Francis Bacon

Life and writing

Francis Bacon lived from 1561 to 1626 and worked in English law and public office alongside his writing. His philosophical projects sought to improve inquiry through observation, experiment and organized cooperation. His Essays appeared in successive editions in 1597, 1612 and 1625. Those short pieces belong to his moral and political writing, alongside a larger program concerned with the advancement of knowledge.

The Essays consider subjects such as truth, revenge and study in compact arguments. The linked English reading edition provides those essays as complete pieces. Compare an anthology selection with the surrounding essay to see how an image or recommendation works in context. A work recommendation identifies a useful destination; it does not make every entry attributed to Bacon a passage from the Essays.

Reading this voice

Read the selected passages on truth, revenge and study, then follow one subject into its whole essay. Notice where a sentence describes human behavior and where it recommends a course of action. Keep the source reference visible: this author’s archive also includes selections assigned to other works and later supplied attributions. The approximate 1593 coordinate on the anthology entries is a lifetime midpoint, not their composition year or the publication date of the recommended edition.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
• Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
• Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.