Thomas Pinney

Winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award! The latest title from the author of A History of Wine in America recounts the beginnings of California's world renowned wine trade-a story

Americans learned how to make wine successfully about two hundred years ago, after failing for more than two hundred years. Thomas Pinney takes an engaging approach to the history of American wine by

The last four years of Macaulay's life, documented in this final volume of the Letters, began as an agreeable coda to the rest. He had come to terms with his invalid state, and took great satisfaction in the achievement that he had already realised. He continued to work at his History, but without any expectations or anxieties, instead he enjoyed what his labours had already brought him. First among these was his house, Holly Lodge, in Kensington, where he removed early in 1856 after nearly fifteen years in chambers at the Albany. At Holly Lodge, attended by servants, and visited by a steady company of family and friends, Macaulay took pleasure in entertaining, and in supervising the care of his trees, lawn and flowers - novel amusements to an urban bachelor of literary habits.

The years covered in this fifth volume of Macaulay's letters were a striking mixture of triumph and loss. The publication of the first part of The History of England at the end of 1848 set Macaulay at the top of his fame, not merely in England, but on the Continent and in America. Honours came pouring in, and the sales of his books began to make him a rich man. The publication of the second part of the History in 1855 was a publishing event of unparalleled magnitude: 25,000 copies were subscribed at once in England, and four times that number were quickly sold in the United States. To add to his triumph, the people of Edinburgh, who had so rudely and unexpectedly rejected him in 1847 as their representative in parliament, now recanted; though Macaulay refused even to appear before them, they insisted upon returning him to parliament, and did so in 1852.

The complete letters of the pre-eminent Victorian, Thomas Babington Macaulay - essayist, historian, lawyer, politician and poet - are here reprinted in paperback for the first time. Revealing a man of enormous energy and wide interests, Macaulay's letters are notable for their brisk clarity and vivid style. The letters trace all the phases of Macaulay's rich life, from his childhood and Cambridge days, through his early legal and political career, his work in India, his election to Parliament and to the Whig cabinet, the development of his literary career and the eventual, triumphant publication of the History of England - all of this alternating with correspondence that reveals the anguish of personal crises and his deep family loyalties. The whole body of Macaulay's surviving letters are presented here, edited and annotated by Thomas Pinney, and sold in a set of 6 volumes, arranged in chronological order. Together they enhance our understanding of early Victorian political and cu

A History of Wine in America is the definitive account of winemaking in the United States, first as it was carried out under Prohibition, and then as it developed and spread to all fifty states after

The Vikings called North America "Vinland," the land of wine. Giovanni de Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who first described the grapes of the New World, was sure that "they would yield excellent wi

A History of Wine in America is the definitive account of winemaking in the United States, first as it was carried out under Prohibition, and then as it developed and spread to all fifty states after

The companion catalogue to the monumental exhibition of the works of Rudyard Kipling held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 2007 celebrates the achievement of this writer who appeale