The English Historical Review

• 1. Introduction

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  The English Historical Review printed its first issue in 1886, and it has not stopped since. That unbroken run makes it the oldest surviving English-language academic journal devoted to history. No other publication in the English-speaking world can claim that distinction.

  Founded by John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, a Regius Professor of modern history at Cambridge and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, the journal was conceived as a serious, rigorous home for historical scholarship. Its very first editor was Mandell Creighton, who shaped the journal through its opening years. Who has held the reins since then? How has a publication born in the Victorian era adapted to a world its founders could not have imagined? And what does it actually publish today, more than a century after those first pages were set in type?

• 2. Scope and Structure

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  Six issues appear each year, making the journal bimonthly. Each issue typically carries at least six articles drawn from a broad chronological range: medieval, early modern, modern, and twentieth-century history all find space on those pages. The journal's geographic ambitions are equally wide. British, European, and world history are all within its remit, stretching back to the classical era.

  Book reviews have long been a central feature. Around forty appear in each issue, giving readers a running account of new scholarship across the discipline. As of 2023, the journal introduced a new section called Reflections, which includes historiographical essays, review articles, and assessments of individual scholars' contributions to the field. One Forum collection is also planned for publication each year, gathering focused debates around a single theme or question.

  The journal is published by Oxford University Press, a shift from its earlier publisher, Longman. That institutional backing has helped sustain its place as a peer-reviewed venue for serious historical argument.

• 3. Founding and Early Leadership

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  Lord Acton brought the journal into being in 1886. His dual standing at Cambridge and All Souls gave the project immediate credibility in both university worlds. Mandell Creighton edited it from that founding year through 1891, setting editorial standards that later editors would build upon.

  Samuel Rawson Gardiner took over in 1891, initially with assistance from Reginald Lane Poole. By 1895 the two were listed as co-editors, and the arrangement continued until 1901. Poole then carried on alone from 1902 through 1920, with George Norman Clark joining in an assisting role during that final year. The passing of editorial authority from Gardiner to Poole to Clark represents one of the journal's earliest examples of careful succession planning, keeping continuity without disruption.

• 4. A Century of Editors

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  George Norman Clark's tenure stretched across multiple configurations. He edited with Charles William Previte-Orton in 1926, then Previte-Orton held the role alone from 1927 through 1938, before the two briefly reunited in 1938-1939. That overlap suggests the journal often preferred gradualist handoffs over clean breaks.

  John Goronwy Edwards and Richard Pares shared editorial duties from 1939 to 1958, one of the longest partnerships in the journal's history. After Pares, Denys Hay led alone from 1959 to 1965, followed by John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, who then co-edited with John Morris Roberts from 1967 to 1974. Roberts continued with George Arthur Holmes through 1978. The pattern of paired editors persisted across almost every subsequent decade. By the time Martin Conway and Catherine Holmes shared the role in 2012-2013, the journal had made collaborative editing a structural norm rather than a temporary arrangement.

  From 2017 onward, the editorial board expanded further, sometimes listing four or five names at once. The current editors as of 2025 are Nandini Chatterjee, Misha Ewen, Alex Middleton, Jan Ruger, John Sabapathy, and Katharine Sykes, a team of six.