Edmund Burke (1730-1797) was one of the most profound, versatile, and accomplished thinkers of the eighteenth century. Born and educated in Dublin, he moved to London to study law, but remained to make a career in English politics, completing A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) before entering the political arena. A Member of Parliament for nearly thirty years, his speeches are still read and studied as classics of political thought, and through his best-known work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) he has continued to exercise a posthumous influence as `the father of conservatism'. This is the first full, scholarly biography of Burke for over a generation, to be completed in two volumes. The first volume covers the years between 1730-1784, and describes his Irish upbringing and education, early writing, and his parliamentary career throughout the momentous years of the American War of Independence. Lavishly illustrated, it provides an authoritative account of the complexity and breadth of Burke's philosophical and political writing and examines its origins in his personal experiences and the political world of his day. This outstanding book will be be required reading for anybody seeking a fuller understanding of eighteenth-century history, philosophy, and political thought.

This volume explores the years from 1784 to 1797, and covers the most interesting years of Burke's life; the leading themes being India and the French Revolution. Burke was a key figure in shaping long-term British attitudes to both.

The first volume of a new biography of Edmund Burke (1730-97), one of the most profound, versatile, and accomplished thinkers of the eighteenth century. A writer and philosopher as well as an active politician (a Member of Parliament for nearly thirty years), his speeches are still read and studied as classics of political thought, and through his best-known work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), he has exercised a profound posthumous influence as `the father of conservatism'.

Edmund Burke’s iconic stance against the French Revolution and its supposed Enlightenment inspiration, has ensured his central role in debates about the nature of modernity and freedom. It has now been rendered even more complex by post-modern radicalism’s repudiation of the Enlightenment as repressive and its reason as illusionary. Not only did Burke’s own work cover a huge range - from aesthetics through history to constitutional politics and political theory - it has generated an enormous literature drawing on many disciplines, as well as continuing to be recruited in a range of contemporary polemics. In Edmund Burke, Iain Hampsher Monk presents a representative selection of articles and essays from the last 50 years of this scholarship. His introduction provides a brief biography and seeks to guide the reader through the chosen pieces as well as indicating its relationship to other and more substantial studies that form the critical heritage of this major figure.