An examination of historical writing during the "long 19th century" - the years from the French Revolution to those just after World War I. Donald R. Kelley provides a comprehensive analysis of the theories and practices of British, French, German, Italian and American schools of historical thought, their principal figures, and their distinctive methods and self-understandings. Kelley treats the modern traditions of European world and national historiography from the Enlightenment to the "new histories" of the 20th century, attending not only to major authors and schools but also to methods, scholarship, criticisms, controversies, ideological questions and relations to other disciplines.

Donald R. Kelley is James Westfall Thompson Professor of History at Rutgers University and executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.

"Kelley is a master in his field, the history of historical thought. His latest book combines a broad sweep with an enviable command of context and detail." Peter Burke, Cambridge University