Author: BEATTIE (James):
Title: An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism. The Sixth Edition.
Description: EAdinburgh: Printed for Denham & Dick, by Thomas Turnbull, Canongate. 1805 12mo, 177 x 100 mms., pp. [7] 8 - 341 [342 blank], with engraved portrait of Beattie as frontispiece and name in ink of "Helen Clark" on title-page slightly off-setting on frontispiece not affecting image, contemporary calf, gilt rules across spine, red leather label. A very good to fine copy. The three essays on literary theory were welcomed by contemporary philosophers, aestheticians, and reviewers. William Cowper found Beattie's literary theorizing "the most agreeable and amiable" that he had encountered, while the Scottish critic David Irving asserted in 1804 that Beattie "displays a more elegant vein of criticism than any of his predecessors." Three years later, Walter Scott, writing in The Edinburgh Review praised Beattie as "the most pleasing and ingenious writer on the Belles Lettres of his day." A rare edition of the Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth: Library Hub (COPAC) finds no copies in England of this edition from 1805. The five copies that Library Hub does locate are all in Scotland but for one in Wales: University of Aberdeen, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, the National Library of Scotland, and the National Library of Wales.

Keywords: scepticism truth philosophy prose


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