I. The origin of the Cambridge Modern History

Abstract

It will soon be half a century since the Cambridge Modern History was planned: the first entry relating to it in the minutes of the Syndics of the University Press is dated 13 March 1896. It is forty-three years since the first volume was published, and throughout that time the history has held its own as one of the indispensable books. It was the parent of all the other Cambridge Histories, of which there are eight series down to the present time. No other modern general history on anything like the same scale has been written or even projected in the English language, and this is a testimony not only to its usefulness but also to the efficiency of those who produced it. The time from the publication of the first volume to that of the last, the Atlas, was only ten years; and perhaps only those who have been concerned in similar enterprises can tell what energy and competence that implies. There were 160 contributors. Some of them, though it seems not so many as twenty, are happily still living and working; but they would probably agree that the Cambridge Modern History, taken as a whole, is a monument of a stage in English historical studies which may now be regarded not unfairly as a past stage.