In the nineteenth century, when the discipline of history was finding its feet, it was fashionable for learned men to stock their libraries with handsome volumes describing the most momentous and weighty episodes of the human past. Bearing titles such as 'Great Events', 'Epoch Marking Events', 'Events to be Remembered', 'A Popular Descriptive Portraiture of the Great Events of Our Past Century' and 'Narratives of the Most Remarkable Occurrences', these were lively vignettes of those colossal moments of "Heroism, Statesmanship, Genius, Oratory, Adventure and Philanthropy" considered eternally important and "of perpetual interest".