What you're looking for is books on historiography, or the history of history. Breisach's aptly-titled Historiography: Ancient, Medival, and Modern is a good start. You may find it a bit, or extremely, dense. If you'd like something less dry you can pick up John Gaddis' The Landscape of History, which is written a bit more for the general public. As far as books covering your specific time period, those are trickier to find. Ultimately historiography is the practice of studying, comparing, and actively analyzing various historical accounts (both primary and secondary) in the hopes of constructing an objective picture of history— it might be up to you, in the end, to write the historiographical book on culture from the 18th century onwards.

Happy reading, and I hope this helped!

Richard J Evans, In Defence of History is also quite good. It focuses on the progress and place of history as an academic discipline during the turbulence of the 20th century. Although it is focused on the 20th century it does discuss in depth, the 'function' of history and its early practices to what it developed into today.