Abstract

Mark Spencer has brought together eighty-seven American discussions, dating from 1758 to 1850, of Hume’s work. A few of these discussions may previously have received scholarly attention, but most have not. A few of the items are brief, no more than a paragraph or two, and some others are slight, even as clues to the cultural history of the thirteen colonies and the United States they became. But taken as a whole, the collection adds a valuable new dimension to that history and to our knowledge of Hume’s reception in North America. Many items provide useful background to Spencer’s forthcoming book on the reception of Hume’s political thought in eighteenth-century America.