Carr was born in London to a middle-class family, and was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School in London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a First Class Degree in Classics. From 1916 to 1936 he served in the British Foreign Office and was part of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. Later he became an adviser on League of Nations affairs. After being assigned to Riga, Latvia in the 1920s Carr became increasingly fascinated with Russian literature and culture and wrote several works on various aspects of Russian life. Between 1931 and 1937, Carr published many works on historians and history, works that gave much fledgling discipline of international relations. After the war, Carr was a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and then Trinity College, where he published most of his popular works ?A History of Soviet Union? and ?What is History??. He remained at Trinity College until his death.
Bibliography
Dostoevsky (1821-1881): a New Biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.
The Romantic Exiles: a Nineteenth Century Portrait Gallery, London: Victor Gollancz, 1933 and was also published in paperback by Penguin in 1949 and again in 1968.
Karl Marx: a Study in Fanaticism, London: Dent, 1934.
Michael Bakunin, London: Macmillan, 1937.
The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939: an Introduction to the Study of International Relations, London: Macmillan, 1939, revised edition, 1946.
Conditions of Peace, London: Macmillan, 1942.
Nationalism and After, London: Macmillan, 1945.
A History of Soviet Russia, Collection of 14 volumes, London: Macmillan, 1950-1978. The first three titles being Bolshevik Revolution, The Interregnum and Socialism In One County.
The New Society, London: Macmillan, 1951
What is History?, 1961, revised edition edited by R.W. Davies, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
1917 Before and After, London: Macmillan, 1969; American edition: The October Revolution Before and After, New York: Knopf, 1969.
The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929), London: Macmillan, 1979.
From Napoleon to Stalin and Other Essays, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.
The Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935, London: Macmillan, 1982.
The Soviet Impact on the Western World (1946)
References
Abramsky, Chimen & Williams, Beryl J. (editors) Essays In Honour of E.H. Carr, London: Macmillan, 1974.