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PITHY QUOTE FROM Bacon: Letters and Life

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Concerning the relief of the poor, I hold some number of hospitals with competent endowments will do far more good that one hospital of an exorbitant greatness. For though the one course will be the more seen, yet the other will be the more felt.

Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. Book IV, Advice to the King, Touching Sutton’s Estate

The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. Electronic Edition. book cover

The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. Electronic Edition.

ISBN: 978-1-57085-630-3

Language: English (some Latin and French)

MARC Records



Sir Francis Bacon. Engraving by H. Wright Smith

List of Contents

The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon contains the standard edition of the letters and the life of Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England; including all his occasional works (namely letters, speeches, tracts, state papers, memorials, devices and all authentic writings not already printed among his philosophical, literary, or professional works), collected and set forth in chronological order with a commentary biographical and historical by James Spedding. 7 volumes.


Bacon, Francis. Works. Collected and edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. Vols. 8-14, The letters and the life of Francis Bacon. London: Longman, 1857-74.



Printed editions of Bacon's Correspondence have appeared since the seventeenth century, but the most important is James Spedding's seven-volume edition of the Letters and Life (1861-1874). This remarkable achievement has stood for over a century as the definitive edition of Bacon's correspondence.

—Centre for Editing Lives and Letters