View source for The Armada (book)

{{Short description|1950 book by Garrett Mattingly}}{{Infobox book
| image             = The Defeat of the Spanish Armada book cover.jpg
| author            = [[Garrett Mattingly]]
| pub_date          = 1950
| publisher         = [[Houghton Mifflin Company]]
| caption           = First edition
}}

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'''''The Armada''''' is a popular history by [[Garrett Mattingly]]—a historian who taught at [[Columbia University]]—about the attempt of the [[Spanish Armada]] to invade England in 1588. It was published in 1959 by [[Houghton Mifflin Company]], and Mattingly won a [[Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards|special Pulitzer Prize]] for the work in [[1960 in literature|1960]] as "a first class history and a literary work of high order."<ref name=pulitzer>[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Special-Awards-and-Citations "Special Awards and Citations"]. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2013-12-02.</ref><ref>[[Margaret Leech]] and ''In the Days of McKinley'' won the 1960 [[Pulitzer Prize for History]].</ref> It was published in the UK in the same year by [[Jonathan Cape]] under the title ''The Defeat of the Spanish Armada''.

One biographer wrote that ''The Armada'' was "written in purple prose but a royal purple, which read like historical fiction."<ref>James Friguglietti. "Mattingly, Garrett", ''American National Biography''.</ref> Another biographer noted that Mattingly "treated his job as that of telling a story about people" and that ''The Armada'' was "that rarity, a book by a professional historian and admired by professional historians which nevertheless became a bestseller."<ref>J. H. Hexter, ''Doing History'' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 157, 169.</ref> ''The Armada'' remains in print and has also been issued outside the United States under the title ''The Defeat of the Spanish Armada''.

==References==
{{Reflist |25em}}

{{PulitzerPrize SpecialCitations Letters}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Armada, The}}
[[Category:1959 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:20th-century history books]]
[[Category:Books about military history]]
[[Category:History books about England]]
[[Category:History books about Spain]]
[[Category:History books about the 16th century]]
[[Category:Pulitzer Prize-winning works]]


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