author
Henry Hallam
1777–1859
An influential English historian, he is best remembered for broad, ambitious works that traced Europe’s political and literary past across centuries. His books helped shape 19th-century historical writing and are still noted for their range, balance, and clarity.
6 Audiobooks
Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2
by Henry Hallam
Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1
by Henry Hallam
View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Vol. 3
by Henry Hallam
About the author
Born at Windsor in 1777, he was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He trained in law and practised as a barrister for a time, but after inheriting enough to live independently he devoted himself more fully to scholarship and writing.
He became known for major historical studies including View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, The Constitutional History of England, and Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. These works earned him a reputation as one of the leading English historians of his generation, admired for careful judgment and wide learning.
Hallam’s life was also marked by personal loss: his son Arthur Henry Hallam, later famous through Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam, died young in 1833. Henry Hallam died in 1859, leaving behind a body of work that helped bring literary criticism, constitutional history, and European intellectual history into conversation with one another.