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The son of a London merchant, Thomas Browne settled in Norwich in 1637, practising medicine and interesting himself in a wide variety of subjects, upon which his pen was rarely silent. Browne's style is complex and multilayered, deeply humane, and shot through with Classical and Biblical references. It also abounds in neologisms and he is credited with inventing more than 700 words, many - such a 'electricity' and 'computer' - still in common usage today. Thomas Browne remains one of Britain's most original writers, with a host of admirers, including such literary 'Greats' as Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, and W. G. Sebald. 'Hydriotaphia' (Urn Burial) is ostensibly an essay on ancient burial customs, but swiftly morphs into a study, at once witty and profound, on Death and humanity's vain longing for an 'immortal name': "The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction…"The second volume, 'The Garden of Cyrus', follows the pattern of the first, posing as an exposition on the importance of the 'Quincunciall' or 'Net-pattern' in both Nature and human culture, but gradual revealing itself as both a fascinating record of 17th century natural history and an insightful meditation on Life and Mysticism.Browne's celebrated 'A Letter to a Friend' takes the form of a traditional 17th century mourning letter, but the melancholy subject is transformed by the author's wit, humour and polished Baroque eloquence into an entrancing work of art. The essay came to light only after his death on October 19th 1682 which - strangely for a man obsessed with numerology - occurred exactly 77 years after his birth, on October 19th 1605.

Better known as a Founding Father of the United States, and its third president, Thomas Jefferson maintained an abiding interest in philosophy and religion. In 1804 he conceived the idea of collating the story of Jesus found in the four Gospels, and of dissecting away their more wordy and (for him) overly-magical aspects, so as to reveal the fundamental tenets of the moral system promulgated by Christ.Following a false start, and many delays, he began anew in 1819 and produced the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, the essential ethical philosophy of the Saviour, shorn of miracles or supernatural interventions. For Jefferson it was enough: there remained "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man… A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen."This is a book for anyone interested in Christianity and the root-precepts of its founder. There is much to ponder here for both Believer and sceptic alike.

Coningsby is the first of Disraeli's trilogy of political novels set against a background of real events in England following the enactment of the Whigs' Reform Bill in 1832. The story follows the fortunes of Harry Coningsby - the orphaned grandson of the Marquis of Monmouth - from a boy at Eton to a young man of twenty-two. The luxurious life of the aristocracy, with their balls and lavish entertainments, is part of Coningsby's heritage but he is a serious and thoughtful hero, the accepted leader of the "New Generation" who, unlike their more laissez-faire elders, recognise the need for social and political change in a newly industrialised nation. Disenchanted with both Whigs and Tories, Coningsby sets out to forge a new political force, one that aims to reinvigorate Britain's three great institutions - the monarchy, the Church and the people. The author's voice rings loud and clear here and also through his other central character, Sidonia, a wealthy and highly accomplished Jew who is both a man of the world and a man of no nation, a position that gives him unique insights into human nature and politics. If Coningsby wants change, advises Sidonia, then he should revive the national spirit and aim to inspire: "To believe in the heroic makes heroes." Bold as he is, the path is a thorny one for Coningsby, especially when he falls in love with a beautiful woman from the "new money" class. Disraeli's solutions for inept political systems may belong to another era but his insightfully drawn characters - the self-serving fixer, the bloated elitist, the clever manipulator of events and public opinion - live on today and will ever endure. In that sense, Coningsby is timeless.

The proverb "Where there are three physicians there are two atheists" summed up the public perception of seventeenth century physicians. But, as the reader of Religio Medici will testify, Sir Thomas Browne, M.D., was anything but an atheist. Browne qualified as a doctor in Europe and travelled widely across the continent, living among many different Christian sects. At the age of thirty, he set down his thoughts on religion, a work that was meant for private circulation only, but when a critically annotated version was printed without his permission in 1642, Browne felt obliged to publish an authorised edition the following year. As a singularly candid piece of introspection, Religio Medici broke the mould of seventeenth century works on religion and catapulted its author to fame across Europe. The book analyses what faith and Church doctrine mean to a post-reformation Christian heavily influenced by the rationalists of the 1600s. Divided into two parts, the first looks at faith and the second at charity, but much ground is covered within these two concepts - death, heaven, hell, judgement, resurrection and even music. Browne refutes the cavil of the day about physicians by arguing that reason and religious faith are perfectly compatible. God, after all, is the immanent power behind all things, both those that man has "worked out" and those that are beyond his reasoning powers. When the limits of rational thought are reached, Browne is happy to rely on faith and to revel in God's mysteries and uncertainties - although he points out that his views will change over time (according to "the dictates of my own reason") as new facts and perspectives come to light. It is this refreshing approach that sets Religio Medici apart as a work that continues to delight and inform the modern debate on religion and science.

Margaret Murray's enthralling study of witch beliefs and customs has become a timeless anthropological classic. Rejecting the consensus view that female witches were simply 'hysterical' or subject to 'suggestion', she uses sound scholarship and comprehensive research to reveal that 'Devil-worship' was in fact a bona fide pre-Christian religion, that was forced 'underground' owing to ceaseless persecution by the Church authorities. All aspects of this 'Old Religion' are covered, from admission ceremonies and the 'witch-mark', through divining, fertility rites and the Sabbat, to spells and sacrifices - including those of children and even of 'the god' himself! According to the The English Historical Review, the book is "so comprehensive in scope, and so rich and varied in its treatment of the witch-cult …it is not likely to be superseded." This the full, original version of Murray's masterpiece, complete with Notes, Bibliography and five Appendices, including a chemical analysis of 'flying ointments'.

Forced to enter the Chinese Emperor's harem at the tender age of sixteen, Yehonala lost her family, her betrothed, and all hope of a normal life. Immured in the seraglio, her beauty and sexual expertise soon enthralled the Son of Heaven, and she was held in high favour as The Orchid, especially after presenting the Emperor with his only male heir. But even with this protection she was far from safe. Yehonala had entered the perilous world of the Forbidden City, a shadowy demimonde peopled by unscrupulous nobles and calculating eunuchs - a milieu of luxury and intrigue, compounded equally of tradition and corruption, where a misplaced word or unthinking gesture might swiftly prove fatal. Yet such was her own guile, courage and absolute refusal to countenance defeat, the Orchid slowly triumphed over every adversary to become Ci Xi, the Empress Dowager of China, and the most famous female autocrat in history.

Confessions ranks as one of the most widely translated and highly valued books in Christian theology and is considered the first autobiography ever written.The work was penned around AD 397 when Augustine was in his forties and is an honest narrative of his sinful youth and ultimate conversion to Christianity. It seems Augustine's abilities as a young man were never in any doubt - a brilliant mind combined with a natural talent in rhetoric - but one little interested in Catholic Christian scripture. He describes his wilfulness as a boy growing up in the Roman province of Numidia, his later attachment to sexual pleasure and the vanity of academic acclaim. His dogged pursuit of truth led him from Manichæism to Neoplatonism and, eventually, after a slow and painful struggle, to his conversion and baptism at the age of thirty-two.From this point in the autobiography Augustine focuses on a number of familiar Christian concepts, among them, Creation, the Trinity, the Origin of Evil and the Cause of Sin. His incisive analyses are a treat for any reader drawn to the Christian mysteries.

Although it is now an acknowledged literary masterpiece, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was all but rejected when first presented to the world (no one in Britain would publish the work). The book relates the story of Stephen Dedalus, from young child to early manhood, charting his journey of self-discovery, from the trials of boarding school, through the sexual awakening of adolescence and rebellion against Ireland's religious strictures to his own very personal battle to discover meaning and 'a voice' as a budding artist.Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce's alter ego, an attempt at "turning his life into fiction". Joyce himself struggled with all his hero's problems, and the book is patently semi-biographical. More importantly, it is also Joyce's attempt to break free from the rigid literary forms of his time: he uses a variety of experimental techniques to give depth and colour to his narrative, mixing styles to emphasise the chaotic nature of his hero's thoughts, and revealing a gradual complexity of mentation as he moves towards manhood. The result is a surprisingly profound and moving account that succeeds in laying bare, on multiple levels, the complexity of human existence.

Alexander Del Mar's book delves below the trite explanations and glib catch-phrases used by a superficial media to mask the true, and always unsavoury, source of monetary crises - greed of gain. Beginning over three hundred years ago, Del Mar traces the continuing attempts, by select groups of bankers and politicians, to manipulate the currency, flout national laws, and ultimately to take sole command of the Holy Grail of Finance - control of a nation's money supply. That such 'monetary crimes' have met with unparalleled success in our own times makes the reissue of this book both timely and extremely relevant to current events.Del Mar was uniquely qualified for such a work. He became by turns the first Director of the US Bureau of Statistics, the American delegate to the International Monetary Congress in both Turin and St. Petersburg, and commissioner to the US Monetary Commission, set up to investigate the Panic of 1873, (which had led to a worldwide economic depression). His conclusion, (that bank reserves had been far too small for the amount of notes issued), made him unpopular in academic circles, and his prescient views were all but ignored. Others, however, recognised his virtues. John Stuart Mill called Del Mar a man with "…stuff in him. He knows what he is about. He is the sort of man to put things right … in any country".

The most popular and widely read of all Buddhist texts, the Dhammapada, (Path of the Eternal Truth), is widely regarded as encapsulating the core of Buddhist philosophy. This classic text was believed by tradition to have been dictated by Sakyamuni himself. It comprises 423 poetically inciteful verses grouped by themes deemed important for the attainment of Nirv¿na or "highest freedom" - joy, anger, desire and hell, among others. The Buddha's key methodology is control of the mind because only through control of the mind can the follower progress to a point where he can be set free from the cycle of death and re-birth. The Dhammapada has been published in more languages than any other Buddhist text and for many students of eastern philosophy this translation by Wagiswara and Saunders remains the standard text in English.

As a manual on realpolitik, this sixteenth-century work has provoked more heated debates than any other political treatise. While it rejects lofty ideals, it nonetheless derives valuable insights from the author's first-hand experience as a respected envoy of Florence. Italy in the renaissance period was a battleground of warring factions, both within states and without, so successful governance was no easy task. Niccolò Machiavelli examines how princedoms in Renaissance Italy can be effectively governed and maintained. This he does by noting the "…actions of great men, acquired in the course of (his) long experience of modern affairs and a continual study of antiquity." Arguing from such empirical evidence, he shows what works to achieve stable control, and what does not. Harsh measures are sometimes necessary but contrary to a common misconception held by many of his critics, he warns against ignoring the welfare and goodwill of the populace. Indeed, some commentators feel Machiavelli was unjustly maligned, pointing out that here was a man who was unremitting in his efforts to secure a good and popular government for his native Florence, and who wanted Italy's honour and pride restored. It was to these ends that he wrote The Prince.

Born in 1806, John Stuart Mill was a prodigy: at six he had had written a history of Rome and by eight he was reading both Plato and Sophocles in the original Greek. Open-minded and magnanimous, in early adulthood John Stuart Mills was far ahead of his time, espousing just about every progressive ideal, from total sexual equality, through slave emancipation and votes for the working classes, to the absolute right to contraception. In 'Utilitarianism', Mill argues for the rightness of this philosophy, which is based on the principle that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness", and originates from the social nature of humanity. In five chapters he clearly sets forth a more nuanced and complex idea of this important moral and social theory.

Acknowledged as one of the greatest of the western mystics, Jacob Boehme was born in 1575 at Old Seidenberg, a small village in Silesia. A shoemaker by trade, Boehme's whole life was spent in contemplation and prayer, seeking spiritual enlightenment. He was rewarded with piercing visions of God and the nature of reality, revelations which he set down in a series of books. The Clavis is perhaps the most accessible of all these tomes, a detailed, yet succinct, account of the nature of God and Creation, and of humanity's role within the unfolding evolution of the Universe.In 1895 the Reverend Dr. Alexander Whyte bemoaned the lack of a Boehme biography, suggesting that a compilation of the many biographic details scattered throughout his works would give the student a better insight into his thoughts and ideas. W. Scott Palmer took up the challenge and the result, The Confessions of Jacob Boehme, serves to shine a light on the doubts and temptations that lay on the path to Boehme's eventual enlightenment.

Born into slavery, Frederick Douglass ignored his master's veto on black education and taught himself to read and write. Escaping to the Northern States in 1838, Douglass became an ardent abolitionist, campaigning passionately against all aspects of human bondage.His 'Narrative' is a classic of black emancipation: a life story replete with tales of cruelty and oppression, of courage and love. Like a later victim of black subjugation - Nelson Mandela -it is Douglass' ability to control his anger and resentment in the face of almost intolerable provocation that most impresses the reader. While bitingly ironic at times, his prose remains reasoned and restrained and his compassion even allows him to pity the dehumanizing effects of slavery on the slave owners themselves. Douglass' story is all the more powerful for these qualities.

A best seller of its time, Olaudah Equiano's story of his life as a slave in the second half of the eighteenth century continues to this day to aid our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade and our fight against modern slavery. According to his memoir, eleven-year old Equiano and his sister were kidnapped from their village (in what is now southern Nigeria) by African slavers. He changed owners several times before being taken to the coast and forced aboard a slave ship destined for Barbados, ending up working for three different slave masters in journeys that took him around the West Indies and across the Atlantic. Although slavery was part of the culture of many African tribes, including his own, the Eboes, what incensed Equiano more than anything was the heartless cruelty of the transatlantic slavers. His Christian conversion also later prompted him to abhor the institution of slavery itself no matter where it was practised. Equiano bought his freedom after some 20 years in servitude and, many travels later, settled in England where, as a British citizen, he joined with white and black abolitionists to campaign for the end of slavery in Britain's colonies.

Sir Thomas More coined the word Utopia (meaning 'No Place') to emphasise his conviction that in no corner of the world had humanity attained to the perfect society. Writing in 1516, More attempted to describe the basis of just such a civilisation, founded upon the principles of rationality, equality, and common ownership. But More's vision is not wholly rose-tinted: he acknowledges the imperfections of human nature, and attempts to construct an ideal society in which individuals fulfilling their baser urges would at the same time act in the best interest of the community. Nearly 500 years of social experiment now divide us from Utopia's author (and the ideal society is arguably no nearer), but Sir Thomas' book still has much to teach us.

Mary Prince was the first black woman to escape from slavery in the British colonies and to publish a record of her life in bondage. Born into servitude, at the tender age of twelve she witnessed the ruin of her family, with her mother and each of her siblings sold off to separate owners, after which she herself was passed from master to master, all of whom subjected her to sexual or physical abuse. In this vivid and graphic account she describes the hideous working conditions of those enslaved, and the barbaric, arbitrary punishments meted out for minor or imagined misdemeanours, many of which led to the death of those oppressed. In her middle years Mary was taken to England, where (all slaves being automatically freed on touching English soil) she fled her former owner and took refuge with Thomas Pringle - a staunch abolitionist - who aided the editing of these her memoirs, first published to wide acclaim in 1831.Included in this fully annotated edition are five illustrations and one map, Thomas Pringle's report on the life and character of Mary Prince, and a short account of the trials of Asa-Asa, a young man who was captured during inter-tribal warfare and held as a slave in Africa for six months, before being sold into the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) was born into a wealthy Parisian family in 1694. His intellectual powers made him a justly influential figure in the Enlightenment, but he seemed to court controversy, twice lampooning the regent Philipe D'Orleans, which earned him first exile from Paris, and then a year in the Bastille. On release, Voltaire continued to ride a roller-coaster between fame and ill-repute, becoming again a royal favourite until a love affair (and imminent duel) led to the threat of further imprisonment, a fate he escaped only by seeking exile across the Channel in May 1726. He would not return for almost three years.Letters Concerning the English Nation is the fruit of this time in England, where he met King George I, perfected his English, and conversed with the likes of Jonathan Swift, Bolingbroke, and other lions of English Literary Society. He read widely, his open, analytical mind consuming a swathe of topics across the Arts and Science. The result is an enthralling series of essays, shot through with Voltaire's hallmark acerbic wit, celebrating the openness of 18th Century English society, its relatively meritocratic nature, and covering such disparate subjects as Trade, Sir Isaac Newton's Optics, Parliament, The Royal Society, Inoculation, John Locke, and The Quakers. Though lauded in Britain, in France this book was burned and the publisher jailed.

This work is a powerful argument for Christianity as a religion of mystical initiation and the only religion in which the eternal wisdom, the Logos, was made flesh - in Christ. Moreover, unlike the adepts of old, Jesus was "…the initiator of the whole of humanity, and humanity was to be his own community of Mystics." From an early age Austrian-born Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), a respected scholar, felt the reality of the spiritual world and devoted much of his life to proving this assumption by "…introspective observation following the methods of Natural Science." In Christianity as Mystical Fact, Dr. Steiner looks at mysticism within Christianity and also its source in pre-Christian times - the priest sages of the Egyptian mystical schools and Greece's famous initiates such as Solon, Aristides and Plato. He argues that the spiritual claims of Christianity cannot be proved by a literal historical approach to the bible. Rather, it is only through mystical enlightenment or "gnosis" that Christianity's spiritual message can be truly known and this experience, according to Steiner, is no less an empirical fact than those of orthodox science. He looks at the New Testament with the eyes of a mystic and finds a whole other layer of meaning there - for example, in the Lazarus miracle, which he describes as a spiritual initiation, "… the point of transition from lower to higher knowledge."

This account stands as a classic among autobiographies, a compelling and easy read about a man who, from lowly beginnings in Boston, rose to become a hugely-respected public servant, writer, scientist and inventor and who went on to play a key role in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. Franklin's autobiography, published after his death, is an unfinished collection of memoirs written over four different periods of his life. It starts in the form of a letter to his son, William, and describes aspects of his childhood in Boston in the early 1700s and his move to Philadelphia where he set up a successful printing business. The many contributions he made to public causes grew out of a strong sense of civic duty, and a stringent work ethic that formed part of his "plan for attaining moral perfection", which is detailed in the second period. The last two sections cover his impressive political and scientific work and give the reader an insight into the developing tensions between the American colonies and the British crown. A polymath of immense standing, Benjamin Franklin stands out as one of the most highly esteemed figures of the eighteenth century.