The English Historical Review (Volume 26) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911. Excerpt: ... Reviews of Books Quellenkunde zur Weltgeschichte: ein Handbuch. Unter Mitwirkung von Dr. Adolf Hofmeister und Dr. Rudolf Stube, bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Dr. Paul Herre. (Leipzig: Weicher, 1910.) In this volume of four hundred pages, of which eighty pages are a threecolumn index, Dr. Herre and his collaborators have attempted to compile a guide-book to universal history. The entries in each division or subdivision are arranged under different heads, original authorities, modern authorities, national or provincial, law, institutions, the church, intellectual and material conditions, &c. In addition, they are printed in large or small type and grouped according to the relative importance which they possess in the minds of the authors. The arrangement, though intelligible enough, is too elaborate. For example, no advantage is gained by the more or less distant separation of general works dealing with a particular country during a particular period from special works; the number of cross-references is in any case so large that it might have been increased with a gain in simplicity. But criticism will be directed not so much to the method as to the achievement of the authors. Their task is a most difficult one: we are reminded in the preface that M. Langlois regards hope of success as a delusion. As the authors modestly admit, the work must be approached from the point of view of their nationality; the treatment must become less and less intense as the subjects are further removed from German interests. The work of historians who do not use the ordinary Teutonic or Romance languages has wisely been omitted from the lists, except in special and unavoidable cases. Subject to these limitations, a book of this kind should satisfy a few definite conditions. ...