Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland: England

Raphael HolinshedProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.3
Word count
310K words
Chapters
31

Tags

English Originals World History Military StrategyEnglish HistoryPower SuccessionHistorical SourcesAcademic StudyChronicle HistoryAntiquarian HistoryFolk OriginsEnglish CountrysideTudor Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (07 of 12)Author: Holinshed, Raphael, -1580?,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Apr 28, 2014

Editor's review

This chronicle is the seventh installment of the England section of Holinshed's six-volume Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, reissued as a public-domain ebook that opens a door onto the way history was written in the Tudor age. Its value lies not in modern historical scholarship but in showing how sixteenth-century Englishmen organized and narrated their own past: the arrangement of materials, the narrative voice, and the moral judgments all bear the clear stamp of their time. For readers familiar with Shakespeare's plays it is especially useful, since several of his history plays drew on Holinshed's chronicle; reading the two side by side reveals the difference between the historical source and its literary adaptation. The text is in the original English and is of installment length, making it suitable as supporting material for the study of early modern English historiography, literary background, or textual transmission, and as casual reading for anyone interested in the intellectual atmosphere of the Elizabethan age. A caveat: this is not a popular history, and the original spelling and conventions demand some patience.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the introduction or the note on the edition to understand the installment's place in the whole and its conventions.
  2. Read alongside the relevant Shakespeare history plays to observe the differences between source and dramatic adaptation.
  3. Do not get bogged down in archaic spelling; first grasp the narrative thread and the tone of moral judgment.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31

FAQ

Is this book a complete chronicle of England? No. It is the seventh installment of the England section within Holinshed's six-volume chronicle, an excerpted electronic volume rather than a full general history. Readers should first understand its place in the overall structure and avoid using it as a complete history of England.
What level of English is needed to read this book? The text preserves sixteenth-century English, with spelling and syntax that differ from modern English, so good reading ability is required, ideally with background in early modern English or English history. Readers with only general English are advised to use a modern annotated edition or a related scholarly introduction.
What is its connection to Shakespeare? Holinshed's chronicle is one of the key sources for several of Shakespeare's history plays. Reading this installment helps in understanding the original narrative form from which the plays drew, but the book itself is a chronicle text, not a drama, and contains no text of Shakespeare's plays.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Raphael Holinshed Author · British

Raphael Holinshed (died perhaps 1580) was an English chronicler. Public information about his life is limited, and later generations have known him chiefly through the historical work he edited. Employed by the London publisher Wolfe, he presided over the compilation of the first edition of the Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1577. The chronicle recounts the events and figures of the history of the British Isles in annalistic form, drawing on earlier writings and documents; its narrative is detailed and carries a strong tone of political and moral instruction. The work circulated widely and became a principal source for Shakespeare's history plays and for Macbeth, bridging English historiography and literature. The collection contains 27 works related to him.