This volume on Edmund Burke (1729-97), published in 1879 in the first series of English Men of Letters, was written by the general editor of the series, John Morley (1838-1923). Himself a politician as well as an author, Morley had previously published a 'historical study' of Burke in 1867, but emphasises in an introductory note that this book 'is biographical rather than critical' and is intended as a narrative life. Morley himself was a radical in politics, and his interest in Burke, who he does not hesitate to characterise on occasion as a narrow-minded reactionary, may seem surprising, but he greatly admired his subject's independent political stance, which he describes as a mixture of utilitarian liberalism and historic conservatism, unfettered by abstract doctrine, and which he believed might again come to dominate political discourse in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
  • ISBN10 3842449054
  • ISBN13 9783842449053
  • Publish Date 3 November 2011 (first published 1 February 2005)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country DE
  • Imprint Tredition Classics
  • Format Paperback (US Trade)
  • Pages 176
  • Language English