Major Works

• Reflections on the Revolution in France

  - Recommended edition: Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. 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, decorating… More

Other Works

• Thoughts and Details on Scarcity

  - Miscellaneous Writings. ed. E. J. Payne. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999).
  Editorial note: This document is the nearest thing to a formal treatise on economics that Edmund Burke ever wrote. Even so, it was not meant as a full treatment of the subject but was a lengthy memorandum to the Prime Minister, William Pitt, on an immediate… 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

• Conservatism as an Ideology

  - Samuel P. Huntington, "Conservatism as an Ideology" American Political Science Review, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Jun., 1957), pp. 454-473.
  Excerpt: Most writers agree, and it is assumed here, that Burke is properly called a conservative. The question, consequently, is: can Burke best be understood as the spokesman for the feudal aristocratic order, the expounder of values and ideals universally… More

• Wollstonecraft as a Critic of Burke

  - David Bromwich, "Wollstonecraft as a Critic of Burke," Political Theory, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Nov., 1995), pp. 617-634.
  Excerpt: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men was the first published reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Later replies from the radical side challenged and in a measure qualified Burke’s report… More

Multimedia

• 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