The Letters of Thomas Babington MacAulay: Volume 4, September 1841-December 1848: September 1841-December 1848 v. 4

by ThomasPinney (Editor), ThomasMacaulay (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $45.98

  The fourth volume of Thomas Pinney's acclaimed edition of Macaulay's letters covers the period between September 1841 and December 1848, in which Macaulay is shown keeping up an active political life as MP for Edinburgh and member of Lord John Russell's Whig Cabinet. At the same time his literary reputation is extended by The Lays of Ancient Rome, the collected Essays, and, at the end of the period spanned by this volume, the triumphant publication of the first two volumes of the History of England. In the same years Macaulay was enjoying perhaps the most satisfactory period of his private life: we see him comfortably established in the Albany, enjoying the society of his sister and her family, taking part as a leading figure in Whig political and literary circles, and confidently at work on the book which was to crown his fame.

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $45.91

  Some of Macaulay's letters were printed in nineteenth-century memoirs, but a 'Complete Letters' of this eminent Victorian has long been needed. Professor Pinney is editing the whole body of surviving letters by Macaulay, giving accurate texts and textual and explanatory notes. The letters are in chronological order, grouped by historical theme and phases of Macaulay's life. The first two volumes deal with his childhood, career at Cambridge, early legal career and early political career, and end with him about to leave for India. The letters are lively because Macaulay (as lawyer, essayist, historian, politician, administrator, poet) was a man of enormous energy and very wide interests. They will add greatly to our sense of early Victorian political and cultural life as well as to our understanding of Macaulay himself.