Burke, Edmund (1729–1797)

ANGLO-IRISH STATESMAN and author Edmund Burke served a long career as a Whig member of the British Parliament. His fame endures for his blistering denunciations of the French Revolution, which he perceived as a direct threat to society, religion, and the rights of Englishmen. Born in Dublin, Ireland, on January 12, 1729, he grew up as a member of the Ascen-dancy, [Page 561]the ruling Protestant elite of Ireland. Burke studied at Trinity College for five years, trained for the law, then later turned to writing and politics. He wrote two early works, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) and A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). He married Jane Nugent in 1757, and they had a son, ...