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From Amateur to Professional: The Case of the Oxbridge Historians
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2023
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“What was wrong with the historical reaction at the end of Victoria's reign, was not the positive stress it laid on the need for scientific method in weighing evidence, but its negative repudiation of the literary art, which was declared to have nothing whatever to do with the historian's task.” Writing in 1945, G.M. Trevelyan was overly pessimistic in assuming that this “negative repudiation” had completely destroyed “literary” history in an age of professionalization; John Osborne uses Trevelyan's own success to convince us of the continued vigor of the belletristic tradition in the twentieth century. Both Trevelyan's anxieties and the fact that they proved unfounded are significant, however, for they help us to focus on important issues in the emergence of professional historiography in England.
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- Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 1983
References
1 G.M. Trevelyan, History and the Reader (London, 1945), p. 11.
2 John W. Osborne, “The Endurance of ‘Literary’ History in Great Britain: Charles Oman, G.M. Trevelyan, and the Genteel Tradition,” Clio, 2 (1972), 7-17.
3 Phillip Elliott, The Sociology of the Professions (New York, 1972), pp. 55-56 discusses the overlap between the gentlemanly and occupational models of professionalism, particularly at the universities. On this point see also Sheldon Rothblatt, The Revolution of the Dons (New York, 1968), pp. 90-91.
4 For such generalizations see, for instance, Richard A. E. Brooks, “The Development of the Historical Mind,” in The Reinterpretation of Victorian Literature, ed. Joseph E. Baker (Princeton, 1950), p. 137 or J.R. Hale, The Evolution of British Historiography (New York, 1964), p. 56. Although T.W. Heyck's concern is not professionalization per se, he uses historians as one example of the withdrawal of intellectuals from the needs and interests of the general public in his “From Men of Letters to Intellectuals: The Transformation of Intellectual Life in Nineteenth-Century England,” Journal of British Studies, 20 (1980), 158-83.
5 G.M. Trevelyan, Clio, A Muse and Other Essays (London, 1931), p. 160.
6 T.B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, ed. Lady Trevelyan (London, 1866), I, 162.
7 Thomas Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, centenary ed. (London, 1896-99), II, 86. James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects (London, 1867), I, 24.
8 James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London 1834-1881 (London, 1884), I, 75.
9 Macaulay, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, II, 167.
10 Thomas Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, 2nd ed. (London, 1843), p. 306.
11 See also J.W. Burrow's discussion of the ways Victorian Whigs, in an attempt to arrange some compromise with the Humean tradition, made progress traditional and innovation preservative, A Liberal Descent (Cambridge, 1981).
12 This definition is offered as a consensus that avoids some of the knottier problems of how to define professionalization. It draws from William Goode, “Community within a Community: The Professions,” American Sociological Review, 22 (1957), 194-200; Bernard Barber, “Some Problems in the Sociology of the Professions,” Daedalus, 92 (1963), 669-88; Everett C. Hughes, “Professions,” Daedalus, 92 (1963), 655-68; and Phillip Elliott, The Sociology of the Professions, p. 5. Opposing definitions of professionalization with particular relevance to Victorian and Edwardian England are surveyed by Elliott, pp. 55-56, and by Susan F. Cannon, Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period (New York, 1978), pp. 147-63. Andrew Abbott's analysis of differences between public and professional perceptions of professional status suggests that in some respects the case of the British historian is a variation of conflicts inherent in professionalization: “Status and Strain in the Professions,” American Journal of Sociology, 86 (1981), 819-35.
13 For a discussion of the research ideal, see Sheldon Rothblatt, Tradition and Change in English Liberal Education (London, 1976), pp. 157ff.
14 E. A. Freeman, The Methods of Historical Study (London, 1886), pp. 17-18,270.
15 William Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History, 3rd. ed. (Oxford, 1900), pp. 14, 110.
16 Lord Acton, Essays in the Liberal Interpretation of History, ed. William McNeill (Chicago, 1967), pp. 329, 332.
17 Quoted in Frederick York Powell and Charles Firth, “Two Oxford Historians,” Quarterly Review, 195 (1902), 560.
18 Acton, Essays, pp. 397-98.
19 J.N. Figgis and R.V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, (London, 1917), I, 309.
20 J.H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1895), p. x. “Minute sifting” is an allusion to Lord Kelvin's presidential address to the Royal Society in 1871. The comment about research is quoted in P.B.M. Blaas, Continuity and Anachronism (The Hague, 1978), p. 56.
21 See, e.g., C.E. Appleton, “Economic Aspects of the Endowment of Research,” Fortnightly Review, 22 O.S. (Oct. 1974), 521-22. See also essays by Mark Pattison and A.H. Sayce in Essays on the Endowment of Research (London, 1876).
22 J.R. Seeley, “Political Somnambulism,” Macmillan's Magazine, 43 (Nov. 1880), 43; the essay attacks Carlyle as a “literary historian pure and simple.”
23 Herbert A.L. Fisher, “Modern Historians and Their Methods,” Fortnightly Review, 62 O.S. (Dec. 1894), 811.
24 Freeman, The Methods of Historical Study, pp. 86, 90-1.
25 Richard Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-1900 (Chicago, 1957), chaps. 13 and 15.
26 See, e.g., Margaret Oliphant, “The Byways of Literature,” Blackwood's Magazine, 84 (Aug. 1858), 200-16; Thomas Wright, “On a Possible Popular Culture,” Contemporary Review, 40 (July 1881), 25-44; B.G. Johns, “The Literature of the Streets,” Edinburgh Review, 165 (Jan. 1887), 40-65; and Edward Dowden, “Hopes and Fears for Literature,” Fortnightly Review, 51 O.S. (Feb. 1889), 166-83.
27 E.A. Freeman, “The Art of History-Making,” Saturday Review, 17 Nov. 1855, p. 52.
28 Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures, pp. 58-59, 114, 61-62.
29 Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, p. 99.
30 J.R. Seeley, “History and Politics - Part IV,” Macmillan's Magazine, 41 (Nov. 1879), 32; “The Teaching of History,” in Methods of Teaching History, ed. G. Stanley Hall, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1896), p. 194.
31 Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, pp. 139-40.
32 Mandell Creighton, “Picturesqueness in History,” Cornhill Magazine, 75 O.S. (March 1897), 305.
33 H.A. L. Fisher, “Modern Historians and Their Methods,” p. 812.
34 Frederic Harrison, Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and Other Literary Estimates (London, 1900), p. 233.
35 E.A. Freeman, “On The Study of History,” Fortnightly Review, 35 |(O.S.(March, 1881)], 329. For Round's attacks, see particularly Feudal England, pp. 391, 393.
36 J.B. Bury, Selected Essays, ed. Harold Temperley (Cambridge, 1930), p. 3. See Doris Goldstein's analysis of tensions and ambiguities in Bury's position, “J.B. Bury's Philosophy of History: A Reappraisal,” AHR, 82 (1977), 896-919.
37 On Maitland see Andrew Lang's comments in “History as she ought to be wrote,” Blackwood's Magazine, 166 (Aug. 1899), 266. On Stubbs see Burrow, A Liberal Descent, pp. 137, 145-46, and Robert Brentano, “The Sound of Stubbs,” Journal of British Studies, 6 (1966-67), 1-14.
38 For an account of the Saturday Review's campaign against “literary” history, see Merle Bevington, The Saturday Review: 1855 1868 (New York, 1941), pp. 233-46. Freeman began to review Froude's History with vol. VII in 1864; see Bevington pp. 343-44 for a complete list of reviews. Freeman continued his attacks in reviews of Froude's Life and Tunes of Thomas Becket in the Contemporary Review, 31 (March 1878), 821-42, 32 (April 1878), 116-39, 32 (June, 1878), 474-500, (33 Sept. 1878), 213-41, and summed up in “Last Words on Mr. Froude,” in the Contemporary, 35 (May 1879), 214-36. He first used the term “constitutional inaccuracy.” “Froude's disease” had become a catchphrase for chronic inaccuracy by 1898; see Charles Langlois and Charles Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of History, trans. G.G. Berry (London, 1898), p. 125.
39 E.A. Freeman, “Froude's Reign of Elizabeth - Vol. Ill,” Saturday Review, 27 Oct. 1866, p. 519; “Froude's Reign of Elizabeth (first notice).” Saturday Review 16 Jan. 1864, pp. 80-81; “Froude's Reign of Elizabeth (concluding notice),” Saturday Review, 30 Jan. 1864, p. 143; Methods of Historical Study, p. 102.
40 Letters of John Richard Green, ed. Leslie Stephen (New York, 1901), p. 445.
41 Margaret Oliphant, “New Books,” Blackwood's Magazine, 118 (July 1875), 90; James Bryce, “John Richard Green,” in Studies in Contemporary Biography (1903; rpt. New York, 1927), p. 142; J.S. Brewer, “Green's History of the English People,” Quarterly Review, 141 (April 1876), 286; James Rowley, “Mr. Green's Short History of the English People: Is it Trustworthy?” Fraser's Magazine, 92 (Sept. 1875), 408.
42 Letters of John Richard Green, pp. 258-59, 482.
43 Ibid., pp. 433-36.
44 Prefatory Note,” English Historical Review, 1 (Jan 1886), 5.
45 Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton (London, 1904), I, 337.
46 “Prefatory Note,” English Historical Review, p. 5.
47 Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, pp. 343-44.
48 Gardiner's Personal Government of Charles I.,” Saturday Review, 22 Dec. 1877, p. 774; J.K. Laughton, “Gardiner's History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate 1649-60, Vol. III,” English Historical Review, 13 (1898), 167; J.R. Seeley, “History of the Great Civil War,” Academy, 21 May 1887, pp. 353-54; see also F. York Powell, “S.R. Gardiner,” English Historical Review, 17 (1902), 275-79.
49 “Gardiner's History of England,” Athenaeum, 21 March 1863, p. 392; “Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage,” Athenaeum, 8 May 1869, pp. 629-30; see also A.V. Dicey, “Gardiner's History,” Nation, 11 April 1895, p. 280; F.W. Warre- Cornish, “Gardiner's Protectorate,” Quarterly Review. 187 (April 1898), 446-70; G.L. Beer, “Gardiner: An Appreciation,” Critic, 38 (1901), 546-47.
50 William Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures, p. vii. F.W. Maitland, “William Stubbs,” English Historical Review. 16 (1901), 421 claims Stubbs as a fellow professional while admitting his defects for the general audience. H. Adams criticizes Stubbs for the same defects, “Stubbs’ Constitutional History of England,” North American Review, 119 (1874), 235.
51 Samuel Crothers, “That History Should be Readable,” in The Gentle Reader (New York, 1903), pp. 167-200; Augustine Birrell, “The Muse of History” in Obiter Dicta (New York, 1887), I, 196-223; Andrew Lang, “History as she ought to be wrote.“
52 Lang, “History as she ought to be wrote,” pp. 268. 272.
53 Charles Colby, “Historical Synthesis,” in Congress of Arts and Sciences, ed Howard Rogers (Boston, 1906), II, 48. This is part of the proceedings from the session on Historical Sciences, held as part of the 1904 St. Louis Exposition.
54 Reprinted in Frederic Harrison, The Meaning of History: see pp. 105, 135-37.
55 John Morley, Critical Miscellanies (London, 1886), III, 9; Diderot and the Encyclopedists (London, 1886), II, 212.
56 James Hobson, “The Academic Spirit in Education,” Contemporary Review, 63 (Feb. 1893), 240.
57 James Bryce, “The Future of English Universities,” Fort nightly Review, 39 O.S. (March 1883), 387.
58 Lang, “History as she ought to be wrote,” p. 268.
59 G.M. Trevelyan, Clio, A Muse, pp. 174-75.
60 Sir Charles Oman, On the Writing of History (New York, 1939), p. 230.
61 E.G.W. Bill, University Reform in Nineteenth Century Oxford (Oxford, 1973), p. 97.
62 Arthur Kngel, “Emerging Concepts of the Academic Profession at Oxford 1800-1854,” in the The University in Society, ed. Laurence Stone (Princeton, 1974), I, 349.
63 Ibid., pp. 347-48. Engel also points out that while the number of professorial chairs increased to 47 in 1892 from 25 in 1850, there were still not enough for these to be viewed as the normal promotion for college dons; see p. 351. The interdependence of specialization and academic professionalism discussed by Rothblatt, Tradition and Change, pp. 185-86 was, in the period I discuss, not yet decisive in determining professional advancement for tutors.
64 A.T. Milne, “History at the Universities: Then and Now,” History, 59 (1974), 40.
65 R.W. Southern, The Shape and Substance of Academic History (Oxford, 1901), p. 18.
66 The following account is drawn from Jean O. McLachlan, “The Origin and Early Development of the Cambridge Historical Tripos,” Cambridge Historical Journal, 9 (1947-49), 78-105 and from George Kitson Clark, “A Hundred Years of the Teaching of History at Cambridge, 1873-1973,” Historical Journal, 16 (1973), 535-53.
67 Quoted by McLachlan, p. 95.
68 Milne, “History at the Universities,” p. 39. Tout explicitly modeled historical training on the research methods of the “experimental sciences“: see H.B. Charlton, Portrait of a University, 1851-1951 (Manchester, 1951), p. 88.
69 Rothblatt, Revolution of the Dons, p. 179.
70 E.A. Freeman, Historical Essays, Fourth Series (London, 1892), p. 201.
71 Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, p. 40.
72 William Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures, pp. 21, 10.
73 Lord Acton, Essays in the Liberal Interpretation of History, pp. 311-12, 359.
74 McLachlan, “Cambridge Historical Tripos,” p. 87; E.S. de Beer, “Sir Charles Firth 1857-1936,” History, 21 (1936-37), 4: Oman, On the Writing of History, p. 253; Gareth Stedman Jones, “The Pathology of English History,” New Left Review, 46 (1967), 32.
75 C.H.A. Fifoot, ed., The Letters of Frederic William Maitland (Cambridge, 1965), p. 349.
76 Milne, “History at the Universities,” p. 37.
77 Kitson Clark, “A Hundred Years of the Teaching of History,” p. 552; Southern, The Shape and Substance of Academic History, p. 18.
78 Doris Goldstein in “J.B. Bury's Philosophy of History: A Reappraisal” stresses Bury's departures from the providentiality in nineteenth-century assumptions about history. My reading of her evidence sees his agreement with the Victorian tradition as more significant than his differences. See in particular Bury's belief in the practical value of historical study, discussed on p. 914.
79 I disagree with P.B.M. Blaas's Kuhnian view that the early professional school had overthrown the Whig paradigm by the early twentieth century. Some of his own evidence suggests that the change was far from so conclusive and not complete so early. See, e.g., his remarks on administrative history, Continuity and Anachronism, pp. 293-95, 364, 373.
80 Blaas, p. 367.
81 Gareth Stedman Jones, “The Pathology of English History,” pp. 41-42.
82 Georg Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography (Middletown, Conn. 1975), pp. 21, 30-31. Jones offers a more polemical account of the connections between political apologetics and historiographical conservativism in “The Pathology of English History.“
83 Jones, “The Pathology of English History,” p. 31; Kitson Clark, “A Hundred Years of the Teaching of History,” p. 538.
84 G.N. Clark, “The Origin of the Cambridge Modern History,” Cambridge Historical Journal, 8 (1945), 57-64; Felix Gilbert, “European and American Historiography,” in History, by John Higham with Leonard Kreiger and Felix Gilbert (Englewood Cliffs, 1965), p. 345.
85 R.W. Southern, The Shape and Substance of Academic History, pp. 5, 17.
86 Elliott, The Sociology of the Professions, p. 47; see also Christopher Kent, Brains and Numbers (Toronto, 1978), pp. 17-18.
87 Elliott, pp. 49, 54-55. See also Joseph Ben-David and Z. Zloczower, “Universities and Academic Systems in Modern Societies,” European Journal of Sociology, 3 (1962), 45-84.
88 Ben-David and Zloczower, “Universities and Academic Systems,” pp. 63-64, A.L. Halsey and M.A. Trow, The British Academics (London, 1971), p. 40.
89 Milne, “History at the Universities,” p. 43. A typical result of efforts to professionalize teaching is William A. J. Archbold (ed.) Essays on the Teaching of History (Cambridge, 1901).
90 H.J. Perkin, Key Profession: A History of the Association of University Teachers (New York, 1969), p. 5. See also Ben-David and Zloczower, pp. 69-70.
91 Halsey and Trow, The British Academics, pp. 239-40; see also their survey of attitudes toward teaching and research, pp. 280ff.
92 Ben Knights, The Idea of the Clenny in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 211-12 makes this argument for university education in general.
93 See, e.g., Blaas's account of the lack of cooperation Col. Wedgewood met with from Namier and J.E. Neale for his proposed biographical history of parliament, pp. 332-34.
94 Ben-David and Zloczower, “Universities and Academic Systems,” p. 66.
95 Felix Gilbert, “European and American Historiography,” p. 336.
96 Higham, Kreiger, and Gilbert, History, p. 14.
97 Laurence Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965) and Burton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976) examine the different relationships between teaching and academic professionalism in American universities.
98 Higham, Kreiger, and Gilbert, History, p. 19. The Ph.D. and D.Phil, degrees were not introduced at British universities until near the end of the first world war.
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