Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in London in November 1790, is cast as a long letter to a young Frenchman, Charles-Jean-François Depont, who had asked Burke's opinion of events in Paris. Its immediate occasion was the sermon A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, preached by the Dissenting minister Richard Price on 4 November 1789 to the Revolution Society at the meeting-house in the Old Jewry, and the society's address of congratulation to the French National Assembly.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) · AuthorReflections on the Revolution in France
Author
Edmund Burke
1729-1797 · Irish-born British statesman, member of Parliament and political writer
About Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) was born in Dublin to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, studied at Trinity College Dublin, and went to London in 1750 to read law at the Middle Temple. He made his name as a writer with A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and became private secretary to the Marquess of Rockingham in 1765, entering the House of Commons the same year. Over nearly three decades in Parliament he urged conciliation with the American colonies, sought relief for Irish Catholics, campaigned for economical reform of the Crown's patronage, and led the impeachment of Warren Hastings for his conduct in India. He published Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790, broke publicly with Charles James Fox in 1791, retired from Parliament in 1794, and died at Beaconsfield in 1797.
Notable works
- The Burke-Paine Debate on the French Revolution (1790-1791)
- Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
- A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
- Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)
- Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies (1775)
- An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791)
- Letters on a Regicide Peace (1795-1797)