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

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: The Psychology of Citizenship

  - Larry Adams, "Edmund Burke: The Psychology of Citizenship," Interpretation, Winter 1973.

• The Value-Centered Historicism of Edmund Burke

  - Joseph Baldacchino, "The Value-Centered Historicism of Edmund Burke," Modern Age 27, no. 2 (1983).
  Excerpt: As he opposed the notion of a “geographical” morality, so, too, did Burke denounce the idea that man’s moral duty changes with the passage of time. “We know that we have made no discoveries,” he writes, “and we… More

• 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 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 for Our Time: Moral Imagination, Meaning, and Politics

  - William F. Byrne. Edmund Burke for Our Time: Moral Imagination, Meaning, and Politics (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011)
  Excerpt: Although the term “moral imagination” originated with Edmund Burke, much Burke scholarship fails to mention it. Two notable early and mid-twentieth-century thinkers, Irving Babbitt and Russell Kirk, do pick up on Burke’s concept and… More

Multimedia

• The Heart of Edmund Burke

  - Audio. Vigen Guroian, "The Heart of Edmund Burke," lecture hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 9 January 1988.
  Excerpt: Burke was a man of great compassion. … His conservatism was a justice-seeking conservatism for the sake of a humanity which often times lives under conditions unsuited to a creature made in the image and likeness of God. His conservatism did… More

• Reflections on Burke’s Reflections

  - Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Reflections on Burke's Reflections," American Enterprise Institute, CSPAN, 6 October 2008.
  From CSPAN: Gertrude Himmelfarb spoke about the influence of the Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke and his book Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke, who died in 1797, served in the British Parliament and became a leading figure in the… More