Hints for an Essay on the Drama

Published anonymously when its author was twenty-seven, and still argued over: a joke that a good many readers, then and since, have declined to take as one.

The one sustained work of philosophy in Burke's output, written before Parliament took him and revised only once.

A line-by-line rebuttal of another man's pamphlet, and the piece that converted Burke from a literary reputation into the Rockingham Whigs' pen.

The Rockingham Whigs' creed rather than one man's essay, circulated in draft for the party's approval.

The retrospective half of Burke's American case: where Conciliation proposes a settlement, this one explains how the quarrel was manufactured and by whom.

Two speeches from one contested election in 1774 — the first on arriving mid-poll, the second on being declared elected — printed together ever since as a single statement.

Set as a school text in the United States for generations — and the speech where Burke stakes his whole case on describing a people rather than on a principle.

A constituency letter as much as a constitutional one, addressed to the officers of the city whose poll Burke would decline three years later.

Written in the weeks after the Gordon Riots for the ministers deciding how many rioters to hang, and never intended for publication.

The far end of the story begun at Bristol in 1774: the same doctrine of representation, restated by a man who was about to give up the seat for having acted on it.

The high point of Burke's career as a practical reformer, and the rare instance of a proposal of his that became law — two years late, and in a smaller form than he moved.

Prompted by the partial relief then before the Irish Parliament and addressed to the Catholic peer most inclined to be satisfied with it.

Where the case Burke had spent two years assembling was first made in public — the argument of his remaining years, delivered in support of somebody else's bill.

A parliamentary address rather than a speech, drafted for a party that had just been destroyed at the polls, and published once the House declined to hear it out.

The labour of Burke's last fifteen years: a prosecution he lost, in a case that has outlasted its own verdict.

The seed of the Reflections, written a year earlier and at a fraction of the temperature — a private answer to the correspondent that famous book is still addressed to.

The book the rest of this shelf is now read through, and the one that cost Burke his party, his closest friendship, and nearly every ally he had.

The first of the French pamphlets: spoken in a supply debate that had nothing to do with France, nine months ahead of the Reflections.

The Reflections carried one step further — the same diagnosis, now with Rousseau named as the author of the disease and foreign armies proposed as the cure.

The companion to the Reflections: where that book made the case, this one defends the man who made it — out of the Whigs' own precedents, and in the third person.

Timed for a relief bill coming before the Dublin Parliament and addressed to the member who would carry it, in the hope of enlarging the bill before it passed.

Not an argument but a covering letter with a draft statute attached — written around 1780, sent to a Home Secretary twelve years later, and never introduced anywhere.

The Irish argument compressed into a single phrase — a companion to the Langrishe letters, and the one that goes after the vocabulary of the settlement rather than its law.

Burke fronting somebody else's book — an English translation of a Girondin's self-defence, published the year after its author had been executed by his own revolution.

The trial run for A Letter to a Noble Lord — the same posture at a smaller target, and not printed until after his death.

A letter rather than a pamphlet, and the most compact statement of his religious settlement Burke ever managed — written while he still believed the Irish question would be settled in his lifetime.

Second thoughts to the recipient of a famous first letter, three years on, after Earl Fitzwilliam's recall had killed the measure it argued for.

A personal answer to a personal attack, written eighteen months after his son's death, and the most admired single piece of writing in Burke's output.

Burke's last public argument, issued while the negotiation it attacked was under way, and in an eleventh edition before the year was out.

The last of the three memorials Burke wrote for ministers on France, addressed to a government that took none of its advice, and printed after both the writer and the coalition were gone.

One of three memorials on France composed for the government rather than for readers, and printed by Burke's executors in the year he died.

The nearest thing to a treatise on economics Burke ever wrote, produced as advice to a prime minister during a famine and printed three years after his death.

Numbered fourth and written first: a private version, addressed to a correspondent sacked that spring, of the case the Three Letters would put publicly a year later.

Notes and unfinished passages that Burke preserved for a book he never wrote, printed after his death by his executors from the papers he left.

Begun in Ireland in the early 1760s from inside the administration that enforced the penal code, then set aside unfinished for the sake of a career in England.