Mary Astell and John Norris: Letters Concerning the Love of God

This volume presents a critical and annotated edition of the correspondence between Astell and John Norris of Bemerton (16571711), Letters Concerning the Love of God, which was published in three separate editions during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1695, 1705, 1730). It includes, as contextual material, Norris's Cursory Reflections upon a Book Call'd, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the first published philosophical response to John Locke's new way of ideas, and Astell's Appendix to the second edition of The Christian Religion, As Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England (1717), a comprehensive attack on Locke's perceived shortcomings as a thinker.