The Oxford Francis Bacon XIX: New Atlantis

This volume belongs to the new critical edition of the complete works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The edition presents the works in broadly chronological order and in accordance with the principles of modern textual scholarship. This volume comprises the first critical edition since the nineteenth century of New Atlantis, Bacon’s posthumously published semi-utopian fable of reformed knowledge. New Atlantis is set on an imaginary island whose central institution--Salomon’s House--is a fictional embodiment of the kind of research institute Bacon dreamed of founding in order to pursue his vast project, the Instauratio magna, and one which generates works that both expand knowledge and benefit humankind.

This edition establishes an authoritative text based on fresh collation of multiple copies of the 1626 edition in close comparison with the 1628 edition. Thorough bibliographical analysis of the 1626 copy-text elucidates the book’s passage through the printing house. David Colclough’s detailed Introduction sets New Atlantis in the contexts of Bacon’s works and of contemporary models of information-gathering and -management, including Iberian examples in the Old and New Worlds. An extensive commentary examines Bacon’s sources, traces analogues across his works (especially with Sylva sylvarum, alongside which New Atlantis was originally printed), provides context and background, glosses obsolete or unusual terms, and considers critical interpretations of the text.

David Colclough

David Colclough is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London. In addition to Francis Bacon, his current research focuses on John Donne, whose Sermons at the Court of Charles I (OUP, 2013) he edited as volume 3 of The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne; he is now preparing volume 14 (Sermons Preached at St Paul’s Cathedral, 1628-1630). He is the author of the ODNB life of Donne, and the editor of John Donne’s Professional Lives (2003). His monograph Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England was published in 2005.