The fourth volume of Thomas Pinney's acclaimed edition of Macaulay's letters covers the period between September 1841 and December 1848, in which Macaulay is shown keeping up an active political life as MP for Edinburgh and member of Lord John Russell's Whig Cabinet. At the same time his literary reputation is extended by The Lays of Ancient Rome, the collected Essays, and, at the end of the period spanned by this volume, the triumphant publication of the first two volumes of the History of England. In the same years Macaulay was enjoying perhaps the most satisfactory period of his private life: we see him comfortably established in the Albany, enjoying the society of his sister and her family, taking part as a leading figure in Whig political and literary circles, and confidently at work on the book which was to crown his fame.
