Alex Colville: Colville’s other works include designs for special issues of Canadian coins commemorating the centenary of Confederation (1967) and for the Governor General’s Medal (1978).

Toba Sōjō: …scrolls featuring humorous secular subjects: “History of Mount Shigi” and “Scrolls of Frolicking Animals.” The “History of Mount Shigi” consists of illustrations of miracles and is notable for its lifelike crowds of people in action. In the “Scrolls of Frolicking Animals” the artist used a new technique of free-line ink…

H.G. Wells: Early writings: …a Simple Soul (1905), and The History of Mr. Polly (1910). In these novels, and in Tono-Bungay (1909), he drew on memories of his own earlier life, and, through the thoughts of inarticulate yet often ambitious heroes, revealed the hopes and frustrations of clerks, shop assistants, and underpaid teachers, who…

Robert Pinsky: …his other collections, which include History of My Heart (1984), The Want Bone (1990), The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems (1996), Jersey Rain (2000), Gulf Music (2007), and At the Foundling Hospital (2016). Landor’s Poetry (1968), The Situation of Poetry:

Giacomo Casanova: …published after his death as Mémoires de J. Casanova de Seingalt, 12 vol. (1826–38). (A definitive edition, based on the original manuscripts, was published in 1960–62 with the title Histoire de ma vie [History of My Life].) This work provides an account of Casanova’s dissolute life and established his reputation…

English literature: Chroniclers: …soberer but still free-speaking two-volume History of My Own Time (published posthumously, 1724–34) was composed by the industrious Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury from 1689. In the last months of the life of the court poet John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester, Burnet had been invited to attend him, and,…

Isaac Backus: …the Baptist church and wrote A History of New England, with Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians Called Baptists (1777–96). Backus fought for religious freedom and served on several committees that examined discrimination against Baptists.

A History of New York, a satirical history by Washington Irving, published in 1809 and revised in 1812, 1819, and 1848. Originally intended as a burlesque of historiography and heroic styles of epic poetry, the work became more serious as the author proceeded. Diedrich Knickerbocker, the putative

A History of New York, a satirical history by Washington Irving, published in 1809 and revised in 1812, 1819, and 1848. Originally intended as a burlesque of historiography and heroic styles of epic poetry, the work became more serious as the author proceeded. Diedrich Knickerbocker, the putative

Mary Adelaide Nutting: …which developed her later four-volume History of Nursing (1907–12, with Lavinia L. Dock). She was an early member of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses of the United States and Canada (later the National League for Nursing Education; now the National League for Nursing) and twice…

Bernard Le Bovier, sieur de Fontenelle: …was carried further by the Histoire des oracles (1687; “History of the Oracles”), based on a Latin treatise by the Dutch writer Anton van Dale (1683). Here Fontenelle subjected pagan religions to criticisms that the reader would inevitably see as applicable to Christianity as well. The same antireligious bias is…

Pendennis, semiautobiographical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, published in monthly installments from 1848 to 1850 and published in book form in two volumes in 1849–50. The novel traces the youthful career of Arthur Pendennis: his first love affair, his experiences at “Oxbridge University,”

Thomas Stanley: Stanley’s The History of Philosophy, which long remained a standard work, was published in 1655–62, and his edition of Aeschylus with Latin translation and commentary in 1663. He had a graceful if tenuous gift as a lyrical poet and was a versatile and accomplished translator.

Beaumont Newhall: …first MoMA catalog, now titled The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (1949).

William Bradford: Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47 is a unique source of intimate detail and description of both the sea voyage and the hardships and challenges faced by the settlers. Bradford also wrote some poetry as well as several dialogues in which he described the virtures of…

Adolphe Blanqui: …a French liberal economist whose History of Political Economy in Europe (1837–38) was the first major study of the history of economic thought.

Thomas Tooke: …these lines in his monumental History of Prices, 6 vol. (1838–57), in the last two volumes of which he collaborated with William Newmarch.

Isaiah Thomas: …documentary source for the monumental A History of Printing in America, compiled over two years and published in two volumes in 1810 and still a major historical source. He founded the American Antiquarian Society.

al-Ṭabarī: Major works: … and was followed by the History of Prophets and Kings. Al-Ṭabarī’s History became so popular that the Sāmānid prince Manṣūr ibn Nūḥ had it translated into Persian (c. 963).

Rasselas, philosophical romance by Samuel Johnson published in 1759 as The Prince of Abissinia. Supposedly written in the space of a week, with the impending expenses of Johnson’s mother’s funeral in mind, Rasselas explores and exposes the vanity of the human search for happiness. The work is

William Edward Hartpole Lecky: …and his next book, the History of Rationalism (1865), while owing something to them, was welcomed by readers made familiar with evolutionary theory by Charles Darwin and the geologist Sir Charles Lyell. Lecky offered a broadly ranging narrative, showing the emergence of modern scientific thought and rational inquiry since the…

biography: Renaissance: …initiators of modern biography: More’s History of Richard III, William Roper’s Mirrour of Vertue in Worldly Greatness; or, The life of Syr Thomas More, and George Cavendish’s Life of Cardinal Wolsey. The History of Richard III (written about 1513 in both an English and a Latin version) unfortunately remains unfinished;…

Barthold Georg Niebuhr: (1811–32; History of Rome) marked an era in the study of its special subject and had a momentous influence on the general conception of history. Although Niebuhr made particular contributions of value to learning (e.g., his study of social and agrarian problems), some of his theories…

Theodor Mommsen: …writer, famous for his masterpiece, Römische Geschichte (The History of Rome). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902.

Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov: …rests on his monumental 29-volume History of Russia From Ancient Times, 28 volumes of which were published between 1851 and Solovyov’s death in 1879. The History wove a vast body of data into a unified and orderly whole that provided an exceptionally powerful and vivid picture of Russia’s political development…

Mikhayl Mikhaylovich Shcherbatov: His History of Russia from the Earliest Times, which appeared during 1770–91 in seven volumes, was the first serious attempt to produce a scholarly narrative of Russian history based on original sources. Although Shcherbatov’s History was later criticized as the work of a reactionary, its incorporation…

Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev: (1768–1848; History of Russia from the Most Early Times), relied on sources that have since to a great extent disappeared. It amassed a great volume of data based on original sources and was a pioneering work in its attempt to depict the development of the Russian…

William Makepeace Thackeray: Early writings: …good realistic crime story; The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond (1841), which was an earlier version of the young married life described in Philip; and The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844; revised as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, 1856), which is a historical novel and his…

Museo Galileo, in Florence, collection of scientific instruments and maps that show the progress of science from ancient times. Much of the collection formerly belonged to the Medici family. The museum’s origins date to 1927, when the Istituto di Storia della Scienza was established for

Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford collection of early scientific instruments and apparatus. Although not given its present name until 1935, the museum began in 1924. In that year, the collection of early instruments in the possession of Lewis Evans (whose brother Sir Arthur

Michel Foucault: Foucault’s ideas: …Histoire de la sexualité (1976; The History of Sexuality) was his exposé of the Frankensteinian machinations that had resulted in the naturalization of the dividing line between the “homosexual” and the “heterosexual.” Yet even in these luminous “histories of the present” something still remained out of view: human freedom. In…

The History of Sir Charles Grandison, epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, published in seven volumes in 1754. The work was his last completed novel, and it anticipated the novel of manners of such authors as Jane Austen. Sir Charles Grandison is a gallant nobleman known for his heroic integrity

George Ticknor: …to work on his monumental History of Spanish Literature, which was published in three volumes in 1849. It was the first comprehensive study of Spanish literature. Ticknor was a founder of the Boston Public Library in 1848 and bequeathed to the library his valuable collection of books on Spanish literature.…

Jean, sire de Joinville: …the author of the famous Histoire de Saint-Louis, a chronicle in French prose, providing a supreme account of the Seventh Crusade (1248–54).

tapestry: 15th century: …determined by comparison with the History of St. Piat and St. Eleuthère. One of the finest works so attributed is the early 14th-century fragment from the set in the Museo Civico at Padua, Italy, illustrating the Geste of Jourdain de Blaye, a medieval chivalric story adapted from the ancient Greco-Roman…

William Marsden: The History of Sumatra that resulted (London, 1783) was the first detailed account of Sumatra to appear in any language. It contained copious material on flora and fauna, economic products, social organization, religion, language, and much else, all arranged on the current scientific principles. Marsden was…