CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS, Contributed to The Edinburgh Review

London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1843. 3 volumes. First Edition. 8vo, publisher's original textured brown cloth, gilt lettered and numbered on the spines panels and ornately decorated in blind on the spines and covers. ix, 490 [2 ads]; 503; 466 [2 ads] pp. A handsome set with minimal wear, the volumes a bit shaken, the textblocks clean, crisp and unpressed. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL BINDINGS. Macaulay was one of the most acknowledged intellectual pundits of his age. He wrote essays for the Edinburgh Review for over twenty years, was a Member of Parliament, a member of the Supreme Council on India, Secretary at War and Paymaster General. It was for two works, CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS and this, his HISTORY OF ENGLAND, that he won his greatest fame. 'Macaulay's approach to writing the History was innovative for his period. He consciously fused the picturesque, dramatic style of classical historians such as Thucydides and Tacitus with the learned and factual approach of his 18th-century precursors such as Hume, following the plan laid out in his own 1828 "Essay on History"'. Edinburgh Review