Stephen Koss

Stephen Edward Koss (1940 – 25 October 1984) was an American historian specialising in subjects relating to Britain.

Koss received his BA, MA, and PhD from Columbia University, where he was a student of R. K. Webb.^[1][2] He began his academic career at the University of Delaware, and became an assistant professor at Barnard College, New York City in 1966, and then a full professor in 1971. He was appointed a professor of history at Columbia University in 1978,^[2] where he had completed his bachelor's and master's degrees, as well as his doctorate; the doctoral thesis was turned into his first book John Morley at the India Office, 1905–1910 published in 1969,^[1] the same year as his biography of R. B. Haldane. He was also a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.^[3] He served on the editorial board of The Journal of Modern History and held office with the .^[4][5] He died on 25 October 1984 as a result of complications following heart surgery.^[2]

The historian F. M. Leventhal noted that as Koss matured there was "an increasingly irreverent and ironic tone in [his] scholarship, a willingness to criticize as well as to condone".^[1] His death was mourned in several academic books published soon after, together with that of , who had also written on the history of newspapers in Britain and who had also died at a relatively young age.^[6][7]

Koss is best remembered for a two-volume work The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain (1981, 1984), respectively covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Neal Ascherson, reviewing the second volume in 1985, wrote: "Koss was the archive-cruncher of his age. But he had another gift, which was to make the imparting of densely-packed information stylish, readable, often mockingly witty."^[8]

A tribute volume appeared in 1987: The Political Culture of Modern Britain: Studies in Memory of Stephen Koss, edited by J. M. W. Bean, with a foreword by John Gross (London: Hamilton).

Publications[]

• "Morley in the Middle". The English Historical Review. 82 (324): 553–561. July 1967. doi:10.1093/ehr/lxxxii.cccxxiv.553. JSTOR 559429.
• "John Morley and the Communal Question". The Journal of Asian Studies. 26 (3): 381–387. May 1967. doi:10.2307/2051415. JSTOR 2051415.
• "The Destruction of Britain's Last Liberal Government". The Journal of Modern History. 40 (2): 257–277. June 1968. doi:10.1086/240192. JSTOR 1876732.
• John Morley at the India Office, 1905-1910. Yale University Press. 1969.
• Lord Haldane, Scapegoat for Liberalism. Columbia University Press. 1969.
• Sir John Brunner: Radical Plutocrat, 1842-1919. Cambridge University Press. 1970.
• "British Political Biography as History". Political Science Quarterly. 88 (4): 713–724. December 1973. doi:10.2307/2148166. JSTOR 2148166.
• Fleet Street Radical: A. J. Gardiner and the Daily News. Archon. 1973.
• The Pro-Boers: The Anatomy of an Anti-War Movement. University of Chicago Press. 1973. (editor)
• "Lloyd George and Nonconformity: The Last Rally". The English Historical Review. 89 (350): 77–108. January 1974. doi:10.1093/ehr/lxxxix.cccl.77. JSTOR 565044.
• "Wesleyanism and Empire". The Historical Journal. 18 (1): 105–118. March 1975. doi:10.1017/s0018246x00008694. JSTOR 2638470.
• Nonconformity in Modern British Politics. Shoestring Press/Archon Books. 1975.
• Asquith. St. Martin's Press/Allen Lane. 1976.
• The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. 1: Nineteenth Century. University of North Carolina Press. 1981.
• The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. 2: Twentieth Century. University of North Carolina Press. 1984.

The two volumes of The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain were later published by Fontana as a single volume.

References[]

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