WASHINGTON — Perez Zagorin, 88, a leading historian of the 17th-century English Revolution and a critic of Marxist interpretations of history, died April 26 at George Washington University Hospital of complications following open-heart surgery.

He lived in Washington.

Since 1992, Zagorin had been a research fellow at the University of Virginia’s Edgar F. Shannon Center for Advanced Studies. He established his reputation as a prominent scholar in 1954 with “A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution.”

Other books, including “The Court and the Country: The Beginning of the English Revolution” (1969) and the two-volume “Rebels and Rulers: 1500-1600” (1982), examined political and ideological trends across Europe.

His 1999 book about the 17th-century English philosopher Francis Bacon was praised in the British Times Literary Supplement as “the best single-volume study available.”

Zagorin also wrote about poet John Milton and the development of the idea of religious tolerance in Europe. In 2005, he published a book for general readers about the Greek historian Thucydides. His final book, “Hobbes and the Law of Nature,” to be published later this year, examines the moral and political thought of 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes.