Volume 1: The Bismarck Period 978-1-032-98985-3
Volume 2: The Nineties 978-1-032-99011-8
Volume 3: The Growing Antagonism 978-1-032-99036-1
Volume 4: The Descent to the Abyss 978-1-032-99200-6
Biography
E. T. S. Dugdale (1876–1964) chose and translated these four volumes of selections from the stupendously large collection of diplomatic documents held in Berlin after the First World War. Dugdale was a keen shot, an academic, a pipe-smoking stamp-collector, and an ardent admirer of Dickens, who for a time made the translation of German texts his métier. On leaving Balliol, he had hoped to join the British Foreign Office; and to that end in the late 1890s spent two years in Germany perfecting his grasp of German – an experience which admirably qualified him for the more literary occupation. In the event, having married in 1902, he instead became an underwriter at Lloyds, and ended the War, wounded, as a captain in the Leicester Yeomanry. The four volumes of Diplomatic Documents were Dugdale’s chefs d’œuvre. The very many and generous contemporary reviews of these are as uniformly struck by their historical importance as by the skill of their presentation and choice.
Original Review of German Diplomatic Documents 1871–1914:
‘The student of British foreign policy will welcome it as a very interesting and helpful collection of source material.’ Dwight E. Lee, The Journal of Modern History, Vol 1, No. 2 (1929)
'...the German documents still outshine all other revelations...In four modest volumes the student will find the meat of forty. The papers have been chosen with rare discrimination, and the editing is first rate. ' New York Herald Tribune October 4 1931
'Dugdale’s admirable four-volume selection and translation of the wealth of material...furnishes for the general reader not interested in research a fascinating first-hand account of Great-Power diplomacy as seen from Berlin'. The Nation, New York, December 31, (1930)
