De Intellectu humano, An Essay.
By John Locke, 1671.
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John Locke began writing his essay De Intellectu humano in 1671 and continued this labor for more than twenty years. The first edition of An Essay concerning Humane Understanding was published in 1690, and Locke had completed four more editions by 1704. In a letter of 1679 Locke had said that the Essay was complete, but he continued its revision through the end of 1686. In 1687 Locke wrote an abridgement of the Essay, which was published in a French periodical in 1688. Two more years passed before the first edition of the Essay appeared.
Locke's personal papers became available to the scholarly world in 1948 when they were acquired, the Lovelace Collection, by the Bodleian Library of Oxford from the King family, who had privately owned these papers from the time Locke had bequeathed them to his cousin Peter King. Prior to 1948 only a few people had ever seen the papers in the Lovelace Collection.
Included in the Lovelace collection was a large notebook written in Locke's own hand. This notebook contained two early drafts of Locke's Essay. The first draft was dated 1671 and presents a rough and undeveloped version of the later Essay. It was first published by R. I. Aaron and J. Gibb in 1939, Oxford University Press, under the title An Early Draft of Locke's Essay. The second draft more closely resembles the Essay, but it is significantly incomplete. This draft was published by Benjamin Rand in 1931, Harvard University Press, under the title, An Essay concerning the Understanding, Knowledge, Opinion, and Assent. Rand had mistakenly believed this draft to be the original draft of the Essay.
The first illustration below is the opening page of the first draft as it appears in the Aaron and Gibb edition. The second illustration is the opening page of the second draft as it appears in Locke's own notebook. The third illustration is the opening page of the body of the first edition of the Essay of 1690.
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Copyright 2003, A. vander Nat. All rights reserved. Email avande1@luc.edu. 08-2003