author
James Beattie
1735–1803
A Scottish poet, moralist, and philosopher of the Enlightenment, he was widely admired in his lifetime for both his verse and his defense of common-sense philosophy. His best-known poem, The Minstrel, helped point the way toward early Romanticism.
3 Audiobooks
The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes
by James Beattie, Robert Blair, William Falconer
The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius with some other poems
by James Beattie
The Poetical Works of James Beattie
by James Beattie
About the author
Born in Laurencekirk, Scotland, in 1735, James Beattie studied at Marischal College in Aberdeen and later spent most of his career there as Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic. He first gained attention as a poet, but he also became an important public thinker whose writing reached far beyond the university.
Beattie is especially remembered for The Minstrel, a long poem that was enormously popular in the eighteenth century and is now often seen as one of the early works that anticipated Romanticism. He also wrote An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770), a forceful reply to skepticism that made him one of the best-known defenders of Scottish common-sense philosophy.
Though his fame has changed over time, Beattie remains an interesting figure because he moved so easily between literature and philosophy. His work captures a moment when poetry, moral reflection, and public debate were closely connected, giving modern readers a vivid glimpse of the Scottish Enlightenment.