The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 26, Catalogues of Books

The final LETTERPRESS volume in the Yale Edwards, the RENOWNED critical edition founded by Harvard’s Perry Miller in 1953

“The conclusion of one of the great editorial projects in American letters, not to mention American religion. . . . Although an edition of Edwards’ reading lists—his ‘Catalogues of Books’—may seem to bear as much potential for excitement as my collected 5th-grade spelling-papers, what Peter Thuesen's treatment of the 720 entries in the Catalogue offers us is a geography of the mind of Jonathan Edwards. It is a superb example of the scholarly editor’s work, a major contribution to the intellectual history of the 18th century, and an indispensable adjunct to any understanding of Edwards’ life as a theologian and philosopher. . . . The Catalogue is a revelation of an insatiable intellectual curiosity, at a time when a single mind could still aspire to universal knowledge.”

—Allen C. Guelzo, Books and Culture

“A much-needed contribution to our understanding of Edwards’s intellectual lineage.”

—Sebastian Rehnman, British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Description

This final volume in the Yale Edwards publishes for the first time two wide-ranging manuscript records of the colonial New England theologian’s world of reading: his “Catalogue” (a notebook, kept throughout his career, of book interests, especially titles he hoped to acquire) and his “Account Book” (a ledger noting books he lent to family, parishioners, and fellow clergy). Decades ago, Edwards biographer Ola Elizabeth Winslow recognized the “Catalogue” as “in many ways the most interesting of all his manuscript remains.” Yet its 720 entries, many of them cryptic and containing multiple book references, presented formidable challenges for scholars. Now, in this volume, both the “Catalogue” and the more recently discovered “Account Book” are fully annotated, cross-referenced, and indexed, revealing the breadth of Edwards’s curiosity and providing a detailed chronicle of his intellectual evolution. Peter Thuesen’s monograph-length (113-page) critical introduction to the volume places Edwards’s book lists in the context of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic, recounting the political, religious, scientific, and other developments that shaped his reading agenda.

More about Edwards and books

Peter J. Thuesen, “Jonathan Edwards and the Transatlantic World of Books,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 3, no. 1 (2013): 43-54. (Originally delivered as the inaugural lecture at the opening of the Jonathan Edwards Center Germany at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, July 11, 2012.)