ABSTRACT
Charles Boxer was an astonishingly prolific historian. In a writing career that stretched from 1926 to 1996 he produced over 350 separate scholarly works: in other words, he published on average one significant piece every two to three months, maintaining this rate uninterrupted for some seventy years. The fact that Boxer published so extensively, on such a wide area and for such a prolonged period of time presents a challenge to any scholar seeking to understand his work. That Boxer was especially pre-occupied with individual biographies is perhaps least obvious with reference to his major published works – i.e. monographs or full-length books. Excluding edited works, Boxer produced fourteen monographs between 1948 and 1981: but only two of them could reasonably be termed biographies. Boxer had the greatest admiration for Vieiras talents as a writer.
