Edmund Burke was an orator, writer, British statesman, and opponent of the revolution in France. This collection of essays focuses on Burke's complex relationship to his native Ireland. It brings together 13 authors, all established experts and young scholars, from a variety of viewpoints and disciplines.

This pioneering study of Burke's engagement with Irish politics and culture argues that Burke's influential early writings on aesthetics are intimately connected to his lifelong political concerns. The concept of the sublime, which lay at the heart of his aesthetics, addressed itself primarily to the experience of terror, and it is this spectre that haunts Burke's political imagination throughout his career. Luke Gibbons argues that this found expression in his preoccupation with political terror, whether in colonial Ireland and India, or revolutionary America and France. Burke's preoccupation with violence, sympathy and pain allowed him to explore the dark side of the Enlightenment, but from a position no less committed to the plight of the oppressed, and to political emancipation. This major reassessment of a key political and cultural figure will appeal to Irish studies and Post-Colonial specialists, political theorists and Romanticists.

Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past three hundred years. A brilliant 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman, Burke was a fierce champion of human rights and the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, and a lifelong campaigner against arbitrary power. Once revered by an array of great Americans including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Burke has been almost forgotten in recent years. But as politician and political philosopher Jesse Norman argues in this penetrating biography, we cannot understand modern politics without him. As Norman reveals, Burke was often ahead of his time, anticipating the abolition of slavery and arguing for free markets, equality for Catholics in Ireland, responsible government in India, and more. He was not always popular in his own lifetime, but his ideas about power, community, and civic virtue have endured long past his death. Indeed, Burke engaged with many of the same issues politicians face today, including the rise of ideological extremism, the loss of social cohesion, the dangers of the corporate state, and the effects of revolution on societies. He offers us now a compelling critique of liberal individualism, and a vision of society based not on a self-interested agreement among individuals, but rather on an enduring covenant between generations. Burke won admirers in the American colonies for recognizing their fierce spirit of liberty and for speaking out against British oppression, but his greatest triumph was seeing through the utopian aura of the French Revolution. In repudiating that revolution, Burke laid the basis for much of the robust conservative ideology that remains with us to this day: one that is adaptable and forward-thinking, but also mindful of the debt we owe to past generations and our duty to preserve and uphold the institutions we have inherited. He is the first conservative. A rich, accessible, and provocative biography, Edmund Burke describes Burke’s life and achievements alongside his momentous legacy, showing how Burke’s analytical mind and deep capacity for empathy made him such a vital thinker—both for his own age, and for ours.

This 12-volume set contains the complete life works of EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797), Irish political writer and statesman. Educated at a Quaker boarding school and at Trinity College in Dublin, Burke's eloquence gained him a high position in Britain's Whig party, and he was active in public life. He supported limitations on the power of the monarch and believed that the British people should have a greater say in their government. In general, Burke spoke out against the persecutions perpetuated by the British Empire on its colonies, including America, Ireland, and India. Burke's speeches and writings influenced the great thinkers of his day, including America's Founding Fathers. In Volume IV, readers will find: . "Letter in Answer to Some Objections to His Book on French Affairs" . "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs" . "Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws Against Irish Catholics" . "Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, On the Subject of the Roman Catholics of Ireland" . "Hunts for a Memorial to be Delivered to Monsieur De M.M." . "Thoughts on French Affairs" . "Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs" . "Remarks on the Policy of the Allies With Respect to France"

This 12-volume set contains the complete life works of EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797), Irish political writer and statesman. Educated at a Quaker boarding school and at Trinity College in Dublin, Burke's eloquence gained him a high position in Britain's Whig party, and he was active in public life. He supported limitations on the power of the monarch and believed that the British people should have a greater say in their government. In general, Burke spoke out against the persecutions perpetuated by the British Empire on its colonies, including America, Ireland, and India. Burke's speeches and writings influenced the great thinkers of his day, including America's Founding Fathers. In Volume II, readers will find: . "Speech on American Taxation" . "Speeches on the Arrival at Bristol and at the Conclusion of the Poll" . "Speech on Moving Resolutions for Conciliation with America" . "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, On the Affairs of America" . "Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol, On the Bills Depending in Parliament Relative to the Trade of Ireland" . "Speech on Presenting to the House of Commons a Plan for the Better Security of the Independence of Parliament, and the Economical Reformation of the Civil and Other Establishments" . "Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election, September 6, 1780" . "Speech at Bristol on Declining the Poll, September 9, 1780" . "Speech of Mr. Fox's East India Bill" . "A Representation to His Majesty, Moved in the House of Commons"