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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Joseph HoneORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Cambridge University Press, 2018.
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This article presents the first addition in recent years to the canon of the British eighteenth-century statesman and political thinker Lord Bolingbroke (1678–1751), a manuscript essay “On the Character of a Great Patriot.” For the first time, this article identifies Bolingbroke as the likely author of this unascribed, undated, and untitled essay in the Senate House Library manuscript collection. Using internal and contextual evidence, the article demonstrates that the “Character” is a description of Bolingbroke's opposition colleague William Pulteney, and that it was written in the final months of 1731, most likely for publication in the opposition journal the Craftsman. The “Character” dates from a period in which Bolingbroke wrote very little, and it is thus a crucial addition to his biography as well as an early exposition of his theory of opposition politics. Moreover, study of the essay shows that Bolingbroke drew extensively on the example of Pulteney when formulating his idea about the necessity of a systematic opposition party, not fully formulated until On the Spirit of Patriotism (1736). The “Character” thus sheds further light on the important relationship between political practice and theory in the age of Walpole.
Author(s): Hone J, Skjönsberg M
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of British Studies
Year: 2018
Volume: 57
Issue: 3
Pages: 445-466
Print publication date: 01/07/2018
Online publication date: 29/06/2018
Acceptance date: 08/03/2018
Date deposited: 02/10/2019
ISSN (print): 0021-9371
ISSN (electronic): 1545-6986
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2018.81
DOI: 10.1017/jbr.2018.81
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