Abstract

The three discourses collected in this volume are from a collection of twelve essays published anonymously in 1620, which were associated with the Cavendish family—the family that served as patron and employer of Hobbes for many years. It was not until Leo Strauss discovered a manuscript version of these essays in Hobbes’s own hand that it began to be suspected that the essays might have been the work of a young Hobbes. Computer analysis of the text, comparing the various word patterns of a work of questionable authorship with that of known authors, has established that three of the twelve essays match the later work of Hobbes and hence can be attributed to him.