From the awesome thrill of the sublime to the delightful perfection of the beautiful, Edmund Burke (1729–97) gives an involving account of our sensory, imaginative and judgemental process and its relation to artistic pleasure. This edition also includes several of Burke’s early political works which illustrate that, despite his later opposition to the Revolution in France, he took a liberal and humane view of society and government.

This authoritative edition has securely established texts and, in his illuminating introduction, David Womersley clearly reveals the cross-pollination of Burke’s aesthetic and political thinking: the power exercised by art and the art of exercising power.