The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01

Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.5
Word count
899K words
Chapters
90

Tags

English Originals Politics Political PhilosophyPolitical AllegoryParliamentary PoliticsMoral PhilosophyConservatismCivic AwarenessWestern ThoughtIntellectual CommentaryTraditional AestheticsAesthetic Theory

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund BurkeAuthor: Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Feb 14, 2005

Editor's review

This is the first of the twelve volumes of Edmund Burke's collected works, provided by Project Gutenberg as a free eBook. Burke was an important 18th-century British political thinker and parliamentary orator; this volume collects his early works, including the aesthetic essay on the sublime and beautiful and pamphlets on British history and politics, and is a key text for understanding the starting point of his thought. Its value lies in two aspects: on the one hand, it shows his systematic analysis of aesthetic experience; on the other, it reveals the rhetorical style and historical concerns of his political writing. The reading threshold is relatively high: sentences are intricate, allusions are dense, and it involves the 18th-century British political background. Readers need not plow through in volume order; they may first read the aesthetic essay and then move on to the political pieces, with annotated editions or introductory materials at hand. The electronic edition is convenient for searching but lacks the original layout and editorial notes, so edition differences should be noted in research use.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the section on the sublime and beautiful first to establish Burke's aesthetic framework, then move on to the political pieces.
  2. Prepare a chronology of major 18th-century British political events and consult it while reading to reduce background obstacles.
  3. For difficult long sentences, first identify the main clause and then add modifiers; consult modern translations when necessary to understand.
  4. After each piece, write a hundred-word summary recording the core argument and rhetorical devices, to facilitate linking later volumes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90

FAQ

Can I read this volume without a philosophy background? You can try, but it will be difficult. The aesthetic essay in this volume involves the empiricist tradition and aesthetic debates of the time; without background, it is easy to miss the argument. It is advisable to read a concise introduction to 18th-century aesthetics first, or choose an edition with notes and an introduction, and then return to the original text.
What does this volume mainly contain? According to the book's information, this is the first of twelve volumes of Burke's collected works and belongs to British history and politics texts; it usually includes his early aesthetic essay and pamphlets on British history and politics. For specific contents, refer to the electronic edition's table of contents, as different editions may vary slightly in arrangement.
Is the electronic edition suitable for academic citation? It can be used for reading and preliminary searching, but before formal citation, authoritative editions should be checked. Project Gutenberg electronic editions usually do not include the original editorial notes and page numbers, and layout information is limited. For academic writing, it is advisable to consult authoritative paper editions or editions with textual collation information and cite exact page numbers and editions.
Which of the twelve volumes should I start with? If the goal is to understand Burke's thought, the first volume is a reasonable starting point because it contains his early aesthetic and political writing. But if you are more interested in his parliamentary speeches and comments on the French Revolution, you may first read the relevant volumes and then go back to the first. You may also read a selected anthology or introduction first to establish an overall framework and then proceed volume by volume.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797 Author

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a British political thinker, pamphleteer and orator whose writings and speeches have had a lasting influence on political theory and the conservative tradition. This site holds sixteen of his works, chiefly the multi-volume The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, together with Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America and Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. These texts comprise parliamentary speeches, political essays and letters, addressing such subjects as the American colonies, the French Revolution, political institutions and moral philosophy. His style is eloquent yet restrained, grounding particular circumstances in general principles and arguing through contrast and historical example. As the library's fields for nationality and dates are incomplete and public information is limited, no biographical details are inferred here; readers may instead trace his political rhetoric and thought through the collected works and speech selections above.