Penn Professors on Writing in History

Jonathan Steinberg

About the Professor

Jonathan Steinberg teaches modern Europe since 1789 with specializations in German and Austrian empires, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and modern Jewish history. He has also taught graduate and undergraduate seminars on historical thought and method.

For more about Dr. Steinberg, please visit his Faculty Page.

Writing Tips

Dr. Steinberg advises students to imitate George Orwell's "Six Rules of Writing." He also recommends imitating good writers in general. He asks students to eliminate all forms of the verb "to be" from their writing and encourages students to use their imaginations. Dr. Steinberg maintains that all factors of writing carry equal weight, for each is important to the final effect, from idea, reasoning, and evidence to grammar and mechanics.

Writing Process

Dr. Steinberg "invents first, then embellishes." He likes to play Bach as part of his pre-writing process, listening to this music while mentally creating outlines of what he intends to write.

Dr. Steinberg writes mostly books but has also composed articles. He wrote a biography of Bismarck that took a few months to write after having lectured about the subject for decades. He has also written 36 episodes of a biography series.

Dr. Steinberg’s approach is to combine a chronological narrative with structures, such as government and economy. This differs from some other historians, who separate events and explanations.

Exemplary Authors

Dr. Steinberg points to two historians for their outstanding writing: Frederic Maitland, an historian of English law, whose "prose is beautiful with lots of imagination," and Chris Clark, a professor at Cambridge, who "has a knack for making things come alive."