"Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode in seventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of ""reason of state""."
Noel Malcolm is a General Editor of the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes. He has been a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Foreign Editor of The Spectator, and political columnist of the Daily Telegraph. He left journalism in 1995 in order to concentrate on scholarly research and writing. Since then he has been a Visiting Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, and Carlyle Lecturer at Oxford University. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001.
Title: Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years' War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes
Author: Malcolm, Noel
ISBN: 9780199575718
Binding:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 2010-01-21
Number of Pages: 240
Weight: 0.2721 kg
Review from previous edition The bringing to light of a previously-unknown work by a major writer or thinker is always a cause of excitement, and even more so when the author in question is a figure of the stature of Hobbes. Noel Malcolm's discovery amongst the papers of the first Earl of Newcastle of an imcomplete manuscript translation, unmistakably in Hobbes's handwriting, of an inflammatory European political pamphlet of the 1620s, is thus a tantalising and provocative event...Most professional scholars...will close this slim volume with mingled emotions of admiration and despair: admiration at the reach, precision and judgement of Malcolm's scholarship, despair over whether they could themselves emulate it. * David Womersley, Social Affairs Unit Web Review *
Noel Malcolm's book consists of six stage-setting chapters, Hobbes's English translation of a manuscript version of a pamphlet written in Latin during the Thirty Years' War, and the Latin text of the published version. Malcolm's chapters are a tour de force of scholarship...Malcolm's careful, erudite edition of the translation and his discussion of the minutiae of the Thirty Years' War must be lauded. * A. P. Martinich, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
This book...offers what good history should: the recovery of the past, in all of its forgotten complexity and detail. In a day when most academic writing achieves only clever hermeneutics, reading Noel Malcolm is a bracing pleasure. * Times Literary Supplement *
