Research Catalog

Title

Eric Hobsbawm : a life in history / Richard J. Evans.

Author

Evans, Richard J.

Publication

• London : Little, Brown, 2019.
• ©2019

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 785 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 24 cm

Summary

At the time of his death at the age of 95, Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) was the most famous historian in the world. His books were translated into more than fifty languages and he was as well known in Brazil and Italy as he was in Britain and the United States. His writings have had a huge and lasting effect on the practice of history. More than half a century after it appeared, his books remain a staple of university reading lists. He had an extraordinarily long life, with interests covering many countries and many cultures, ranging from poetry to jazz, literature to politics. He experienced life not only as a university teacher but also as a young Communist in the Weimar Republic, a radical student at Cambridge, a political activist, an army conscript, a Soho 'man about town', a Hampstead intellectual, a Cambridge don, an influential journalist, a world traveller, and finally a Grand Old Man of Letters. In A Life in History, Richard Evans tells the story of Hobsbawm as an academic, but also as witness to history itself, and of the twentieth century's major political and intellectual currents. Eric not only wrote and spoke about many of the great issues of his time, but participated in many of them too, from Communist resistance to Hitler to revolution in Cuba, where he acted as an interpreter for Fidel Castro. He was a prominent part of the Jazz scene in Soho in the late 1950s and his writings played a pivotal role in the emergence of New Labour in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This, the first biography of Eric Hobsbawm, is far more than a study of a professional historian. It is a study of an era.

Subjects

• Historians
• Great Britain
• Historians > Great Britain > Biography
• Hobsbawm, E. J (Eric J.), 1917-2012
• Biographies
• Biography

Genre/Form

• Biographies.
• Biography.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Preface -- 'The English boy' 1917-193 -- 'Ugly as sin, but a mind' 1933-1936 -- 'A freshman who knows about everything' 1936-1939 -- 'A left-wing intellectual in the English Army' 1939-1946 -- 'Outside in the movement' 1946-1954 -- 'A dangerous character' 1954-1962 -- 'Paperback writer' 1962-1975 -- 'Intellectual guru' 1975-1987 -- 'Jeremiah' 1987-1999 -- 'National treasure' 1999-2012 -- Conclusion.

Call Number

JFE 19-4135

ISBN

• 9781408707418 (hardback)
• 1408707411 (hardback)

LCCN

2019005324

OCLC

1088588283

Author

Evans, Richard J., author.

Title

Eric Hobsbawm : a life in history / Richard J. Evans.

Publisher

London : Little, Brown, 2019.

Copyright Date

©2019

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 19-4135