BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Second Edition (1790)

Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris.

London: J. Dodsley, 1790. “The Second Edition”, a later impression, probably the fourth (Todd 53e; ESTC T46575).

A London printing of Burke’s attack on the French Revolution, issued in November 1790, within weeks of the first edition and cited as Printing and the Mind of Man 239.

iv, 356 pp. Octavo, 22 x 14 cm. Press figures: p.4 “2”, p.15 “o”, p.28 “x”, p.116 none, p.171 “§”, p.340 “6”, p.354 “o”; misprint “ascertainmennt” at p.223, line 23. The figures at pp.15 and 340 agree with the published points for Todd 53e; p.28 has “x” where the published description records none, probably a press variant within the impression. on the title page. Half calf over marbled paper boards with calf corners. The spine has six compartments divided by double gilt fillets, five of them with a gilt star tool, and a black label lettered in gilt “BURKE ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.” Rebacked, with the original label laid down.

Burke wrote the Reflections in reply to Richard Price’s sermon to the Revolution Society in November 1789, which had welcomed events in France. The Revolution and Constitutional Societies are the “certain societies in London” of the title, and the opening pages deal with them directly. Against the abstract rights claimed by the National Assembly, Burke defended inherited institutions, prescription and gradual reform. Later in the book he attacks the Assembly’s finances, including the assignats issued against confiscated church lands. The book drew replies from Mary Wollstonecraft and from Thomas Paine, whose Rights of Man appeared in 1791. The first impression of 4,000 copies was published on 1 November 1790 and Dodsley reprinted within days. Todd’s bibliography sorts these early printings by their press figures, not by the title page statement. Three impressions came out before any title page read “The Second Edition.” This copy is the second impression to carry that statement.

PMM (Printing and the Mind of Man, the 1967 catalogue edited by John Carter and Percy Muir from the 1963 London exhibition) places the Reflections under the heading ‘The Price of Revolution’, and traces it to Richard Price’s sermon to the Revolution Society: ‘this it was which provoked the Reflections’, no. 239. Burke wrote from fear that the ‘aims, principles and methods in France might infect the people of England’, and in the debate between the ideal and the practical, ‘the latter had never had a more powerful or moving advocate’ (loc. cit.).

Spine gilt bright. The label is rubbed at the edges but the lettering is legible. Marbled boards rubbed, with surface wear and fading along the edges; corners bumped and rubbed. Binding square and sound. Foxing to the title page and the facing free endpaper. The text block is lightly toned with occasional spotting and is otherwise clean. Small pencilled mark to the rear free endpaper.

An early London impression of Burke’s Reflections, printed in the first month of publication, in a sound half calf binding.