The Journals of Thomas Babington Macaulay

This five-volume critical edition presents the lively and candid diary of Thomas Macaulay, Victorian statesman, historian and author of The History of England. Spanning the period 1838 to 1859, the journal is the longest work from Macaulay’s pen to remain unpublished. It is the most revealing of all his writings. These unique manuscripts are now held at Trinity College, Cambridge. They have never been published before.

Macaulay was acutely aware of the verdict of posterity and never published anything he had not carefully revised and polished. But when he wrote the Journal, the masks were put aside. He knew the leading Liberal politicians, most importantly Lord Lansdowne, Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell. He was closest to the writers and scholars who frequented the Athenaeum, like Dean Milman, Henry Hallam, George Cornewall Lewis, and the economist Nassau Senior. He knew Thackeray, Dickens, Carlyle (whom he disliked) and Bulwer Lytton. Through his Clapham sect connections he had ties with both the Church and the City; regularly dining with Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and his circle, and taking investment advice from the banker Henry Thornton.

The diaries are a valuable resource for researchers interested in the mid-nineteenth-century British political and cultural landscape. They will appeal to scholars specialising in Victorian Studies and British History.

• The first time that this important primary resource has been published
• A lively and entertaining look at mid-Victorian Britain
• Essential for understanding the origin, purpose and composition of Macaulay’s The History of England, the best-selling work of history in our literature
• New editorial material includes a substantial general introduction, a headnote to each new year of the journal, and a consolidated index

Sample pages

• The Journals of Thomas Babington Macaulay: Introduction
• The Journals of Thomas Babington Macaulay: October 1838 Sample

Contents

Volume 1: 20th October 1838 – 12th June 1840
Volume 2: 18th November 1848 – 27th July 1850
Volume 3: 28th July 1850 – 4th December 1852
Volume 4: 5th December 1852 – 31st December 1856
Volume 5: 1st January 1857 – 23rd December 1859

Related titles

• The Edinburgh Review in the Literary Culture of Romantic Britain : Mammoth and Megalonyx
• Lives of Victorian Political Figures, Part I : Palmerston, Disraeli and Gladstone by their Contemporaries
• The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau

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