For centuries readers have admired the writer who wields his pen like a sword - an Aristophanes, a Rabelais, a Montaigne, a Swift. Using ribaldry, satire and irony in varying proportions, such writers pierce the thick, comfortable hide of society and uncover, predictably, the corruption and hypocrisy that characterize the life of man in commercial society. Though a lesser talent than any of these literary giants, Bernard Mande ville is nevertheless a member of their class. The crucial year in the emergence of his reputation was 1723, the year in which he added his controversial Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools to his Fable of the Bees. From that point on he became one of the most reviled targets of the public guardians of morality and religion; for some he appeared to be truly the Devil incarnate, Mandevil, as Fielding and others spelled it. This reputation was attached to his name well into the nineteenth centu ry. In a diary entry for June 1812 Henry Crabb Robinson recorded the following conversation with the elderly Mrs. Buller: "She received me with a smile, and allowed me to touch her hand. 'What are you reading, Mr. Robinson?' she said. 'The wickedest cleverest book in the English language, if you chance to know it. ' - 'I have known the "Fable of the Bees" more than fifty years. ' She was right in her guess.

For centuries readers have admired the writer who wields his pen like a sword - an Aristophanes, a Rabelais, a Montaigne, a Swift. Using ribaldry, satire and irony in varying proportions, such writers pierce the thick, comfortable hide of society and uncover, predictably, the corruption and hypocrisy that characterize the life of man in commercial society. Though a lesser talent than any of these literary giants, Bernard Mande ville is nevertheless a member of their class. The crucial year in the emergence of his reputation was 1723, the year in which he added his controversial Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools to his Fable of the Bees. From that point on he became one of the most reviled targets of the public guardians of morality and religion; for some he appeared to be truly the Devil incarnate, Mandevil, as Fielding and others spelled it. This reputation was attached to his name well into the nineteenth centu ry. In a diary entry for June 1812 Henry Crabb Robinson recorded the following conversation with the elderly Mrs. Buller: "She received me with a smile, and allowed me to touch her hand. 'What are you reading, Mr. Robinson?' she said. 'The wickedest cleverest book in the English language, if you chance to know it. ' - 'I have known the "Fable of the Bees" more than fifty years. ' She was right in her guess.

William Godwin’s Mandeville was described as his best novel by Percy Shelley, who sent a copy to Lord Byron, and it was immediately recognized by its other admirers as a work of unique power. Written one year after the battle of Waterloo and set in an earlier revolutionary period between the execution of Charles I and the Restoration, Mandeville is a novel of psychological warfare. The narrative begins with Mandeville’s rescue from the traumatic aftermath of the Ulster Rebellion of 1641 and proceeds through his early education by a fanatical Presbyterian minister to his persecution at Winchester school, his constant (and not unjustified) paranoia, and his confinement in an asylum. Mandeville’s final, desperate attempt to prevent his sister’s marriage to his enemy ends with his disfiguration, which also defaces endings based on settlement or reconciliation. The novel’s events have many resonances with Godwin’s own period. The historical appendices offer contemporary reviews, including Shelley’s letter to Godwin praising Mandeville, material explaining the novel’s complex historical background, and contemporary writings on war, madness, and trauma.

This book integrates studies on the thought of Bernard de Mandeville and other philosophers and historians of Modern Thought. The chapters reflect a rethinking of Mandeville’s legacy and, together, present a comprehensive approach to Mandeville’s work. The book is published on the occasion of the 300 years that have passed since the publication of the Fable of the Bees. Bernard de Mandeville disassembled the dichotomies of traditional moral thinking to show that the outcomes of the social action emerge as new, non-intentional effects from the combination of moral opposites, vice and virtue, in such a form that they lose their moral significance. The work of this great writer, philosopher and physician is interwoven with an awareness of the paradoxical nature of modern society and the challenges that this recognition brings to an adequate perspective on the historical world of modernity.

In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and on into Asia, and the many wonderful and monstrous peoples and practices in the East. A captivating blend of fact and fantasy, Mandeville's Book is newly translated in an edition that brings us closer to Mandeville's worldview.

A fictive travelers guide to the East, both Near and Far, The Book of John Mandeville was a late-medieval best seller, more popular in its day than Marco Polos Travels. In addition to a fresh, vibrant translation -- the first from the Middle French original since the fifteenth century -- this edition of The Book of John Mandeville offers a succinct, broad-ranging Introduction to the work that touches on the question of authorship, the sources on which the text drew, and the transformation and reception of the work down to the present day. Also included are notes setting the work in its historical and cultural context and selections from related texts, including significant textual variants from William of Boldenseles Book of Certain Regions beyond the Mediterranean and Odoric of Pordenones Relatio.

In this study of Bernard Mandeville's A Modest Defence of Publick Stews , Irwin Primer breaks new ground by arguing that in addition to being an advocation for the establishment of state-regulated houses of prostitution, Mandeville's writing is also a highly polished work of literature.