Abstract
Having pondered what history you want to write about, and why, the next question to ask yourself is, ‘Who for?’ This is perhaps the most important question of all. If you can’t establish who your readers will be, you will find it extremely difficult to write well.
No other discipline has its portals so wide open to the general public as history.
JOHAN HUIZINGA, MEN AND IDEAS1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Johann Huizinga, Men and Ideas (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960), 39.
See, e.g. William Kelleher Storey, Writing History: A guide for students, 3rd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009);
I.W. Mabbett, Writing History Essays: A student’s guide (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007);
Jules R. Benjamin, A Student’s Guide to History, 10th edn (Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 2007).
Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987);
Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Introduction, A.H.R. Forum: Revisiting “Gender: A useful category of historical analysis”,’ The American Historical Review 113, no. 5 (2008): 1344.
Patrick Wolfe, ‘Land, labor, and difference: Elementary structures of race,’ The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001): 866–905;
Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: Who speaks for “Indian” pasts?,’ Representations 37 (Winter 1992): 1–26.
William Germano, Getting It Published: A guide for scholars and anyone else serious about serious books (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Eleanor Harman & Ian Montagnes, The Thesis and the Book, 2nd edn (Toronto: University Of Toronto Press, 2003).
See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us: Media, memory, history (London: Verso, 2005).
James R. Millar, ed., Encyclopedia of Russian History (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2004), vii.
Martin Marix Evans, Encyclopedia of the Boer War: 1899–1902 (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, 2000).
See Ann Curthoys, Ann Genovese & Alexander Reilly, Rights and Redemption: History, law, and Indigenous people (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008);
Iain McCalman & Ann McGrath, eds, Proof and Truth: The humanist as expert (Canberra: The Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2003).
For an example of a commissioned history which was rejected see Rachel Wells, ‘A century of history for sale in biography of an emporium’, The Age, 14 September 2008: <www.theage.com.au/national/a-century-of-history-for-sale-in-biography-of-an-emporium-20080913-4fyc.html>
Langston Hughes, Fight for Freedom: The story of the NAACP (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962), 203.
Jonathan Steinberg, in co-operation with the members ofthe Historical Commission appointed to examine the history of the Deutsche Bank in the period of National Socialism, The Deutsche Bank and Its Gold Transactions During the Second World War (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1999), 12.
Robert Fitzgerald, Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution, 1862–1969 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
John E Wilson, ‘Review of Robert Fitzgerald, Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution, 1862–1969’, EH Net Economic History Services (1995), <http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/0010>.
Richard White, Remembering Ah anagran: A history of stories (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998);
Michael King, Being Pakeha Now: Reflections and recollections of a white native (Auckland: Penguin Books (NZ), 1999);
Timothy Kenslea, The Sedgwicks in Love: Courtship, engagement, and marriage in the early Republic (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2006);
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American family (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008).
Ann McGrath, ‘Must film be fiction?,’ Griffith Review, no. 24 (2009).
Frank L. Cioffi, The Imaginative Argument: A practical manifesto for writers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 22.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2011 Ann Curthoys and Ann McGrath
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Curthoys, A., McGrath, A. (2011). Who is your history for?. In: How to Write History that People Want to Read. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-30496-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-30496-3_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-29038-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-30496-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)