George Macaulay Trevelyan

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George Macaulay Trevelyan

George Macaulay Trevelyan (born February 16, 1876 in Welcombe House , Stratford-upon-Avon , Warwickshire , † July 21, 1962 in Cambridge ) was a British historian .

Live and act

Trevelyan was born in 1876, the third child of his parents, in Welcombe House, the estate of his maternal grandfather, merchant and MP Sir Robert Needham Phillips. Trevelyan's father was Sir George Trevelyan , 2nd Baronet of Trevelyan, the eldest son of Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, 1st Baronet Trevelyan. A great uncle of Trevelyan was the famous historian Thomas Babington Macaulay .

After the visit of the English elite school Harrow studied Trevelyan, his great-uncle emulating, history at Trinity College of Cambridge University . During his studies in Cambridge he founded the lake hunt , a "hunting ritual" practiced by Cambridge students to this day, in which members of the student body slip into the role of rabbits and dogs in a simulated hunt. In 1898 he submitted his dissertation, which was published the following year under the title England in the Age of Wycliffe .

Equipped with a Cambridge Fellowship, he initially lectured at the traditional university until 1903. After that he temporarily gave up university life in order to be able to devote himself entirely to historical writing. In 1927 he returned to Cambridge to take over the professorship for modern history, the Regius Professor of Modern History . In 1940 he also took over the post of master's degree at Trinity College, which he should exercise until his retirement in 1951.

After his death in 1962, Trevelyan was buried in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church in Langdale, Cumbria.

Trevelyan as a historian

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Trevelyan with his son and father around 1910

Trevelyan openly supported the principle of partisan historiography, tinged with personal moral judgments, and opposed the attempt to approach history through dispassionate, "objective" analysis. Accordingly, he never concealed his admiration for the political views of the liberal Whigs and their successor, the Liberal Party, as well as his conviction that democratic governance would inevitably result in a constant improvement in social conditions.

Trevelyan's view of the historian's need to take sides was programmatically presented by Trevelyan in the essay Bias in History using the example of his many-volume work on the Italian freedom movement and the life of Garibaldi as follows: "Without bias, I should never have written them at all . For I was moved to write them by a poetical sympathy with the passions of the Italian patriots of the period, which I retrospectively shared. " ("Without a certain predilection for the subject I would never have set out to write this work. The impulse to write it down arose from a personal poetic sympathy for the passion of the Italian patriots of that time, which I felt afterwards, so to speak." )

honors and awards

While Trevelyan rejected the proposed chairmanship of the British Academy , he accepted the office of Chancellor of Durham University , one of its colleges named after him (Trevelyan College). In 1920 he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography Lord Greys . He was also a member of the Royal Society . In 1931 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1937 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters . He has received honorary doctorates from numerous universities, including Cambridge.

Works

  • England in the Age of Wycliffe , 1899.
  • England Under the Stuarts , 1904.
  • The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith , 1906.
  • Garibaldi's Defense of the Roman Republic , 1907.
  • Garibaldi and the Thousand , 1909.
  • Garibaldi and the Making of Italy , 1911.
  • The Life of John Bright , 1913.
  • Clio. A Muse and Other Essays , 1913.
  • Scenes From Italy's War , 1919.
  • The Recreations of an Historian , 1919.
  • Lord Gray of the Reform Bill , 1920.
  • British History in the Nineteenth Century , 1922.
  • Manin and the Venetian Revolution of 1848 , 1923.
  • History of England , 1926.
  • England Under Queen Anne
  • Blenheim , 1930.
  • Ramillies and the Union with Scotland , 1932.
  • The Peace and the Protestant Succession , 1934.
  • Sir George Otto Trevelyan: A Memoir , 1932.
  • Gray of Fallodon , 1937.
  • The English Revolution, 1688-1698 , 1938.
  • Trinity College. To Historical Sketch , 1943.
  • English Social History. A Survey of Six Centuries from Chaucer to Queen Victoria , 1944.
  • An Autobiography and Other Essays , 1949.
  • A Layman's Love of Letters , 1954.

literature

  • Adrian Lord: George Macaulay Trevelyan. 1876-1962 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . tape 9 , 1963, pp. 314-321 , doi : 10.1098 / rsbm.1963.0017 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter T. (PDF; 432 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved March 25, 2019 .
  2. ^ Honorary Members: George Macaulay Trevelyan. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 25, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Trevelyan, George Macaulay
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Welcombe House , Stratford-upon-Avon
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1962
Place of death Cambridge