This book, originally published in 1977, is a survey of European historiography from its origins in the historians of Greece and Rome, through the annalists and chroniclers of the middle ages, to the historians of the late eighteenth century. The author concentrates on those writers whose works fit into a specific category of writing, or who have inlfuence the course of later historical writing, though he does deal with some of the more specialist forms of medieval historiography such as the crusading writers, and chivalrous historians like Froissart. He maintains that 'modern' history did not develop until the 18th Century.

1. Ancient Historians: Greeks and Romans 2. The Bible: Jewish and Christian Time 3. Medieval Historiography at its Prime: From the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries 5. The Humanist Historian in Fifteenth-Century Italy 6. The Sixteenth Century 7. History and Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century 8. Historians and Antiquaries in the Eighteenth Century: The Emergence of the Modern Method