The "Key Issues" series makes available some of the contemporary responses that met important books and debates on their first appearance. Examining the range of contemporary literature - journal articles, book extracts, public letters, sermons and pamphlets - the series should give the reader an insight into the historical, social and political context in which a key publication or particular topic emerged. Each text has been reset and provided with a new editorial introduction to supply the necessary historical background. Public debate about language in the English-speaking world during...

The "Key Issues" series aims to make available the contemporary responses that met important books and debates on their first appearance. These take the form of journal articles, book extracts, public letters, sermons and pamphlets which provides an insight into the historical relevance and the social and political context in which a publication or particular topic emerged. Each volume brings together some of the key responses to the works. This is the second volume of a two-volume set containing important secondary literature on Hume on religion. This text focuses on general remarks on...

The 1870s is a key decade in the evolution of British thinking about the nature, purpose, and future of empire. Increasing economic competition began to disturb the complacent assumption about Britain's leadership in technology and in the world economy. The growth of other countries, most notably the United States and Germany, put in question Britain's survival as a great power. These changes set in motion a reappraisal of Britain's empire and its importance to the motherland, and a heated debated as to whether colonialism and imperialism were a burden rather than a benefit to Britain. The...

Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (published in February 1936) is probably the most influential and controversial economics book of the twentieth century. Keynes claimed to have undermined the foundations of orthodox economics and to have developed a radically new way of thinking about unemployment.

This volume brings together forty of the reviews published before the end of 1936, showing how a wide range of economists and political and literary figures responded to the book. It shows a variety and intensity of the reactions evoked by Keynes. Because they are all...

Mill's On Liberty has turned out to be, as he predicted, the most widely read and long-lasting of his writings. It has proved, however, extremely difficult to pin Mill down to any definite political doctrines. His contemporaries clearly had the same problems as have beset modern commentators. Some portray Mill as a dangerous revolutionary, a latter-day Jacobin; others see him as peddling mere platitudes. This volume traces the reception of On Liberty in the periodical literature, from the "rave" review of Buckle in Fraser's Magazine, by way of the furious denunciations in such Tory journals...