This is a study of the 'secret history', a polemical form of historiography which flourished in England during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Introduction; Part 1 Whig Secret History: The Core Tradition; Chapter 1 Procopius of Caesarea and the Secret History of the Court of the Emperor Justinian (1674); Chapter 2 Secret History and Whig Historiography, 1688-1702; Chapter 3 Secret History, the ‘Revolution’ of 1714 and the Case of John Dunton; Part 2 Secret History in the Eighteenth Century: Variations and Adaptations; Chapter 4 Delarivier Manley and Tory Uses of Secret History; Chapter 5 Secrecy and Secret History in the Spectator (1711-14); Chapter 6 Daniel Defoe: Harleyite Secret History and the Early Novel; Chapter 7 Eliza Haywood: Secret History, Curiosity and Disappointment; conclusion Conclusion;
