Difference between revisions of "History of England during the Reigns of K. William, Q. Anne, and K. George I"

Revision as of 15:58, 6 September 2023

by James Ralph

The History of England during the Reigns of K. William, Q. Anne, and K. George I
Title not held by The Wolf Law Library at the College of William & Mary.
Author	James Ralph
Editor
Translator
Published	London: Printed by D.Browne, for F. Cogan
Date	1744-1746
Edition	English
Language
Volumes	volume set
Pages
Desc.

James Ralph (d. 1762) spent his younger years in Philadelphia, where he was acquainted with Benjamin Franklin and aspired to be a poet.^[1] In 1724, he abandoned his family and moved to London where he lived on money borrowed from Franklin and found work teaching at a village school.^[2] Later on, Ralph and Franklin had a falling out when Franklin made sexual advances towards Ralph’s mistress. In 1727 he resumed his literary career, publishing a book of poetry known as The Tempest, or, The Terrors of Death.^[3]

The history of England during the reigns of King William, Queen Anne, and King George I, with an introductory review of the reigns of the royal brothers Charles and James, published in two volumes (1744-6), was Ralph’s most important work and intended as a continuation of William Guthrie’s History of England.^[4] However, the title is misleading because the work does not progress past King William’s reign.^[5]

Although the work sold poorly, it is still noteworthy for several reasons. Ralph incorporated far more documents into his analysis than his contemporary, Paul de Rapin-Thoyras, had used when writing his own English history.^[6] Additionally, he was the first historian to examine the origins of the revolution of 1688 in depth and his work focused on economics and the financial revolution of the 1690s more than others covering the same period.^[7] Finally, he departed from the norm of writing history from a partisan standpoint and pointed out the biases and errors in his predecessors’ analysis.^[8]

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as "Guthrie's history of England & Ralph's continuation 5.v. fol." and given by Thomas Jefferson to his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph. Later appeared on Randolph's 1832 estate inventory as "Ralph's Continuation of the History of England 2 [vols. ], $10.00." According to the English Short Title Catalogue, Ralph only published one edition — in London (1744-1746). Both George Wythe's Library on LibraryThing^[9] and the Brown Bibliography^[10] list Ralph's The History of England: during the Reigns of K. William, Q. Anne, and K. George I.

As yet, the Wolf Law Library has been unable to find a copy of this title.

See also

• A General History of England: From the Invasion of the Romans under Julius Cæsar to the Late Revolution in MDCLXXXIII
• Jefferson Inventory
• Wythe's Library

References

1. ↑ Laird, Okie, "Ralph, James (d. 1762)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; "Ralph, James," in Appletons' Cyclopedia of American Biography, v. 5, eds. James Grant Wilson and John Fisk (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1900), 164.
2. ↑ Ibid.
3. ↑ Okie, "Ralph, James".
4. ↑ Ibid.
5. ↑ Ibid.
6. ↑ Ibid.
7. ↑ Ibid.
8. ↑ Ibid.
9. ↑ LibraryThing, s.v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on July 17, 2023.
10. ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433.

External Links

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