Peter Linebaugh

Peter Linebaugh is an American Marxist historian who specializes in British history, Irish history, labor history, and the history of the colonial Atlantic. He is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective.

Historian Peter Linebaugh

Early life

Linebaugh was born in 1942.^[1] He was a student of British labor historian E. P. Thompson, and received his Ph.D. in British history from the University of Warwick in 1975.^[2] He has taught at University of Rochester, New York University, University of Massachusetts–Boston, Franconia College, Harvard University, and Tufts University. Linebaugh retired from the University of Toledo in 2014.^[3]

Career

About the second edition of his book The London Hanged—and about Linebaugh's unique place in the pantheon of 21st-century historians more broadly—Nicholas Lezard wrote, "For a start, this is a work of proper history: with all due respect to Dava Sobel . . . and others who set out to make their histories entertaining and, crucially, popular by giving them a narrative, this is a work by a proper historian, whose only concession to the marketplace is the fact that he has made a connection that should command our attention."^[4] Historian Robin Kelley praised Linebaugh's book The Magna Carta Manifesto (2008), arguing that there is "not a more important historian living today. Period."^[5]

Linebaugh's writing has appeared in New Left Review, the New York University Law Review, Radical History Review, and Social History. He is also a frequent contributor to CounterPunch.

Personal life

Linebaugh is married to Michaela Brennan. He has two daughters, Kate and Riley Linebaugh.^[6]