Richard Jefferies is most often remembered and read as a writer on wild life and as the author of Bevis. His novels and strange autobiographical writings are largely forgotten; his agricultural writings — with the exception of Hodge and His Masters — are equally neglected. But it was with three letters on the Wiltshire labourer which appeared in the Times in 1872 that Jefferies first reached a more than local readership. During most of the 1870s he earned his living as an agricultural journalist, and such was his reputation that he was writing leading articles for a national farming weekly and essays on farming topics for the principal reviews when he was still only in his late twenties. Until his early death in 1887 he remained an occasional writer on fanning and the countryside.

The son of a not very successful small farmer, Jefferies was a realist rather than a romantic when writing on rural and agricultural topics. As a countryman he was both knowledgeable and exceptionally observant. His native north Wiltshire afforded him examples of several systems (and standards) of fanning and of a variety of views on the nature of the depression. His journalistic activity covered the last prosperous years of “high farming” in the late 1860s and the first decade of depression from the early 1870s to the early 1880s. This was a period of increasing difficulty for a large number of farmers and landowners, culminating in the almost universally disastrous summer of 1879.

Of the many books which have been written about Edmund Burke, very few compare in importance with a book which was never written. Burke's “official biography” was first promised by his literary executors four years after his death; it was to be the final volume in their edition of his Works. When contemporaries realised, as they soon did, that the bringing out of the Works was going to take many years, some guessed that the biography might be postponed indefinitely. Sir James Mackintosh late in 1806, having remarked of Burke that “perhaps a fit biographer is more important to his just fame than ever such a person was before to a great man,” added a sharp comment:

Alas! it was exactly the case. When Dr. French Laurence, the most energetic of Burke's literary executors, died in 1809, he had seen through the press four volumes of the octavo edition of the Works but no portion of the promised biography. He had collected biographical materials, which are still among Burke's papers, but nothing was thrown into form. His collaborator and successor, Dr. Walker King, went on collecting materials, and renewed the promise of a biography, but he too put off its execution until his other tasks could be accomplished.

British historians agree that from 1756 to 1761 William Pitt was the driving force behind England's victories in the Seven Years' War. Historians are divided, however, in their assessment of Pitt's relations with his generals. Basil Williams concisely stated one position when he linked success with Pitt's “wise choice of commanders on land and sea.” Julian S. Corbett best represents the opposite opinion. “It is commonplace,” he observed, “to credit him [Pitt] with a remarkable talent for choosing commanders. Yet surely no great War Minister ever appointed so many bad ones.”

The lines for debate are clear, and the question is vital for a general interpretation of Pitt's career and England's role in the war. Surprisingly, modern students of the elder Pitt have uncritically followed the opinion represented by Williams, and they have disregarded Eric McDermott's call in 1955 for a fresh examination of the “Great Commoner” and civil-military relations during the war. This essay deals with the question by telling the story of three English military operations on the French coast in 1757 and 1758. They are important in themselves for what they reveal about military planning and execution. More important, the story supports Corbett's conclusion by shedding light on the relationship between Pitt in London and the commanders in the field.

Pitt came to power when the country's military fortunes were at their lowest point. General Braddock's defeat in western Pennsylvania and the loss of Minorca, the Royal Navy's best base in the Mediterranean, punctuated the pre-war hostilities with France. At home, the armed services were undermanned, and abroad the search for allies left England with Prussia to face the combined forces of France, Austria and Russia.

This review article has a conventional purpose, namely, to assess the contributions made by thirteen recent books, most by British historians, to the history of British foreign policy and the European states system during the revolutionary, Napoleonic, and post-Napoleonic eras. There is, however, a problem. None of the books is conventional diplomatic history. Almost half relate only indirectly to foreign policy, while for the remainder foreign policy constitutes only part of their subject matter. The review therefore consciously runs two risks: that of judging the books by inappropriate standards and that of drawing conclusions about current historiography in this field and period from an inappropriate sample. The reader will have to judge whether the results justify the procedure.

Geoffrey Best's War and Society in Revolutionary Europe illustrates the problem. Best clearly succeeds in his goal of going beyond the study of military organizations to the study of war itself as a “unique human interest and activity.” The book is far-ranging, delightfully written, based on wide reading, and packed with insights. It also contributes substantially to the history of international politics, mainly by demonstrating how powerful an impact armies and combat had. Yet from the political historian's standpoint there is ground for some frustration as well as for pleasure. Best's descriptions of how armies developed from the Old Regime into the nineteenth century and his analyses of the impact of war in 1792–1815 are excellent for France and Britain and adequate for Prussia and Spain.

Whereas both Houses of the Parliament of England have been necessitated to undertake a war in their just and lawful defense … all oaths, declarations, and proclamations against both or either of the Houses of Parliament … or their ordinances and proceedings, or any for adhering unto them, or for doing or executing any office, place or charge, by any authority derived from them; and all judgments, indictments, outlawries, attainders and inquisitions in any the said causes … be declared null, suppressed, and forbidden. (From the first of nineteen Newcastle Propositions, July 1646; expanded from the first of twenty-seven Propositions of Uxbridge, November 1644; repeated in the second of The Four Bills, December 1647)

Indemnity Committee cases from the 1647–55 manuscripts indicate a widespread volume of suits pressed against parliament's Civil War and Commonwealth officeholders. Invariably, the officials petitioning the Indemnity Committee were under prosecution. Often they had been fined and even jailed. Also revealed in these papers is a public knowledgeable in the law and ready to wield its power in punishing an array of officials in London and the shires. Four broad conclusions are asserted here. First, the Indemnity Committee records reflect a massive legal assault on state officials from the beginning of the Civil War to the mid-1650s, a factor in the political, administrative, and social history of the period that has heretofore been ignored. Second, suits were lodged mainly as the result of actions stemming from fiscal innovations put into place by a parliament that pushed toward victory and then struggled to pay its war debts.

This essay examines the history of the safety razor in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. In so doing, it explores male shaving practices and the male investment in physical appearance in the age of industrial capitalism. In highlighting the history of a single material artifact to showcase the relationship between masculinity, good grooming, personal success, and notions of self-improvement, this essay also underscores the growing influence of American products in British life, the intricacies of the consumer economy, and the increasing sophistication of advertising practices.

This article explores the events surrounding the Monitor controversy, which stemmed from radical criticism of the crown's conservative approach to the war between Spain and Great Britain in 1762. While some observers wished to quickly bring the war to an end, others expressed more radical plans for the destruction of the Spanish Empire. When the crown retaliated against prominent agitators with a round of arrests designed to silence their dissent, the result was a succession of legal cases that culminated with Entick v. Carrington in 1765. In their arguments, the plaintiffs expressed concern that the British Empire was seemingly in danger of evolving into an oppressive, allegedly “Spanish” style of polity. These legal processes and the precedents they set were critical to the development of protected space for political dissent in the British Empire, and affirmed a more broadly participatory model for the future development of imperial policy.