Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon - Hardcover

Jardine, Lisa; Stewart, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809055392 ISBN 13: 9780809055395

Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub, 1999

Synopsis

This in-depth biography explores the internal contradictions of and (often self-generated) myths surrounding the 16th-17th century scholar and statesman. It follows Bacon's early political career, which ended in scandal, and his subsequent scientific investigations; discusses his private life, including speculation on homosexual relationships with his servants; and claims that his death was caused by experimentation with opiates. The authors, both British scholars, have drawn on previously untapped archives for their research. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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Review

For modern readers--especially those in the sciences who revere him as the father of the inductive method--Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is the model of an English Renaissance man whose towering intellectual achievements somewhat paradoxically set him floating above mundane historical particulars. British academics Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart fling Bacon back into the hurly-burly of Elizabethan and Jacobean politics, where he unquestionably belongs. Indeed, their magnificently detailed rendering of Bacon's bumpy progression to the pinnacle of royal office-holding, as James I's lord chancellor (he was forced to "retire" in 1621 after a bribery scandal), makes his scientific and philosophical contributions even more remarkable. How on earth did he find time to write The Advancement of Learning (1605) and Novum Organum (1620) at all? In the authors' deliciously dense re-creation, notable for their shrewd evaluations of often misleading written source material, Bacon seems almost exclusively preoccupied with intriguing for promotion, struggling to pay debts incurred by his lavish lifestyle, and currying favor with both Elizabeth's and James's male favorites. (The latter tactic leading to contemporary charges of "sodomy" that the authors do not necessarily dismiss.) Some may regret that this warts-and-all portrait does not spend more time on Bacon's books, but Jardine and Stewart brilliantly succeed in their stated goal of providing "a rich context for those works." Seldom has a scholarly tome so palpably conveyed the gritty, sweaty, faction-ridden reality of being a working politician at the turn of the 17th century. --Wendy Smith

About the Author

Lisa Jardine is the author of Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance. Alan Stewart is the author of Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England. They both live in London and teach at the University of London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0809055392
• ISBN 13: 9780809055395
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 637