Francis Bacon

by

Alan Stewart

• LAST MODIFIED: 22 November 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0208

Introduction

In his early thirties, some years before his works appeared in print, Francis Bacon (b. 1561–d. 1626) famously wrote that “I have taken all knowledge to be my province”—and the modern reader is still struck by the sheer range and ambition of his writings. In his busy public life, Bacon was lawyer, parliamentarian, adviser, courtier, bureaucrat, politician, and judge; his intellectual pursuits went well beyond even that scope to encompass natural philosophy in its broadest senses, theology, mythography, experimental science, historiography, and much more. Many scholars attempting to understand Bacon necessarily limit their inquiry to fit their own intellectual expertise and the silo of their academic discipline, and to good effect, but recently there has been a greater willingness to embrace interdisciplinary approaches, and to understand, for example, the relation between his scientific and legal thinking, or his political activities and his essay writing—although Bacon might well have been bemused by the still limited nature of these forays on his “province” of “all knowledge.” Bacon has been read and studied now for over four centuries, and while his writings have always remained in print, it is possible to track certain trends in the focus of Bacon studies. After a century when no major edition appeared, ambitious new editions of his works, in English, French, and Romanian, have been inaugurated since the 1990s. The same period has seen a resurgence of interest in his fable New Atlantis and, more recently, his natural history collection Sylva sylvarum; it is inevitable that the coming years—with the benefit of new scholarly editions—will pursue other directions. This bibliography was commissioned under the heading of “British and Irish Literature,” and it therefore perhaps leans towards the Bacon texts that have been deemed most worthy of study by literary scholars. But in truth there is very little Bacon scholarship that is purely literary: those scholars have found themselves in territory more familiar to philosophy, law, science, and politics. In an attempt to prevent the bibliography sprawling in every direction, it does not attempt to engage as fully with some of the more technical subjects that Bacon broaches (mathematics, medicine, mining, some experimental work, etc.) and the minutiae of his legal and parliamentary careers. It is be hoped, however, that there is still enough here to reflect Bacon’s intellectual “province.”

Bibliography

Bacon scholarship has been relatively ill-served by bibliographical studies. Gibson 1950 surveyed editions of Bacon’s printed works to 1750, but subsequent attempts to capture the state of play in critical work have been sporadic (Houck 1968, Sessions 1987, Sessions 1990). A census of surviving early modern manuscripts, Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700, has revolutionized knowledge of Bacon’s works in manuscript. A census of Bacon’s letters, The Correspondence of Francis Bacon, is now searchable online. The ongoing University Short Title Catalogue is making many more European editions available digitally. A recent initiative by The Oxford Francis Bacon aims to keep an up-to-date bibliography of works by and on Bacon.

• Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700.

  In 1980, Sotheby’s manuscripts expert Peter Beal launched his Index of English Literary Manuscripts (London: Mansell), whose first volume, 1450–1625, contained an important entry on Bacon’s writings in manuscript. This massively expanded online version provides extensive coverage of extant manuscript copies of works by Bacon (and 235 other early modern authors). While its coverage of Bacon’s letters is incomplete, its tracking and descriptions of copies of Bacon’s other works are indispensable.

• The Correspondence of Francis Bacon.

  Created at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters by Alan Stewart with Patricia Brewerton, Andrew Gordon, Jan Broadway, and Harriet Knight, this online resource makes searchable (by name and word) a new census (manuscript and printed) of letters to and from Bacon.

• Gibson, R. W. Francis Bacon: A Bibliography of His Works and of Baconiana to the Year 1750. Oxford: Scrivener Press, 1950.

  A handsome, if not entirely complete, bibliography of Bacon editions to 1750, with multiple illustrations of title pages. A typescript supplement, attempting to fill some of the gaps, was privately issued in 1959.

• Houck, J. Kemp. Francis Bacon, 1926–1966. Elizabethan Bibliographies Supplements XV. London: Nether Press, 1968.

  Designed to update S. A. Tannenbaum’s Elizabethan Bibliographies, this Supplement offers 873 entries on Bacon, published between 1926 and 1968, broken into eleven sections: editions; translations; bibliography; general, historical, and biographical studies; the authorship controversy and related theories; language and literature; science; philosophical, history of ideas, religion; utopia and political theory; historiography; and law and politics. The works are listed, without further comment.

• Oxford Francis Bacon: Bibliography.

  This site, run by James Lancaster for the team behind the new Oxford Francis Bacon edition, aims to build a cumulative bibliography for Bacon, including books, journals articles, and chapters in edited collections. Keywords are recorded but there is no further description of the entries.

• Sessions, William A. “‘Recent Studies in Francis Bacon.” English Literary Renaissance 17.3 (Autumn 1987): 351–371.

  DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-6757.1987.tb00941.x

  This wide-ranging and knowledgeable survey essay covers anglophone criticism from 1945 and 1984 in the following categories: general, philosophical, scientific, rhetorical and literary, historical and political, legal and medical.

• Sessions, William A. “Bibliography.” In Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts: “The Art of Discovery Grows with Discovery.” Edited by William A. Sessions, 325–327. New York: AMS Press, 1990.

  Continues the work of Sessions 1987, adding works published in French, German, and Italian, and through to 1988.

• Universal Short Title Catalogue.

  The outcome of a project headed by Andrew Pettegree (St Andrews), this “open access bibliography of early modern print culture” aims to locate copies of all books printed between 1450 and 1650, with links to digital scans of many titles. Constantly updated, it promises to enhance our knowledge of Bacon’s dissemination in print.