Selected Bibliography:
Henry Home,
Lord Kames
(1696-1782)
Last revised 22 October 1999
- There is no full primary or secondary bibliography, but lists
useful for undertaking such a project can be found in:
- William C. Lehman, Henry Home and the Scottish
Enlightenment: A Study in National Character and in the History
of Ideas (The Hague, 1971), 341-42.
- Ian Simpson Ross, Lord Kames and the Scotland of His
Day (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), 381-82.
- Roger L. Emerson, "Henry Home, Lord Kames," in British
Prose Writers, 1660-1800, 2nd series, Dictionary of
Literary Biography, vol. 104, ed. Donald T. Siebert (Detroit
and London, 1991), 224-25.
Collected Editions
- There is no collected edition of Kames's works, but in 1995
Thoemmes Press issued seven titles (Essays upon Several
Subjects concerning British Antiquities, Essays on the
Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, Introduction
to the Art of Thinking, Elements of Criticism,
Sketches of the History of Man, and Loose Hints on
Education) with an introduction by J. V. Price.
Individual Works
- Remarkable Decisions of the Court of Session, from 1716 to
1728, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1728). Reprinted 1790.
- Essays upon Several Subjects in Law (Edinburgh, 1732).
- The Decisions of the Court of Session, from Its First
Institution to the Present Time, Abridged and Digested under
Proper Heads, in the Form of a Dictionary, 2 vols.
(Edinburgh, 1741). Reprints in 1757, 1764, and 1774. A. F.
Tytler added a third volume in 1778 and a fourth in 1797 to bring
the Dictionary up to date; Thomas Macgrugar brought out a
Supplement in 1804 containing the omitted cases.
- Essays upon Several Subjects concerning British
Antiquities (Edinburgh, 1747). Reprinted 1749; third edition,
revised and enlarged, 1763.
- Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural
Religion (Edinburgh, 1751). Second ed., London, 1758; third
edition, corrected and enlarged, 1779. A German translation by C.
G. Rautenberg, Versuche über die ersten Gründe der
Sittlichkeit und der natürlichen Religion, appeared in
1768 and 1772.
- "Of the Laws of Motion," in Essays and Observations,
Physical and Literary, ed. A. Munro and D. Hume (Edinburgh,
1754).
- Objections against the Essays on Morality and Natural
Religion Examined (Edinburgh, 1756). Published anonymously;
by Kames, possibly with the help of Hugh Blair and Robert
Wallace.
- The Statute Law of Scotland Abridged, with Historical
Notes (Edinburgh, 1757). Reprinted 1769 and 1778.
- Historical Law-Tracts, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1758).
Second edition, 1761; third edition, revised and enlarged, 1
vol., London, 1776. A partial French translation by M.-A.
Bouchaud, Essais historiques sur les loix, appeared in
Paris in 1766.
- Principles of Equity (Edinburgh, 1760). Second
edition, corrected and enlarged, 1767; third edition, 2 vols.,
1778; 1800; "new" edition, 1825.
- Introduction to the Art of Thinking (Edinburgh, 1761).
Reprinted 1764, 1775, 1789, 1810, 1816; Glasgow, 1819.
- Elements of Criticism, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1762).
Second edition, revised and enlarged, 1763; third edition,
revised and enlarged, 2 vols., 1765; fourth edition, revised and
enlarged, 1769; fifth edition, 1774; sixth edition, with the
author's last corrections and additions, 1785. Often reprinted.
- Remarkable Decisions of the Court of Session, from 1730 to
1752 (Edinburgh, 1766).
- Progress of Flax-Husbandry in Scotland (Edinburgh,
1766).
- "Observations upon the Paper concerning Shallow Ploughing"
and "On Evaporation," in Essays and Observations, Physical and
Literary, ed. A. Monro (Edinburgh, 1771), 3:68-79, 80-99.
- Sketches of the History of Man, 2 vols. (Edinburgh,
1774). Second edition, "considerably improved," 4 vols., 1778;
third edition, with the author's last corrections and additions,
1788. Often reprinted.
- The Gentleman Farmer: Being an Attempt to Improve
Agriculture by Subjecting It to the Test of Rational
Principles (Edinburgh, 1776). Second edition, revised and
enlarged, 1779; third edition, revised and enlarged, 1788.
- Elucidations respecting the Common and Statute Law of
Scotland (Edinburgh, 1777).
- Select Decisions of the Court of Session, from 1752 to
1768 (Edinburgh, 1780).
- Loose Hints on Education, Chiefly Concerning the Culture
of the Heart (Edinburgh, 1781). Second edition, 1782.
Archives
- The largest collections of unedited Kames materials are held
at the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh: see especially the
Abercairny Collection (including family papers, unpublished MSS,
and correspondence); records of the Court of Session and
Justiciary Court; and Forfeited Estates Papers, also records of
the Board of Trustees for Manufactures and Fisheries. Kames
papers are also found in the National Library of Scotland; city
archives, Edinburgh; Mitchell Library, Glasgow; university
libraries in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Glasgow; also at Aldourie
Castle, near Inverness; British Library; American Philosophical
Society; and Yale University Library. See Ian Simpson Ross,
Lord Kames and the Scotland of His Day (Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1972), 378-80.
- William Smellie, Literary and Characteristical Lives of
John Gregory, M.D., Henry Home, Lord Kames, David Hume, Esq., and
Adam Smith, LL.D. (Edinburgh, 1800).
- Lord Woodhouselee (Alexander Fraser Tytler), Memoirs of
the Life and Writings of the Honourable Henry Home, Lord
Kames, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1807); supplement, 1809; second
edition, revised and enlarged, 1814. Comprehensive but adulatory
work, with much useful information about Kames and his circle by
a protégé who was chosen by the subject to be the
official biographer.
- John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Scotland and Scotsmen in the
Eighteenth Century, ed. A. Allardyce, 2 vols. (Edinburgh and
London, 1888). The author knew Kames well and the writers of the
age.
- James Boswell, Materials for Writing the Life of Lord
Kames [c. 1778-82], vol. 15 of The Private Papers of James
Boswell from Malahide Castle, ed. G. Scott and F. A. Pottle
(New York: 1928-34). The source contains valuable reports from
Kames himself about his life and writings.
- James Boswell, Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck, 1778-82
(New York and London, 1981).
- Arthur McGuinness, Henry Home, Lord Kames (New York,
1970).
- William C. Lehmann, Henry Home and the Scottish
Enlightenment: A Study in National Character and in the History
of Ideas (The Hague, 1971).
- Ian Simpson Ross, Lord Kames and the Scotland of His
Day (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972). A new critical
biography of Kames is needed in the light of fuller information
about him now available, and a new generation's work on the
Scottish Enlightenment to which he contributed.
- Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1995).
- David M. Walker, The Scottish Jurists (Edinburgh,
1985), 220-47.
- Ernest C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 2nd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980).
- Roger L. Emerson, "Henry Home, Lord Kames," in British
Prose Writers, 1660-1800, 2nd series, Dictionary of
Literary Biography, vol. 104, ed. Donald T. Siebert (Detroit
and London, 1991), 217-25.
Law
- T. B. Smith, A Short Commentary on the Law of Scotland
(Edinburgh, 1962).
- David Lieberman, "The Legal Needs of a Commercial Society:
The Jurisprudence of Lord Kames," in Wealth and Virtue: The
Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment,
ed. I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1983), 203-34. The most cogent article available on Kames's legal
philosophy.
- John W. Cairns, "'Famous as a School for Law, as Edinburgh
. . . for Medicine': Legal Education in Glasgow,
1761-1801," in The Glasgow Enlightenment, ed. A. Hook and
Richard B. Sher (Edinburgh, 1995).
- David W. Walker, A Legal History of Scotland, vol. 5,
The Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1998).
Philosophy
- Victor Cousin, Philosophie écossaise (Paris,
1857).
- James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy (London, 1875).
- Richard Olson, Scottish Philosophy and British Physics,
1750-1880: A Study in the Foundations of the Victorian Scientific
Style (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975).
- Ian Simpson Ross, "Unpublished Letters of Thomas Reid to Lord
Kames, 1762-82," Texas Studies in Literature and Language
7 (1965): 17-65.
- David F. Norton, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist,
Sceptical Metaphysician (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,
1982). The most comprehensive account available of Kames's moral
philosophy and epistemology.
- Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From
Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1996).
History
- George Davie, The Democratic Intellect (Edinburgh,
1961).
- George W. Stocking, "Scotland as the Model of Mankind: Lord
Kames's Philosophical View of Civilization," in Towards a
Science of Man: Essays in the History of Anthropology, ed. T.
H. H. Thorensen (The Hague, 1975), 65-89.
- Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (Oxford,
1978).
- Bruce Lenman, An Economic History of Modern Scotland
(London, 1977).
- Roger L. Emerson, "Conjectural History and Scottish
Philosophers," Historical Papers: Communications
Historiques (1984): 63-90.
- Roger L. Emerson, "The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh,
1737-48," British Journal for the History of Science 12
(1979): 154-91; "1748-68," BJHS 14 (1981): 133-76;
"1768-83," BJHS 18 (1985): 255-303. Seminal articles on
crucial aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment.
- Ronald Hamoway, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory
of Spontaneous Order, foreword by Ian S. Ross (Carbondale,
1987). Discussion of the central theme in Scottish Enlightenment
writers, but Kames's contribution needs better bibliographic
grounding to assess the timing of his impact on the literati.
- Christopher Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish
Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1997).
Rhetoric, Criticism, and Aesthetics
- Helen W. Randall, The Critical Theory of Lord Kames,
vol. 22 of Smith College Studies in English (Northampton: Smith
College, 1944).
- Leroy Shaw, "Henry Home of Kames: Precursor of Herder,"
Germanic Review 35 (1960): 16-27.
- Terence Martin, The Instructed Vision: Scottish Common
Sense Philosophy and the Origins of American Fiction
(Bloomington, 1961).
- Andras Horn, "Kames and the Anthropological Approach to
Criticism," Philological Quarterly 44 (1965): 211-33.
- Wilbur S. Howell, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and
Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971).
- Thomas P. Miller, The Formation of College English:
Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press, 1997).
Anthropology
- George W. Stocking, Jr., "Scotland as the Model of Mankind:
Lord Kames' Philosophical View of Civilization," in Toward a
Science of Man: Essays in the History of Anthropology, ed. T.
H. H. Thoresen (The Hague, 1975), 65-89.
- Robert Wokler, "Apes and Races in the Scottish Enlightenment:
Monboddo and Kames on the Nature of Man," in Philosophy and
Science in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Peter Jones
(Edinburgh, 1988), 145-68.
Please send comments and corrections to biblio@c18.org.