Bolingbroke: Political Writings provides the first accessible, modernized and annotated texts of three of the most important works in eighteenth-century British political thought. These works, the Dissertation upon Parties, the letter "On the Spirit of Patriotism" and The Idea of the Patriot King together formed the first coherent platform of a political opposition movement in Anglo-American politics and influenced not only radicals in Britain, but the American Founding Fathers and the French Revolutionaries.

Bolingbroke: Political Writings provides the first accessible, modernized and annotated texts of three of the most important works in eighteenth-century British political thought. These works, the Dissertation upon Parties, the letter "On the Spirit of Patriotism" and The Idea of the Patriot King together formed the first coherent platform of a political opposition movement in Anglo-American politics and influenced not only radicals in Britain, but the American Founding Fathers and the French Revolutionaries.

In turn, Tory minister, Jacobite renegade, English philosopher and anti-minister, Bolingbroke has elicited mixed reactions from his compatriots, both contempories and historians. Bernard Cottret discusses here his political writings in the context of contemporary thought in England and France. His analyses of 'A' Dissertation upon Parties' and 'The Idea of a Patriot King' are supported by a full mid-eighteenth-century political thought.