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"A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in
bondage." -- Joseph Addison, Cato 1713. Joseph Addison was born in
1672 in Milston, Wiltshire, England. He was educated in the
classics at Oxford and became widely known as an essayist,
playwright, poet, and statesman. First produced in 1713, Cato, A
Tragedy inspired generations toward a pursuit of liberty. Liberty
Fund's new edition of Cato: A Tragedy, and Selected Essays brings
together Addison's dramatic masterpiece along with a selection of
his essays that develop key themes in the play. Cato, A Tragedy is
the account of the final hours of Marcus Porcius Cato (95-46BC), a
Stoic whose deeds, rhetoric, and resistance to the tyranny of
Caesar made him an icon of republicanism, virtue, and liberty. By
all accounts, Cato was an uncompromisingly principled man, deeply
committed to liberty. He opposed Caesar's tyrannical assertion of
power and took arms against him. As Caesar's forces closed in on
Cato, he chose to take his life, preferring death by his own hand
to a life of submission to Caesar. Addison's theatrical depiction
of Cato enlivened the glorious image of a citizen ready to
sacrifice everything in the cause of freedom, and it influenced
friends of liberty on both sides of the Atlantic. Captain Nathan
Hale's last words before being hanged were, "I only regret that I
have but one life to lose for my country," a close paraphrase of
Addison's "What pity is it that we can die but once to serve our
country!" George Washington found Cato such a powerful statement of
liberty, honor, virtue, and patriotism that he had it performed for
his men at Valley Forge. And Forrest McDonald says in his Foreword
that "Patrick Henry adapted his famous Give me liberty or give me
death' speech directly from lines in Cato." Despite Cato's enormous
success, Addison was perhaps best-known as an essayist. In
periodicals like the Spectator, Guardian, Tatler, and Freeholder,
he sought to educate England's developing middle class in the
habits, morals, and manners he believed necessary for the
preservation of a free society. Addison's work in these periodicals
helped to define the modern English essay form. Samuel Johnson said
of his writing, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style,
familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must
give his days and nights to the study of Addison."
The collection includes new translations of Tocqueville's works,
including the first English translation of his Second Memoir, the
original Memoir, a letter fragment considering pauperism in
Normandy, and the ‘‘Pauperism in America’’ index to the
Penitentiary Report. Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the most
important thinkers of the nineteenth century, and his thought
continues to influence contemporary political and social discourse.
In Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings, Christine Dunn
Henderson brings all of Tocqueville’s writings on poverty
together for the first time: a new translation of his original
Memoir and the first English translation of his unfinished Second
Memoir, as well as his letter considering pauperism in Normandy and
the ‘‘Pauperism in America’’ appendix to his Penitentiary
Report. By uniting these texts in a single volume, Henderson makes
possible a deeper exploration of Tocqueville’s thought as it
pertains to questions of inequality and public assistance. As
Henderson shows in her introduction to this collection, Tocqueville
provides no easy blueprint for fixing these problems, which remain
pressing today. Still, Tocqueville’s writings speak eloquently
about these issues, and his own unsuccessful struggle to find
solutions remains both a spur to creative thinking today and a
caution against attempting to find simplistic remedies. Memoirs on
Pauperism and Other Writings allows us to study his sustained
thought on pauperism, poverty assistance, governmental assistance
programs, and social inequality in a new and deeper way. The
insights in these works are important not only for what they tell
us about Tocqueville but also for how they help us to think about
contemporary social challenges. This collection will be essential
not only to students and scholars of Tocqueville’s thought,
nineteenth-century France, and political economy, but also to all
those interested in the issues of public assistance, associative
life, voluntary associations, and charities.
The collection includes new translations of Tocqueville's works,
including the first English translation of his Second Memoir, the
original Memoir, a letter fragment considering pauperism in
Normandy, and the ‘‘Pauperism in America’’ index to the
Penitentiary Report. Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the most
important thinkers of the nineteenth century, and his thought
continues to influence contemporary political and social discourse.
In Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings, Christine Dunn
Henderson brings all of Tocqueville’s writings on poverty
together for the first time: a new translation of his original
Memoir and the first English translation of his unfinished Second
Memoir, as well as his letter considering pauperism in Normandy and
the ‘‘Pauperism in America’’ appendix to his Penitentiary
Report. By uniting these texts in a single volume, Henderson makes
possible a deeper exploration of Tocqueville’s thought as it
pertains to questions of inequality and public assistance. As
Henderson shows in her introduction to this collection, Tocqueville
provides no easy blueprint for fixing these problems, which remain
pressing today. Still, Tocqueville’s writings speak eloquently
about these issues, and his own unsuccessful struggle to find
solutions remains both a spur to creative thinking today and a
caution against attempting to find simplistic remedies. Memoirs on
Pauperism and Other Writings allows us to study his sustained
thought on pauperism, poverty assistance, governmental assistance
programs, and social inequality in a new and deeper way. The
insights in these works are important not only for what they tell
us about Tocqueville but also for how they help us to think about
contemporary social challenges. This collection will be essential
not only to students and scholars of Tocqueville’s thought,
nineteenth-century France, and political economy, but also to all
those interested in the issues of public assistance, associative
life, voluntary associations, and charities.
Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that America had no truly great
literature, and that American writers merely mimicked the British
and European traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
This new edited collection masterfully refutes Tocqueville's
monocultural myopia and reveals the distinctive role American
poetry and prose have played in reflecting and passing judgment
upon the core values of American democracy. The essays, profiling
the work of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Edith
Wharton, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Willa Cather, Walker Percy, and
Tom Wolfe, reveal how America's greatest writers have acted as
society's most ardent cheerleaders and its most penetrating
critics. Christine Dunn Henderson's exciting new work offers
literature as a portal through which to view the philosophical
principles that animate America's political order and the mores
which either reinforce or undermine them.
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