Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow BIBLIOGRAPHY - Discourses Concerning Government

Return to Title Page for Discourses Concerning Government

Search this Title:

BIBLIOGRAPHY - Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government [1698]

Edition used:

Discourses Concerning Government, ed. Thomas G. West (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1996).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works by Sidney

A full listing of Sidney’s writings, both published and unpublished and including letters, is provided in the works by Alan Craig Houston and Jonathan Scott (in the second volume of Scott’s biography of Sidney) included in the Secondary Sources below.

Discourses Concerning Government. London, Printed, and are to be sold by the Booksellers, of London and Westminster, 1698.

[Published and edited by John Toland, this has been made available in a facsimile reprint (New York: Arno Press, 1979). It is the basis of the present edition.]

Discourses Concerning Government. The Second Edition carefully corrected. To which is Added, The Paper He delivered to the Sheriffs immediately before his Death. London: J. Darby, 1704.

Discourses Concerning Government. To which are added, Memoirs of his Life, and An Apology for Himself, Both Now first published, And the latter from his Original Manuscript. The Third Edition. London: A. Millar, 1751.

[Reprinted in a facsimile edition (Farnborough, England: Gregg International, 1968).]

Discourses Concerning Government. With his Letters, Trial, Apology, and Some Memoirs of his Life. London: A. Millar, 1763.

[Thomas Jefferson’s personal copy is in the Library of Congress.]

Other editions of the Discourses were published in London, 1705; Edinburgh, 1750 (in two volumes); London, 1795; Philadelphia, 1805 (published for Washington’s biographer, the Rev. M. L. Weems, in two volumes); New York, 1805 (three volumes). French translations, 1702 (repr. The Hague, 1755); and Paris, 1794. German translations, Erfurt, 1705; and Leipzig, 1793.

The Works of Algernon Sidney: A New Edition. London: W. Strahan, 1772. Edited by J. Robertson.

[Besides the Discourses, this edition contains the paper Sidney delivered to the sheriffs upon the scaffold; letters, taken from Thurloe’s State Papers, including letters to his father; letters to Henry Savile, ambassador in France; the record of his trial; his Apology in the Day of His Death. The text of the Discourses in this edition was extensively corrected, and to some extent rewritten, by the editor.]

“The Character of Sir Henry Vane.” Appendix F of Sir Henry Vane the Younger: A Study in Political and Administrative History, by Violet A. Rowe. London: Athlone Press, 1970.

Court Maxims, Discussed and Refelled. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. Edited by Hans Blom et al.

[Sidney’s only other book-length work, never previously published, was written about 1665. It is an attack on the Restoration regime of Charles II, with encouragement to rebellion.]

“Of Love.” In A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts … of the Late Lord Somers, ed. Sir Walter Scott. 13 vols. London, 1809–16. Vol. 8, pp. 612–619. Also printed in The Essence of Algernon Sydney’s Work on Government. To which is annexed, his Essay on Love. London: J. Johnson, 1795.

A Just and Modest Vindication of the Proceedings of the Two Last Parliaments of K. Charles the Second. London, 1681. Printed in State Tracts . . . in the Reign of K. Charles II. London, 1689. Pp. 165–187.

[The published author is Sidney’s friend Sir William Jones, but there is evidence that Sidney was the principal author.]

Trial Records

The earliest account of Sidney’s trial is An Exact Account of the Tryal & Condemnation of Algernon Sidney, esq. London: E. Mallet, 1683. Next appeared The Arraignment, Tryal, & Condemnation of Algernon Sidney, Esq; for High-Treason. For Conspiring the Death of the KING, and Intending to Raise a Rebellion in this KINGDOM. London: Benj . Tooke, 1684. The trial record was reprinted in Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials. London: Bagshaw, 1811. Vol. 9, pp. 817–1022. See also the version published in the 1763 and 1772 editions of the Discourses, which was extensively corrected by an editor.

Secondary Sources

Ashcraft, Richard. Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

[Contains a new and persuasive history of the Whig conspiracy in the early 1680s to overthrow Charles II, for which Sidney was beheaded.]

Carswell, John. The Porcupine: The Life of Algernon Sidney. London: John Murray Publishers, 1989.

[A reliable and very readable retelling of the story of Sidney’s life, with a sympathetic view of Sidney’s character. Written for educated readers interested in history, rather than for professional historians.]

Conniff, James. “Reason and History in Early Whig Thought: The Case of Algernon Sidney.” Journal of the History of Ideas 43 (1982).

[Shows that Sidney’s use of early Anglo-Saxon history to support his case against absolute monarchy is more defensible than scholars today generally acknowledge, and that the argument from history is not the heart of Sidney’s book.]

Fink, Zera S. The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England. 2d ed. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1962.

[Briefly discusses Sidney’s political thought.]

Firth, Charles H. “Sidney.” Dictionary of National Biography. London: Oxford University Press, 1917–. Vol. 18, pp. 202–210.

Houston, Alan Craig. Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England and America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

[Contains a good account of Sidney’s life and a lengthy treatment of his political thought. The discussion of Filmer and English royalist thought is particularly helpful.]

Karsten, Peter. Patriot Heroes in England and America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.

[Chronicles Sidney’s rise and decline as a popular hero.]

Meadley, George W. Memoirs of Algernon Sidney. London: Cradock and Joy, 1813.

[A well-written biography by a warm admirer of Sidney’s character and principles, but not always accurate in its repetition of Whig myths about Sidney.]

Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.

[Discusses Sidney’s influence and reputation among leading eighteenth-century English republicans.]

———. “Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government: Textbook of Revolution.” In Absolute Liberty: A Selection from the Articles and Papers of Caroline Robbins, ed. Barbara Taft. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1982.

[Reprinted from William and Mary Quarterly 4 (1947), 267–296. Discusses Sidney’s reception in America during the Revolutionary era.]

Scott, Jonathan. Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

[The first twentieth-century biography, it is the most thorough account, based on good historical detective-work. The parts on Sidney’s political thought are helpful but sometimes misleading—for example, the frequently repeated assertion that Sidney was a “relativist.”]

———. Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

[The second volume of Scott’s biography.]

Worden, Blair. “The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney.” Journal of British Studies 24 (January 1985).

[A competent scholarly overview of Sidney’s career and a brief account of his thought.]

Additional Items, Second Printing.

Carrive, Paulette. La Pensée politique d’Algernon Sidney: 1622–1683. Paris: Mérediens-Klincksieck, 1989.

Dumbauld, Edward. “Algernon Sidney on Public Right.” University of Arkansas Law Journal 10 (1987–88), 317–338.

Nelson, Scott A. The Discourses of Algernon Sidney. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993.

EDITOR’S NOTE