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ISBN 0521059933
The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History is a two-volume history of medieval Europe by Charles Previté-Orton (1877–1947), prepared for publication by Philip Grierson, and published by Cambridge University Press in 1952. It is a condensed and revised version of The Cambridge Medieval History which was published in eight volumes between the World Wars and, unlike that work, was intended for a general audience.

The book was generally well received despite some criticism for being too heavy on facts and neglecting the non-political aspects of medieval history such as literature and art. Others felt that it was not as easy a read as had been promised. Reviewers agreed that it was more than a mere condensing of its parent, being almost completely new material from the pen of Previté-Orton that reflected the latest developments in medieval history in the 1940s rather than the views of twenty or thirty years earlier that formed the original work. There was disquiet, however, that even such a distinguished author as Previté-Orton could not be right all the time and that the inevitable generalising statements essential in such a condensed work might be mistaken for settled facts when much about medieval history remained uncertain.

Background
The history has its origins in the eight-volume Cambridge Medieval History which was published between the World Wars and of which Previté-Orton was one of the editors. In 1939, the Syndics of Cambridge University Press asked Previté-Orton to write a concise version of the earlier history which was a work of reference that in practice was too detailed and too long to be read in full. He had complete discretion to take and amend any part of the full history and to add any new material that he felt necessary. He completed the work before his death in 1947 but it was not ready for the printers, so the numismatist and historian Philip Grierson was given the task of making the final revisions prior to publication. As the work was intended for the general reader, maps and genealogical tables were added to aid understanding and Grierson split the longer chapters in Previté-Orton's manuscript to match the shorter chapters of the rest of the work.

Publication
The book was published by Cambridge University Press in two hardback volumes in 1952. It was reprinted with corrections in 1953, 1960, and 1962. There were two further reprints followed by the first paperback edition in 1975. A Readers Union book club edition was published in 1955. The book is currently out of print with the university press.

Content
The work contains 38 chapters, gathered into books of three or four chapters each, as well as an editorial note by Grierson, table of contents, 132 illustrations, 15 maps, 17 genealogical tables, retrospect, appendices, and an index, totalling over 1,100 pages. It covers the period from the end of the third century to the end of the fifteenth, spanning the collapse of the western Roman Empire and the "ruin" of the ancient civilisation, to the development of "conscious" nation states, the development of humanism and naturalism in the arts, the discovery of the New World and the eclipse of European commerce by an oceanic stage, preceded by the eventual collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire. The authors acknowledge the arbitrary nature of the periods chosen as being described as the Medieval period or Middle Ages, and the "crooked and perilous" road taken, but see the story, overall, as one of great progress.

Volume I The Later Roman Empire to the Twelfth Century
Book I – The Later Roman Empire
Book II – The Break-up of the Empire
Book III – Byzantium and Islam
Book IV – The Dark Ages in the West
Book V – The Foundation of Western Europe
Book VI – The Twelfth Century
Volume II The Twelfth Century to the Renaissance
Book VII – The Papacy at its Zenith and the Secular Kingdoms
Book VIII – The Leadership of France
Book IX – The Fourteenth Century
Book X – The End of the Middle Ages
Book XI – The Transition to Modern Times
(Wikipedia)