Burke

An 1879 biography of Edmund Burke, emphasising his independent political stance which mixed utilitarian liberalism and historic conservatism.

John Morley (Author)

9781108034746, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 November 2011

230 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.3 kg

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.

Note
1. Early life and first writings
2. In Ireland - Parliament - Beaconsfield
3. The constitutional struggle
4. The Rockingham party - Paris - election at Bristol - the American war
5. Economical reform - Burke in office - fall of his party
6. Burke and his friends
7. The new ministry - Warren Hastings - Burke's public position
8. The French Revolution
9. Burke and his party - progress of the Revolution - Ireland - last years
10. Burke's literary character.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]