Unbeknownst to most readers today, Austen and Dickens each wrote a satiric history of England. Austen's The History of England from the Reign of Henry the 4th to the Death of Charles the 1st--written in 1791 when she was 16--is a deliberate parody of the intellectually vapid histories to which girls of her class were routinely subjected. Reprinted in its entirety, Austen's juvenilia is witty, cold-blooded and contrarian: during Henry V's reign, she writes, Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for, and the history's purpose is supposedly to vindicate Mary Queen of Scots and abuse Elizabeth. Dickens was already a bestselling novelist when he published A Child's History of England in the early 1850s, which was part of the British school curriculum for decades; an excerpt appears here. Using plain language, sharp if heavy irony and evocative detail, Dickens is radical and opinionated: Elizabeth is coarse, capricious, and treacherous and James I is a greedy, dirty drunk. Although a knowledgeable introduction by historian and TV presenter Starkey (Elizabeth) offers interesting biographical tidbits and puts each book in its proper context, American readers will find these to be amusing minor works by a pair of English national treasures. (Oct. 2) Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.