Abstract
THE modern changes in literary methods and the demands of the reading public have altered the character of many classes of books, but none has been so much affected as that dealing with topography. The subsidised family history, the elaborate folding pedigrees, plates of armorial bearings or of equally uninteresting tombs of former magnates of the locality, have disappeared from such works, unless their intrinsic interest coincides with that of the subject of the book. Genealogists and students of family history are now provided with publications of their own, surely a change of a practical kind, and one which allows the substantive matter of a topographical work to take its real place. Even when the older fashion is cast aside for the new, however, there are many alternatives in the treatment of local history. Mr. Gordon Home may be said to be thorough in the one he has chosen, for in the course of some 300 octavo pages he traces the story of the district in which Pickering is situated from pre-Glacial times upto the date of his publication, including the geology. the archaeology early and later, local legends and folklore; and very good miscellaneous reading he makes of it. The earlier sections, however, can scarcely be said to conform with his title-page, for it is admitted that for many thousands of years after the period of his second chapter no hunian being yet existed in Britain in the latitude of Pickering, and the town itself would, of course, be even later.
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The Story of an English Town 1 . Nature 73, 538–539 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/073538a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/073538a0