The History of England

1791
Jane Austen
The History of England
B

Years before her Northanger Abbey heroine says of history, "I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention," Austen puckishly dismisses about 260 years of English history.  She even weighs in on the Richard III controversy:  "As he was York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a very respectable Man."  This is just barely nonfiction, because of her tone and because of the deliberation omission of most dates, but there are some facts mixed in with the satire, and it's probably the only historical work with a Sharade [sic] about James I's favourite, the Earl of Somerset.