Excerpt from The Manufacture of Historical Material: An Elementary Study in the Sources of StoryIN a former work, The First Twelve Centuries of British Story, published in 1912, a narrative sketch was attempted of the early history of the British Islands as a whole, carrying the story down to the date of the accession of Henry II. In 1154. An introductory chapter dealt with the records of the times for all parts.In that volume, a review of the social side of history, the laws and customs and land usages of the societies, was as far as possible avoided, for many reasons, of which the most urgent was that such a subject called for a scrutiny of a different set of authorities from those in use for narrative history, records dealing with ancient custom and social life, of which the part treating of the tribal and pastoral societies of the West had been but little touched, apart from antiquarian inquiry.A great part of the subject-matter of this book was originally intended, like the pre liminary chapter of the former book, to be an introduction to a work in progress dealing with feudal and communal societies.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.