Major Works

• Reflections on the Revolution in France

  - Recommended edition: Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Edited by J. G. A. Pocock. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. Originally published 1790.
  Excerpt: “It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon,… More

Other Works

• Selected Letters of Edmund Burke

  - Selected Letters of Edmund Burke, ed. Harvey Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
  From Amazon: Edmund Burke (1729-97) was a British statesman, a political philosopher, a literary critic, the grandfather of modern conservatism, and an elegant, prolific letter writer and prose stylist. His most important letters, filled with sparkling prose… More

• On Empire, Liberty and Reform: Speeches and Letters

  - On Empire, Liberty and Reform: Speeches and Letters, ed. David Bromwich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
  From the publisher: The great British statesman Edmund Burke had a genius for political argument, and his impassioned speeches and writings shaped English public life in the second half of the eighteenth century. This anthology of Burke’s speeches,… More

Commentary

• The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

  - Russell Kirk. The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960). First edition originally published 1953.
  Excerpt: Conscious conservatism, in the modern sense, did not manifest itself until 1790, with the publication of Reflections on the Revolution in France. In that year the prophetic powers of Burke fixed in the public consciousness, for the first time, the… More

• “Edmund Burke and the American Constitution” by Morton Frisch

  - Frisch, Morton J. "Edmund Burke and the American Constitution." Interpretation 17, no. 1 (Fall 1989): 23–38.
  Frisch examines Burke’s opinion on the American Constitution and why Burke supported the American Revolution even as he would later oppose the French Revolution.

• The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke

  - Conor Cruise O'Brien. The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
  Excerpt: Can this book properly be described as a biography? It is certainly nor a conventional biography, but it is a complete biography, extending from the circumstances – key Burkean word – of the subject’s birth in Ireland to those of… More

• The Great Edmund Burke

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, "The Great Edmund Burke," review of The Great Melody, by Conor Cruise O'Brien, New Criterion, November 1992.
  Excerpt: The publication of The Great Melody is an event not just in the small circle of Edmund Burke scholarship but also in the larger community of historians. Still more, and above all, it is a gift to anyone who wants to understand politics. Conor Cruise… More

• Liberty and Revolution in Burke’s Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol

  - Mark Kremer, "Liberty and Revolution in Burke's Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol," Interpretation, Fall 1998.

• The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments

  - Gertrude Himmelfarb. The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (New York: Knopf, 2004).
  Excerpt: Burke’s views on economics suggest that there may be something like an “Edmund Burke Problem”- a “two Burkes” phenomenon comparable to the “Adam Smith Problem.” Just as the altruistic principles of the Theory… More

• Edmund Burke in America: The Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism

  - Drew Maciag. Edmund Burke in America: The Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013).
  From the publisher: The statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–1797) is a touchstone for modern conservatism in the United States, and his name and his writings have been invoked by figures ranging from the arch Federalist George Cabot to… More

• The Great Debate by Yuval Levin

  - Levin, Yuval. The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
  Excerpt: “This book seeks to examine Burke and Paine’s disagreement and to learn from it about both their era’s politics and ours. Using not only their dispute about the French Revolution but also the two men’s larger bodies of writing and… More

Multimedia

• Burke and the American Revolution

  - Audio recording. Russell Kirk, "Burke and the American Revolution," undated lecture hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
  Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind and Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered, considers Burke’s writings on the American Revolution, arguing that “Burke understood the two causes,” of the revolution—political and… More

• Burke and the American Tradition of Ordered Liberty

  - Ian Crowe, "Burke and the American Tradition of Ordered Liberty," Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal Mecosta, Michigan, 31 October 2009.

• In Our Time: Edmund Burke

  - "In Our Time: Edmund Burke," BBC Radio 4, June 2010.
  Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke. With: Karen O’Brien Professor of English at the University of Warwick Richard Bourke Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary,… More