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Having married and settled in Florence in the 1840s, the poet and translator Theodosia Trollope (1816-65) found herself well placed to chronicle the events which contributed to the unification of Italy. While another Englishwoman in Italy, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, would become better known for her verse, Trollope nevertheless firmly established herself in the liberal and literary circles of Florentine society, allowing her to witness at first hand, and explore in prose, the effects that the Risorgimento was having on those living through it. Vividly capturing the unfolding situation in Tuscany, twenty-seven letters first appeared in The Athenaeum in 1859-60. They were published together in this work of 1861, along with an update on the months that had elapsed since the last letter was written in April 1860. Championing the cause of unification, Trollope's writing helped to generate enthusiasm in Britain for the progress and personalities of the Risorgimento.

At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Malta officially became part of the British Empire in 1814. As the British presence there increased, so too did public interest in the island's history, particularly the military religious order of the Knights Hospitaller. In 1858, the army officer Whitworth Porter (1827-92) published this two-volume work, tracing the fortunes of the order since its establishment following the First Crusade. Incorporating details of the knights' social habits and customs into his narrative, Porter also provides supplementary material such as royal and papal documents in translation. Volume 2 opens in 1522 with the surrender of Rhodes, followed by the order's eventual relocation to Malta, which the Ottomans besieged without success in 1565. The coverage extends to the blockade of Valletta, then under French control, at the end of the eighteenth century.

The Byzantine writer Laonicus Chalcocondyles (c.1430-90) has been described as 'the last Athenian historian'. From a noble Athenian family, he moved to the court of Mistra in the Peloponnese, then ruled by Constantine XI Palaiologos (later the last emperor of Byzantium), and may have been a pupil of Gemistos Plethon. Laonicus' most important work was this 'Apodeixis' or 'setting forth' of the history of the period from 1298 to 1463, during which the Byzantine Empire came under increasing pressure from, and eventually succumbed to, the Ottoman Turks. Laonicus uses the Ancient Greek historians, especially Herodotus, as his models, comparing the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the fall of Troy. The surviving Greek manuscripts of his work were not well preserved, and for this edition of 1843, the German philologist Immanuel Bekker (1785-1871) collated the various versions and supplied a Latin translation, rendering the work accessible to historians.

As a younger woman, Anna Maria 'Marie' Tussaud (1761-1850) rubbed shoulders with many of the key figures of the French Revolution, sculpting in wax the likes of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat and Robespierre. After moving to Britain, she made her living by exhibiting her sculptures in numerous towns and cities. In 1835 she settled in London and opened her museum, which became one of the city's most popular attractions. Initially reluctant about releasing her memoirs, Madame Tussaud was convinced by her editor Francis Herve (1781-1850) that her unique position - of seeing first-hand the events and characters that drove the Revolution, while maintaining a generally non-partisan view of them - would make the book of real interest to the public. First published in 1838, it offers evocative eyewitness insights into one of the defining periods in modern European history.

Published in 1867, this book discusses the Crimean War from a pro-Turkish perspective. Sir Adolphus Slade (1804-77) covers the history of Ottoman military development as well as the origins of the Eastern Question, and the events leading to the outbreak of war. As a naval officer, whose Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece, &c., and of a Cruize in the Black Sea, with the Capitan Pasha is also reissued in this series, he was lent to the Turkish fleet in 1849 and took the name Mushaver Pasha. For seventeen years he worked to overhaul the navy, especially the defences of the Bosphorus, and his successes made him impatient with the allied French and British fleets. In 1854, an argument with their Admirals led to his removal from active service, and to a bitterness reflected in this book, which nevertheless provides a fascinating perspective on the war's diplomatic and military complexities.

This volume of letters was published in 1884, when General Gordon (1833-85) was engaged in the controversial defence of Khartoum that claimed his life the following year. The reputation of 'Chinese' Gordon, a complex figure, unpopular with the British government and military but adored by the people and press, was fed by works such as this. Covering his time in the Crimea as a young lieutenant, and later in the drawing up of the new frontiers between the Russian and Ottoman empires, these letters were published by his later biographer, Demetrius C. Boulger (1853-1928) as evidence of Gordon's strength of character and value as a military leader. One reviewer noted in them an 'indomitable cheerfulness of disposition, patient endurance, trustful fatalism, simple courage and faith, ... [and] single-hearted devotion to duty', words which reflected the popular view of Gordon as a symbol of British national pride and imperial honour.

Moritz von Kotzebue (1789-1861), son of the German dramatist and an experienced seaman and soldier, who had faced Bonaparte's troops on the battlefield, travelled to the court of Fath Ali Shah Qajar (1772-1834), the king of Persia, with a Russian embassy in 1817. His account of the journey was published in German in 1819, and an English translation was published in the same year, claiming to offer a different perspective from the ordinary run of British writings on Persia. Covering the journey from St Petersburg through the Caucasus and down to Soltaniyeh, where the embassy meets the Shah, the work is a compilation of day-to-day observations on people and events. The author is astute and witty, and the book is not only an interesting read but also a useful source for the region's social history; a lengthy description of the Shah's court is particularly impressive.

Catharine Macaulay (1731-91) is considered to have been the first female historian. Her eight-volume History of England (1763-83) and her radical views brought her considerable fame in eighteenth-century England. She was a political activist in favour of parliamentary reform, and wrote several political pamphlets on the subject. She also wrote the feminist work Letters on Education (1790), which argues for the equal education of men and women and is thought to have been influential upon Mary Wollstonecraft. Macaulay supported both the American Revolution and the French Revolution and saw them as moves towards equality and liberty. This political pamphlet, first published in 1790, was written in support of the French Revolution and against Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. It is a passionate polemic that challenges Burke's interpretation of British history. It remains an important work in the history of political philosophy.

Little is known of the true origins of the French adventurer Victor-Antoine-Claude Robert, Count de Parades (1752-86). He arrived in Paris in 1778, just as the Franco-American alliance, which guaranteed French military support to the United States against Great Britain, was being signed. Parades was determined to join the French Army, but lacking the connections to do so, offered his services as a spy. He travelled repeatedly to England, visiting ports and fortifications to gather confidential information. First published in 1791, this work provides a detailed account of Parades' adventures and misfortune. Written while he was jailed in the Bastille, the book denounces the corruption of ministers who wrongly accused him of state treason after the failure of the 1779 Franco-Spanish 'Armada' against Plymouth. A fascinating historical document, it sheds light on the political relations between France and England during the American War of Independence.

Cecil Nathan Sidney Woolf (1887-1917), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was killed in the First World War. In this prize-winning book, published in 1913, Woolf examines the way in which the medieval jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1314-57) interprets the Roman Law to make it relevant to fourteenth-century Italian political reality. Considering Bartolus's treatment of the relationships between the Roman Empire and the papacy, kingdoms and city-republics, Woolf places Bartolus's thought in its wider historical context by surveying the complex problem of the empire from the mid-thirteenth century onwards. In particular, he assesses Bartolus's most famous argument that the city is its own emperor. Arguing that Bartolus's influence lasted into the early modern period, both in the practice of law and in the use made of his works by writers like Bodin and Albericus Gentilis, this book also includes a useful table explaining Bartolus's distinctions between imperium and jurisdiction.

Renowned economic historian and clergyman William Cunningham (1849-1919) published this work in 1896, which is considered a companion volume to his seminal Essay on Western Civilisation. Educated at Edinburgh, Cambridge and Tubingen, Cunningham wrote widely on theology and economics. He was a Cambridge lecturer and fellow at Trinity, Professor of Economics at King's College London, a teacher at Harvard, a founding fellow of the British Academy, and President of the Royal Historical Society. Favouring historical empiricism over deductive theory, his work, labelled neo-mercantilist, was against laissez-faire and favoured economic regulation, social religion, and conservative incremental change. This book outlines these views as part of an analysis of the basic units of economic life - exchange, possessions, money, credit, selling, price, labour, trade, profit, interest, rent, wages - and how these interact within capitalism. The work strongly influenced contemporary thought and remains relevant in the historiography of economics.