John Locke (1632-1704) was a prolific correspondent and left behind him over 3,600 letters, a collection almost unmatched in pre-modern times. A man of insatiable curiosity and wide social connections, his letters open up the cultural, social, intellectual, and political worlds of the later Stuart age. Spanning half a century, they mark the transition from the era of revolutionary Puritanism to the dawn of the Enlightenment. Locke is chiefly known as a philosopher, a theorist of empiricism in his Essay Concerning Philosophyrstanding, a theorist of liberalism in his Two Treatises of Government, and a theorist of religious toleration in his Letter concerning Toleration. But his interests extended further still, to education, medicine, finance, theology, empire, and the natural world. He was a Fellow of the early Royal Society. He received letters from scholars in Paris and Amsterdam, from colonial administrators in Virginia, from aristocrats and shopkeepers, from children, from tenants, from politicians, from philosophic women, from astronomers, chemists, and physicists. He is one of the first people whose correspondence is as far flung as North America, India, and China. A friend of Anglican archbishops and of freethinking anticlericals, of Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, of William Molyneux the 'virtuoso' of Dublin, of Jean LeClerc of Amsterdam, and of Damaris Masham, Locke stood in the midst of the 'Republic of Letters'. This book brings together 245 of the most important and revealing letters. Half of them are letters written by Locke (twelve per cent of the total number surviving), the other half are letters written to him. If Locke's place is already secure among those who explore philosophy and political ideas, these letters will give Locke a new presence among those who are interested in the social and cultural worlds of seventeenth-century Britain.
Reviews
This handsomely produced volume is well worth its while ... The result of Goldie's choice of letters and of the generally excellent editorial material which surrounds them is a book not only in which one might browse with pleasure but also which might be read systematically. * Locke Studies *
Mark Goldie has now performed a vital task for all serious students of Locke: he has given us a selection of the most important of these letters in a single volume that is light in weight and elegantly annotated. The letters collected here-both to and from Locke-can be read from start to finish, telling the story of a man who was to find himself both at the centre of the 'commonwealth of learning' and of the struggle against political and religious tyranny in the British Isles. * James Hill, Acta Comeniana *
Each of the sixteen temporally separate groups of letters is prefaced with a couple of pages of useful biography. Also there is an excellent overall thirty-page introduction. * Locke Studies *
Mark Goldie's edition of Selected Correspondence is a timely attempt to unlock this cabinet of secrets for a much larger audience ... His knowledge of Locke and his historical setting is exemplary ... He faces the formidable challenge with tact and composure ... fascinating to read, and often illuminating in detail ... It fully deserves to carry the pleasures and insights of the correspondence to a much wider circle of readers. * John Dunn, Times Literary Supplement *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198235422
Author Mark Goldie
Format Hardback
Page Count 416
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 711g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 163mm * 27mm