Austen’s “The History of England” has long been understood as a parody of the common literary genre of national histories so the following excerpts were selected for their representation of this type of text. The Austen family owned a copy of Oliver Goldsmith’s history so this publication is particularly interesting to our understanding of “The History of England”. The other selections represent some more of the popular histories of England. The presentation of page facsimiles is to encourage close reading of the text and the paratext (title page, layout, typeface, paragraphing) as both are important for understanding Austen’s satire in “The History of England”.
Goldsmith’s History:
[downloaded from GoogleBooks via PDF, excerpts selected personally]
Hume’s History:
[downloaded from GoogleBooks via PDF, excerpts selected personally]
Smollet’s History:
[downloaded from GoogleBooks via PDF, excerpts selected personally]
The Common Place 