Synopses & Reviews
The Memoirs of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave (1715-63) rank with those of Horace Walpole and Lord Hervey as classics of eighteenth-century political literature. They have an additional significance as a record of the momentous political crisis of 1754-7, which heralded the break-up of the early Hanoverian party system and laid the foundations for the pattern of alignments of the last half of the century. Waldegrave's Memoirs, first published in 1821, played a major part in the development of the Whig interpretation of the English past by apparently providing evidence in support of the Holland House thesis of a new royal absolutism, devised at Leicester House in the 1750s and implemented on the accession of George III in 1760. In an important introduction, Dr Clark unravels the nineteenth-century historiographical misconceptions of this problem and shows how Waldegrave's text was misused for polemical Whig purposes.
Synopsis
A classic of eighteenth-century political literature, Wadegraves' Memoirs have an additional significance as a record of the momentous political crisis of 1754-7, which heralded the break-up of the early Hanoverian party system. This edition sets the Memoirs against a much fuller account of the politics of the 1740s and 50s.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; Preface; List of abbreviations; Textual conventions; Introduction; 1. The court society; 2. The family background; 3. The political career of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave, 1741-1763; 4. The publication of the memoirs; 5. The historical influence of the memoirs; 6. The text of the memoirs; Index.