Borlase’s Cornwall

Leicester University has made itself the prime centre for regional county and local history, under a distinguished succession of Professors, Hoskins, Simmons, Finberg and Everitt. Now Professor Jack Simmons has inspired a magnificent project of republishing under his general editorship a series of the finest Classical County Histories. These range from seventeenth-century Dugdale’s Warwickshire and Wright’s Rutland to nineteenth-century Surtees’ Durham and Cussans’ Hertfordshire.

Most of the series will be given up to great works like Nichols’ Leicestershire, perhaps the finest of all, Thoroton’s Nottinghamshire, Hutchins’ Dorset, Has-ted’s Kent and others. Each is to be presented in the best edition, with the latest additions and corrections, and introduced by an authority on the particular county.

It should be said at once that these works are indispensable to any self-respecting library, and that their reproduction at all, in these discouraging times, is a matter for congratulation to the publishers, who are in the midst of producing a series of fine substantial volumes at surprisingly reasonable price.