Graham, Roderick. The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume. Tuckwell Press, East Linton, 2004.

Price: US$62.68 + shipping

Condition: Near Fine

Description: 2004. xvi, 429pp. SIGNED and inscribed by the author on the title page: "To John Lloyd; Best Wishes; Roderick Graham" B&W illustrations. "Shelves groan under the weight of academic critiques of David Hume's philosophy and in-depth studies of his political economy. This book, however, is not one of those scholastic tomes. Rather, this is the story of the life of the famous philosopher, one of Scotland's greatest men. Through Hume's life, we are shown the Enlightenment from its roots, through its sometimes difficult growth to its flowering in eighteenth-century Edinburgh. Using original sources, some for the first time, we witness Hume's disappointment with the reception of his Treatise of Human Nature - it fell deadborn from the press' - although it is now seen as a pivotal work in European thinking, and follow his adventures during a farcical invasion of France. His Essays and History at last brought him the fame he had sought, but also caused the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to attempt to excommunicate him. The accusation that Hume was an atheist is disproved while, more light-heartedly, his time as a diplomat shows him at the heart of the gossip of pre-Revolutionary Paris, where he was Le Bon David'. Back in Edinburgh, James Boswell nicknamed him The Great Infidel' yet, like everyone else, sought invitations to Hume's well-stocked table and wine cellar. Hume never married, although he was always a favourite with the ladies for whist and conversation, and he was involved in a preposterous courtship in Turin. He also had a lengthy intellectual involvement with a married aristocrat who was already another man's mistress." Book and unclipped jacket are both in excellent condition.

Seller: Edinburgh Books, Edinburgh, United Kingdom