"A SUCCESS SUCH AS NO HISTORICAL WORK IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE HAS HAD SINCE GIBBON": MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, HANDSOMELY BOUND

MACAULAY, Thomas Babington. The History of England from the Accession of James the Second. WITH: Miscellaneous Works of Lord Macaulay. Edited by his Sister Lady Trevelyan. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1899. Ten volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter brown morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, marbled boards and endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and partly unopened. $3000.

Later edition of Macaulay's enormously influential history, together with a collection of his famous essays and orations, handsomely bound by Dutton.

"The first historical work deliberately designed to outsell the best-selling novel of the day, Macaulay's book [The History of England] immediately fulfilled its author's aspiration. His colourful style and stirring power of description secured for the History a success such as no historical work in the English language has had since Gibbon… the numerous reprints and translations into almost every literary language have perpetuated Macaulay's ideas almost to this day… The hero of the book is William III, and its aim the justification of the 'Glorious Revolution' which, by the mid-nineteenth century had, in Macaulay's opinion, produced 'the most enlightened generation of the most enlightened people that ever existed'" (PMM 328). The five volume Miscellaneous Works includes his essays from The Edinburgh Review and parliamentary speeches. With an engraved frontispiece portrait of Macaulay. History first published in 1848.

A handsome set in fine condition.