The Oxford Francis Bacon – serie

This volume belongs to the new critical edition of the complete works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The edition presents the works in broadly chronological order and in accordance with the principles of modern textual scholarship. This volume comprises the first critical edition since the nineteenth century of New Atlantis, Bacon's posthumously published semi-utopian fable of reformed knowledge. New Atlantis is set on an imaginary island whose central institution--Salomon's House--is a fictional embodiment of the kind of research institute Bacon dreamed of founding in order to pursue his vast project, the Instauratio magna, and one which generates works that both expand knowledge and benefit humankind.This edition establishes an authoritative text based on fresh collation of multiple copies of the 1626 edition in close comparison with the 1628 edition. Thorough bibliographical analysis of the 1626 copy-text elucidates the book's passage through the printing house. David Colclough's detailed Introduction sets New Atlantis in the contexts of Bacon's works and of contemporary models of information-gathering and -management, including Iberian examples in the Old and New Worlds. An extensive commentary examines Bacon's sources, traces analogues across his works (especially with Sylva sylvarum, alongside which New Atlantis was originally printed), provides context and background, glosses obsolete or unusual terms, and considers critical interpretations of the text.

This volume inaugurates a new critical edition of the writings of the great English philosopher and sage Francis Bacon (1561-1626) - the first such complete edition for more than a hundred years. It contains six of Bacon's Latin scientific works, each accompanied by entirely new facing-page translations which, together with the extensive introduction and commentaries, offer fresh insights into one of the great minds of the early seventeenth century.

This is the first critical edition since the nineteenth century of Bacon's principal philosophical work in English, The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and advancement of Learning, divine and humane - traditionally known as The Advancement of Learning.

This volume belongs to the new critical edition of the complete works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The edition presents the works in broadly chronological order and in accordance with the principles of modern textual scholarship. This volume contains Bacon's earliest known writings, dating from 1584 to 1596, comprising position papers, commentaries on printed works, legal readings and opinions, and discourses of advice, usually written in response to specific events or demands, and circulated in manuscript. Bacon's writings to 1596 generally reflect his professional occupations: legal, political, and parliamentary. They include substantial writings on the Martin Marprelate controversy of 1588-1589, Roman Catholic attacks on Elizabeth's government (1593); dramatic entertainments put on at Gray's Inn and the court; tracts on important legal cases of the period; notes from his extensive reading; and letters of advice written for and to Bacon's patron, Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex. Despite the 'occasional' nature of these writings, there is clearly visible across them the early signs - 'seeds' as their author would call them-of the philosophy Francis Bacon would later come to write. The writings are presented with substantial introductions, and full commentaries and glossaries

This volume belongs to the first new critical edition of the works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to have been produced since the nineteenth century. The edition presents the works in broadly chronological order and according to the best principles of modern textual scholarship. The seven works in the present volume belong to the final completed stages (Parts III-V) of Bacon's hugely ambitious six-part sequence of philosophical works, collectively entitled Instauratio magna (1620-6). All are presented in the original Latin with new facing-page translations. Three of the seven texts (substantial works in two cases, and all sharing a startlingly improbable textual history) are published and translated here for the first time: these are an early version of the Historia densi, the 'lost' Abecedarium, and the Historia de animato & inanimato. Another - the Prodromi sive anticipationes philosophiae secundae - has likewise never been translated before. Together with their commentaries and the introduction they open the way to important new understandings of Bacon's mature philosophical thought.

Bacon's essays reflect the experience and wide reading of a Renaissance man - philosopher, historian, judge, politician, adviser to the Prince - above all, astute observer of human nature. With uncompromising candour, he exposes man as he is, not as he ought to be, examining such givens of Renaissance power as negotiating for position, expediting a personal suit, speaking effectively, and the role of dissimulation in social and political situations. He scrutinizes judicial prerogatives and probes the causes and dangers of atheism and superstition. Even such topics as boldness or love or deformity have a practical bent. In Bacon's own phrase, these essays 'come home to Mens Businesse and Bosomes.' It is especially through their matchless style that they come home–with imaginative vigour, concrete language, and the colloquial force of individual sentences. An introduction places the essays in their original context, examines their evolution over Bacon's lifetime, and elucidates their form and prose style; a commentary examines his sources and relates essays to his other writings; a glossary and index are also included.

Volume XI of The Oxford Francis Bacon comprises the first new critical edition of Bacon's most important philosophical work, the Novum Organum, for a hundred years. One of the foundation documents of early-modern philosophy, Novum Organum is edited in accordance with modern textual-critical principles for the first time. Graham Rees presents the only edition ever to include the original Latin text with a brand new, facing-page translation, and a thorough Introduction and detailed commentary of the text. The edition represents a major step towards the reinstatement of Bacon as a central figure in the history of early-modern philosophy, and will be essential reading for anyone studying the history of science and ideas in the seventeenth-century.

This volume belongs to the critical edition of the complete works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an edition that presents the works in broadly chronological order and in accordance with the principles of modern textual scholarship. This volume contains critical editions of five varied works Bacon composed during the 1620s. The most significant and substantial of these five works is his biography of Henry VII (The historie of the raigne of King Henry the seventh) but the volume testifies as well to Bacon's continuing robust allegiance to his youthful vaunt that all knowledge was his province, for it also includes his sketch for a biography of Henry VIII, An advertisement touching an holy war (a thoughtful debate over the prospect of holy war in his own time), Apophthegmes (a lively collection of witty anecdotes, classical to early modern), and his select verse translations from the psalms. In each case an authoritative text has been established based upon fresh collation of the relevant manuscripts and of multiple copies of the seventeenth editions, and subjected to a thorough bibliographical analysis of the treatment of Bacon's texts in the early modern printing-house. The Introductions discuss the occasion and context for each work, evaluate his creative transmutation of his sources, and weigh their contemporary reception. A comprehensive commentary identifies and parses Bacon's use of source material, from his refinement of published literary and historical sources and contemporary MSS to the political white papers composed while he served as counsellor to King James. An extensive glossary is integrated into this commentary. An Appendix provides full bibliographical descriptions of all of the textual witnesses, manuscript and printed edition.