Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics, and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wholly separate states — the first, an experience inspired by fear and awe; the second, an expression of pleasure and...

This work is far more than an eloquent piece of occasional writing. For Burke is one of the foremost conservative British political thinkers: in his support for piecemeal reform rather than revolutionary change, in his sceptical belief in expediency and practical wisdom rather than abstract theorising, and in his defence of property, religion and traditional institutions. On all these topics,...

The most important works of Edmund Burke, the greatest political thinker of the past three centuries, are gathered here in one comprehensive volume. Accompanying his influential masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a selection of pamphlets, speeches, public letters, private correspondence and, for the first time, two important and previously uncollected early essays. Amid the 18th century's golden...