Stephen Koss

{{short description|American historian}}

Stephen Edward Koss (25 May 1940 – 25 October 1984) was an American historian specialising in subjects relating to Britain.

Koss received his BA, MA, and PhD from Columbia University, where he was a student of R.K. Webb. He began his academic career at the University of Delaware, and became an assistant professor at Barnard College, New York City in 1966, and then a full professor in 1971. He was appointed a professor of history at Columbia University in 1978,{{cite news|last=Berger |first=Joseph |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/27/obituaries/dr-stephen-koss-expert-on-history.html |title=Dr. Stephen Koss, Expert On History |work=New York Times |date=27 October 1984 |accessdate=14 August 2014}} where he had completed his bachelor's and master's degrees, as well as his doctorate; the doctoral thesis was turned into his first book John Morley at the India Office, 1905–1910 published in 1969, the same year as his biography of R.B. Haldane. He was also a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.{{cite book|editor-last=Griffiths|editor-first=Dennis|title=The Encyclopedia of the British Press 1422–1992|location=London & Basingstoke|publisher=Macmillan|year=1992|page=355}} He served on the editorial board of The Journal of Modern History and held office with the North American Conference on British Studies.{{cite journal |title=Front Matter |journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=54 |issue=1 |date=March 1982 |jstor=1906047}} {{subscription required}}{{cite journal |title=Front Matter |journal=Journal of British Studies |volume=17 |issue=1 |date=Autumn 1977 |jstor=175688}} {{subscription required}} He died on 25 October 1984 as a result of complications following heart surgery.

The historian F.M. Leventhal observed that as Koss matured there was "an increasingly irreverent and ironic tone in [his] scholarship, a willingness to criticize as well as to condone".{{cite journal |title=Reviews: Changing Fortunes in Fleet Street |first=F. M. |last=Leventhal |journal=Journal of British Studies |volume=24 |issue=4 |date=October 1985 |pages=490–495 |jstor=175477 |doi=10.1086/385848}} {{subscription required}} His death was mourned in several academic books published soon after, together with that of Alan J. Lee, who had also written on the history of newspapers in Britain and who had also died at a relatively young age.{{cite book |title=Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-2000 |volume=9 |series=Penguin History of Britain |last=Clarke |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Clarke (historian) |publisher=Penguin UK |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-141-93919-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HhawjF9EpQgC&pg=PT573}}{{cite book |title=Politicians, Diplomacy and War in Modern British History |first=Keith |last=Robbins |page=85 |publisher=A. & C. Black |year=1994 |isbn=978-1-852-85111-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d8XxilZCvuYC&pg=PA85}}

Koss is best remembered for a two-volume work The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain (1981, 1984), respectively covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Neal Ascherson, reviewing the second volume in 1985, wrote: "Koss was the archive-cruncher of his age. But he had another gift, which was to make the imparting of {{Sic|hide=y|densely|-}}packed information stylish, readable, often mockingly witty."{{cite journal|last=Ascherson|first=Neal|url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v07/n03/neal-ascherson/newspapers-of-the-consensus|title=Newspapers of the Consensus|journal=London Review of Books|volume=7|issue=3|date=21 February 1985|pages=3–5, 3}}}. The quote is from the (freely available) opening of the article online. The two volumes of The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain were later published by Fontana as a single volume.

A tribute volume appeared in 1987: The Political Culture of Modern Britain: Studies in Memory of Stephen Koss, edited by J. M. W. Bean, with a foreword by John Gross (London: Hamilton).