Henry St John Viscount Bolingbroke 1754 The Philosophical Works Leather Set

Up For Sale Today is

The Philosophical Works Of The Late Right Honorable Henry St. John,
Lord Viscount Bolingbroke
Five Volumes Complete

by

Viscount Henry St. John Bolingbroke

Hardcover. 8vo. Published by David Mallet, London, UK. 1754. 5 Volumes. Vol I: 563 pgs. Vol II: 527 pgs, Vol III: 561 pgs,. Vol IV: 632 pgs. Vol V: 567 pgs.

Bound in full leather boards with titles and raised bands present to the spine. Boards have  shelf-wear present to the extremities. Bookplate and previous owner's names present to the front pastedown.  Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid.

Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), was a prominent member of the Tory party in the British Parliament from 1701 until the 1714 shift of power to the Whigs. After joining the failed 1715 Jacobite Rebellion as secretary of state to James Stuart, he was exiled to France until his pardon in 1723.During his exile, he encountered the ideas of the French Enlightenment and devoted much time to philosophical study, struggling to develop a system of morality grounded in natural law and reason and tending towards a deist worldview. His Philosophical Works grew out of this period and his subsequent study, and was first published three years after his death.

Bolingbroke’s works had some influence in the American colonial period: John Adams claimed to have read through his works five times, and Bolingbroke influenced Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, who were widely read in the colonies. Additionally, Bolingbroke’s Philosophical Works was a favorite of Jefferson, who copied approximately 10,000 words from the work into his Literary Commonplace Book, complied in the 1760s.