Skip to content

Chapter I: Part I: , by Keatinge and Frazer, pp. 377-381. However, we have no wish

Text size

to prescribe for the teacher the manner in which he shall exercise his craft, but simply to provide him and his pupils with materials hitherto not readily accessible for school purposes. The very moderate price of the books in this series should bring them within the reach of every secondary school. Source books enable the pupil to take a more active part than hitherto in the history lesson. Here is the apparatus, the raw material: its use we leave to teacher and taught.

Our belief is that the books may profitably be used by all grades of historical students between the standards of fourth-form boys in secondary schools and undergraduates at Universities. What differentiates students at one extreme from those at the other is not so much the kind of subject-matter dealt with, as the amount they can read into or extract from it.

In regard to choice of subject-matter, while trying to satisfy the natural demand for certain “stock” documents of vital importance, we hope to introduce much fresh and novel matter. It is our intention that the majority of the extracts should be lively in style--that is, personal, or descriptive, or rhetorical, or even strongly partisan--and should not so much profess to give the truth as supply data for inference. We aim at the greatest possible variety, and lay under contribution letters, biographies, ballads and poems, diaries, debates, and newspaper accounts. Economics, London, municipal, and social life generally, and local history, are represented in these pages.

The order of the extracts is strictly chronological, each being numbered, titled, and dated, and its authority given. The text is modernised, where necessary, to the extent of leaving no difficulties in reading.

We shall be most grateful to teachers and students who may send us suggestions for improvement.

S. E. WINBOLT. KENNETH BELL.

NOTE TO THIS VOLUME

It will be obvious from the Table of Contents that, though there is a great wealth of illustrative matter for this period, I have preferred to draw largely upon the _Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester_, published in three volumes in 1861, and the _Despatches of the Duke of Wellington_, by Lieutenant-Colonel Gurwood. The latter is a very convenient selection. The title of the volume is justified by the fact that some eighteen out of the forty-eight pieces have more or less direct reference to England’s struggle with Napoleon.

S. E. W.

CHRIST’S HOSPITAL, _October, 1912_.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DATE TITLE PAGE

Comments

Log in to leave a comment.

England and Napoleon (1801-1815)Chapter I: Part I: , by Keatinge and Frazer, pp. 377-381. However, we have no wish

0%2 min left in chapter