The Discourse of John Selden, Esq: Table Talk

This is the first fully annotated edition of The Discourse of John Selden, Esq. (previously known as Table Talk) since 1892, the very first based on a critical scrutiny of twenty-one surviving manuscripts, fifteen more than any previous editor knew existed. This expanded census of manuscripts demonstrates robust scribal publication. Selden's extraordinary talent for lucidly expressed analogy and his mordant wit and wise opinions on 155 topics earned him praise from Dr. Johnson and Coleridge. The work, composed in the 1650s, was considered so irreverent that it remained in manuscript for more than thirty years before it could be printed. A long-serving member of Parliament and a minority lay member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, Selden provides intimate access to the political and religious debates of mid-seventeenth-century England, but he also addresses its high and low culture. Some of the topics are complex and require extensive contextual annotation, but the paragraphs that provide the greatest pleasure are the timeless and still timely ones that require only light annotation or none at all.