Past Masters (book series) explained

Past Masters is an Oxford University Press book series published from 1980. Directly inspired by Isaiah Berlin's approach to the history of ideas, the series was created by Henry Hardy in 1980, with Keith Thomas as General Editor. Its aim was to provide a brief, lively introduction to the ideas and beliefs of important thinkers from the past who have influenced the way we think today.^[1] In 1995 it was expanded to form the Very Short Introductions series, in which a number of Past Masters were subsequently republished.

Publication history

Note: This list may not be complete. ISBNs given refer mainly to the paperback editions.

1980s

• Aquinas, A. J. P. Kenny, 1980.
• Burke, C. B. Macpherson, 1980.
• Dante, George Holmes, 1980.
• Francis Bacon, Anthony Quinton, 1980.
• Galileo, Stillman Drake, 1980. *
• Homer, Jasper Griffin, 1980.
• Hume, A. J. Ayer, 1980.
• Jesus, Humphrey Carpenter, 1980.
• Marx, Peter Singer, 1980.
• Pascal, A. J. Krailsheimer, 1980.
• Confucius, Raymond Dawson, 1981.
• Engels, Terrell Carver, 1981.*
• Machiavelli, Quentin Skinner, 1981. *
• Montaigne, Peter Burke, 1981.
• Aristotle, Jonathan Barnes, 1982.
• Berkeley, J. O. Urmson, 1982.
• Carlyle, A. L. Le Quesne, 1982.
• Darwin, Jonathan Howard, 1982.
• Kant, Roger Scruton, 1982. *
• Tolstoy, Henry Gifford, 1982.
• Bayle, Elisabeth Labrousse, 1983.
• Clausewitz, Michael Howard, 1983.*
• Cobbett, Raymond Williams, 1983.
• Diderot, Peter France, 1983.
• George Eliot, Rosemary Ashton, 1983.
• Hegel, Peter Singer, 1983.*
• Muhammad, Michael Cook, 1983.
• Plato, R. M. Hare, 1983.
• Proust, Derwent May, 1983.
• The Buddha, Michael Carrithers, 1983.*
• Thomas More, Anthony Kenny, 1983.
• William Morris, Peter Stansky, 1983.
• Chaucer, George Kane, 1984.
• Goethe, T. J. Reed, 1984.
• Lamarck, L. J. Jordanova, 1984.
• Leibniz, George MacDonald Ross, 1984.
• Locke, John Dunn, 1984. *
• Petrarch, Nicholas Mann, 1984.
• Adam Smith, D. D. Raphael, 1985.
• Bergson, Leszek Kołakowski, 1985.
• Cervantes, P. E. Russell, 1985.
• Gibbon, J. W. Burrow, 1985.
• Mill, William Thomas, 1985.
• Ruskin, George P. Landow, 1985.
• Vico, Peter Burke, 1985.
• Augustine Henry Chadwick, 1986. *
• Shakespeare, Germaine Greer, 1986. *
• Spinoza, Roger Scruton, 1986.*
• Virgil, Jasper Griffin, 1986.
• Descartes, Tom Sorell, 1987.
• Malthus, Donald Winch, 1987. *
• Montesquieu, Judith N. Shklar, 1987.
• Kierkegaard, Patrick Gardiner, 1988.*
• Wittgenstein, A. C. Grayling, 1988.*
• Arnold, Stefan Collini, 1989.
• Bentham, J. R. Dinwiddy, 1989.
• Hobbes, Richard Tuck, 1989.*
• Freud, Anthony Storr, 1989.*

1990s

• Paine, Mark Philp, 1989.
• Disraeli, John Vincent, 1990.
• Erasmus, James McConica, 1991.
• Paul, E. P. Sanders, 1991. *
• Schiller, T. J. Reed, 1991.
• Durkheim, Frank Parkin, 1992.
• Samuel Johnson, Pat Rogers, 1993.
• Jung, Anthony Stevens, 1994.*
• Nietzsche, Michael Tanner, 1994. *
• Schopenhauer, Christopher Janaway, 1994.*
• Tocqueville, Larry Siedentop, 1994.
• Rousseau, Robert Wokler, 1995.*
• Keynes, Robert Skidelsky, 1996.
• Russell, A. C. Grayling, 1996.*
• Gandhi, B. C. Parekh, 1997. *
• Heidegger, Michael Inwood, 1997. *
• Past Masters: German Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer & Nietzsche, Roger Scruton et al., 1997.
• Three Great Economists: Smith, Malthus, Keynes, Keith Thomas et al., 1997.
• Frege, Joan Weiner, 1999.

*Also published as a Very Short Introduction.

See also

• Fontana Modern Masters

Notes and References

1. https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/p/past-masters-pm/?cc=gb&lang=en& Past Masters