G.R. Elton and his Era: Thirty Years On

Abstract

The recent publication by Cambridge University Press of the third volume of G.R. Elton's collected papers and reviews nearly coincided with two other events: the appearance of aflorilegiumentitledTudor Rule and Revolutionand presented to him on his sixtieth birthday, and the announcement of his appointment as Regius Professor of History at Cambridge where he has been a Fellow of Clare and a mainstay of the University Department of History for three decades. During that time his work has ranged over the whole territory of the historian. Witness the scores of papers in a set of three fat volumes that is a selection and also the seventeen other published volumes of original work mainly based on archives, large narrative histories, and also books on the study and teaching of history. His major contributions also include the annual bibliography he has edited since 1977 as well as various series of monographs and archival indices which in themselves have been a major source of encouragement to the work of other scholars.But G.R. Elton has not gathered flowers and tributes and honors because he is an industry in himself—a veritable Krupp among historians. It is rather the quality of his achievement that has been celebrated since the publication ofThe Tudor Revolution in Governmentin 1953. Once the radical theses of that book had been incorporated into the textEngland Under the Tudors(1955), the importance of his work has never been in doubt. Subsequent debates inPast and Presentand other journals, with Oxford medievalists and London Elizabethans, showed the impact of his main ideas.