The correspondence of Berkeley does justice to Alexander Pope's famous poetic pronouncement, “To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.” The character portrait that emerges from a careful reading of his letters reveals a figure worthy of admiration not only as a philosopher and a divine, but as an individual who passionately pursued a number of grand causes. He is a figure reflective of his time, and his letters provide insight into both his own thought as well as access to broader historical and philosophical currents.

It is, I think, the not so secret desire of those who compile the correspondences of philosophers and historical notables to uncover new letters that profoundly reshape how we understand them or their thought. More often than not, however, we must settle for simply providing a service to fellow scholars, researchers, and the merely curious. In this volume it is unlikely the reader will find letters that provide new philosophical insights into Berkeley's philosophical views. They will find, however, a much more complete collection of letters than ever previously published, including letters addressed to Berkeley. After a search of several years, this volume includes a number of previously unpublished letters written by and to him, some or all of which, I hope, will be of use to scholars.

There has been no successful prior attempt to provide a complete collection of Berkeley's extant correspondence. A. C. Fraser published many new letters in his Life and Letters, but he excluded most of the correspondence written to Berkeley. Benjamin Rand presented most of the correspondence between Berkeley and Percival in his nowagingwork Berkeley and Percival (published in 1914), but hemissed a number of letters in the archives and was unaware of several others that have since come to light. A. A. Luce hoped to have a complete edition of Berkeley's letters (see Life, p. vi), but he too made the decision to not publish the vast majority of the letters addressed to Berkeley. Luce alsomissed letters in the archives and some new ones have since come to light, includingmany published here for the first time. That said, the present volume relies heavily on the excellent work done by all three of these pioneering early Berkeley scholars.