Derek Hirst

Derek Hirst (born 1948, Isle of Wight) is an English historian of early modern Britain.

A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and author of five books and over thirty articles, Hirst held a B.A. (1969) and Ph.D (1974) from Cambridge University. He was the William Eliot Smith Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught from 1975–2017, supervising seventeen dissertations and serving as chair of the department for several years. His focus was on 17th-century England and his best known work is England In Conflict 1603-1660: Kingdom, Community, Commonwealth.

Hirst also worked extensively on Andrew Marvell with Steven Zwicker, a colleague at Washington University in St. Louis. Hirst and Zwicker conducted an extensive review of Marvell's work and were the first to suggest that Marvell's campaigns for the rights of the individual were the result of "an inner struggle that tugged at every fiber of his personal life." Their work has led them to be considered among the leading experts on Marvell and their findings appeared in book form in Andrew Marvell, Orphan of the Hurricane (2012).

Further reading
  • "Exploring personal roots of public issues: Derek Hirst, Ph.D., probes psychology and culture to understand the course of history," March 30, 2000 Interview
  • Hirst, Derek "Locating the 1650s in England's seventeenth century" History (1996) 81#263 pp 359-83 online


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