history

history, chronicle, annals mean a written record of events important in the life or career of a race, a nation, an institution, or a region.

A history is more than a mere recital of what has occurred; in the modern conception, at least, it requires order and purpose in narration, but not necessarily a strictly chronological order nor a common definitely defined purpose. Usually, also, it is thought of as an interpretation of events especially in their causal relationships. It may exhibit fullness and completeness or, on the other hand, selection of details, especially when a single aspect is considered or a thesis is to be proved. A chronicle is a recital of events in chronological order without interpretation

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the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

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Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland

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Annals is not always clearly distinguishable from chronicle except in its emphasis upon the progress or succession of events from year to year. The term need not imply a discursive treatment or a continued narrative, for some of the ancient annals are merely records of important events in each year of the time covered. However, in the selection of titles for modern historical works these distinctions are not always observed, for chronicle and annals are sometimes chosen as less formal or pretentious than history or because chronicle stresses narrative quality and annals the selection of noteworthy events

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in the earlier Middle Ages, history was written chiefly in the form of annals, that is, the enumeration of the notable events of each year, or of chronicles, in which happenings were recorded in somewhat more continuous, but still strictly chronological and unanalytical form— R. A. Hall

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In their extended senses only history and annals are closely comparable. Both of these words designate more or less shifting abstractions.

History usually signifies the known past, or the sum total of events that are remembered because recorded by historians or evidenced by documents, monuments, and remains

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nothing like this has happened hitherto in the history of man

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a land without ruins is a land without memories—a land without memories is a land without history— Ryan

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Annals most often signifies the sum total of events, with their dates, that have become fixed in the mind because of the momentousness, often tragic momentousness, of those events

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the short and simple annals of the poor— Gray

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happy the people whose annals are blank— Carlyle

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Chronicle, on the other hand, is often applied to something concrete (as a person or thing) that records, relates, or manifests events as they happen

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pitch upon the veriest camp follower of the New Poetry as the abstract and brief chronicle of its procedure— Lowes

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the neighborhood . . . was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men— Irving

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