Aster's Selected Political Writings (Cambridge History of Political Thought Original Series Facsimile Edition)

Author: (English) Mary Astell
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-05-01
Features: The writings of the High Church Tory pamphleteer Mary Astell are a remarkable and underestimated contribution to the constitutional debates that ushered in the modern liberal democratic state. An interlocutor with Swift and Defoe, Astell was perhaps the first systematic critic of Locke's entire corpus, something which has been overlooked in the considerable literature evaluating the reception of Locke's Two Treatises on Government. Astell's political pamphlets, Reflections upon Marriage, A Fair Way with the Dissenters, and An Impartial Enquiry into the Origins of Rebellion, ran to some five editions in her lifetime, but have never been reprinted in their entirety. This new edition makes accessible the major works of a fine English stylist and important political theorist. Patricia Springborg is a Reader in the Department of Government at the University of Sydney, New South Wales. She has held visiting appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Brookings Institution in Washington. Her publications include The Problem of Human Needs (1981), Royal Persons (1990), and Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince (1992).