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David Hume (1711-76) was born in Edinburgh and devoted himself to philosophy and literature from an early age. In 1739-40, he published his now highly regarded work, A Treatise of Human Nature. He worked as a tutor, judge advocate, librarian, diplomat and senior civil servant, as well as writing further works such as Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and a six-volume History of England. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of Literature at the University of Oxford. Among his interests are Jonathan Swift (he was the general editor of the CUP edition of Swift), Daniel Defoe and Edward Gibbon, whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire he edited for Penguin Classics. |
