The main collection is in the Shaftesbury Papers, Public Record Office, London ("A collection of documents, also entry-books of letters, written by, and correspondence of, the third Earl of Shaftesbury"). The Shaftesbury Papers were gifted to the PRO by the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury in 1871. Other elements of Shaftesbury's correspondence are included in other collections and some of them have been published by T. Forster and R. A. Barrel (below).
Short selection of manuscripts and documents among the Shaftesbury Papers:
Manuscripts from the PRO are to be published and some of them are already edited in the Standard Edition (above). Some of these manuscripts have been published or translated in other editions (below).
Another lesser-known though important collection is in the Harris Papers, Hampshire Record Office, Winchester (essentially "Papers of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)"). The philosopher and grammarian James Harris (1709-1780) was Shaftesbury's nephew and had direct access to the papers of his uncle. According to the Hampshire Record Office catalogue, this collection includes: Letters (in French) to the 3rd Earl from Pierre Bayle; letters (in French) from Coste; letters (in French) from Jean Le Clerc ; letters from Benjamin Furly; letters to the 3rd Earl from various correspondents; letter-book with copies of letters from the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury to various correspondents; other letters and documents; copies of letters from 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury to Mr Coste, prepared for publication; Chronology of Horace, according to the idea of a letter to Mr Coste, 15 Nov 1706; small notebooks of notes on The Satires and The Epistles; papers and notes collected for a Life of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury by James Harris, etc.
R. Voitle, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671-1713 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1984). The only modern biography. Draws much material from the Shaftesbury Papers.
The first biography was written by the fourth Earl of Shaftesbury: Sketch of the Life of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, in B. Rand, ed., The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1900): xvii-xxxi. The source is the manuscript PRO 30/24/21/226 (above).
The same source was used by Thomas Birch in his General Dictionary, vol. IX (1739): 179-186.
F. Brugère and M. Malherbe, ed., Shaftesbury. Philosophie et politesse (Paris: Champion, 2000). It contains several papers from an international conference held at the University of Nantes (France), September 1996. With contributions by: F. Badelon, J.-P. Larthomas, D. Lories, L. Jaffro, L. E. Klein, F. Brugère, M. Malherbe, B. Saint-Girons, J.-M. Vienne, J. V. Arregui, G. Stenger, E. Martin-Haag.
S. Grean, Shaftesbury's Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: a Study in Enthusiasm (Athens, Ohio: UP, 1967). Extensive treatment, but does not take the Shaftesbury Papers into consideration.
L. E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early 18th-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994). Puts Shaftesbury in his cultural-political context.
L. Jaffro, Ethique de la communication et art d'écrire. Shaftesbury et les Lumières anglaises (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998).
I. Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment. A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780, vol. 2, Shaftesbury to Hume (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000). Pays close attention to Shaftesbury's impact on the Scottish Enlightenment.
F. Crispini, L'etica dei moderni. Shaftesbury e le ragioni della virtu (Roma: Donzelli, 2000).
E. Cassirer, "Shaftesbury und die Renaissance des Platonismus in England", Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, IX, 24 (1930-1931): 136-155. Starting point for modern studies.
E. Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. J. Pettegrove, (London: Nelson, 1953). Long the standard study of Shaftesbury's neoplatonism.
M. Micheletti, "Animal capax religionis". Da Benjamin Whichcote a Shaftesbury (Perugia: Benucci, 1984).
M. B. Gill, "The Religious Rationalism of Benjamin Whichcote", Journal of the History of Philosophy, 37, 2 (1999): 271-300.
D. Grossklaus, Natürliche Religion und aufgeklärte Gesellschaft: Shaftesburys Verhältnis zu den Cambridge Platonists (Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2000). The major essay since Cassirer's.
R. L. Brett, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: a Study in Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1951). Useful but dated.
E. Wolff, Shaftesbury und seine Bedeutung für die englische Literatur des 18 Jahrhunderts. Der Moralist und die literarische Form (Tübingen: Nimeyer, 1960).
R. Marsh, Four Dialectical Theories of Poetry: an Aspect of English Neoclassical Criticism (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1965). A fine discussion of Soliloquy.
M. Prince, Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment. Theology, Æsthetics and the Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996). Close reading of Shaftesbury's poetics.
J. E. Sweetman, "Shaftesbury's Last Commission", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 19 (1956): 110-116. On Shaftesbury's commission to Paolo de Matteis of a portrait of the philosopher as a dying man.
J. Stolniz, "On the Significance of Lord Shaftesbury in Modern Æsthetic Theory", Philosophical Quarterly, 11 (1961): 97-113.
W. Lottes, "The Judgment of Hercules. Shaftesbury und die ut pictura poesis Tradition", Anglia, 107 (1989): 330-343.
L. Pestilli, "Lord Shaftesbury e Paolo de Matteis: Ercole al bivio tra teoria e pratica", Storia dell'arte, 68 (1990): 95-121. On the Judgment of Hercules.
D. Leatherbarrow, "Plastic Character, or, How to Twist Morality with Plastics", Res, 21 (1992): 124-141.
P. Mortensen, "Shaftesbury and the Morality of Art Appreciation", Journal of the History of Ideas, 55, 4 (1994): 631-650.
J. V. Arregui, "La teologia de la belleza en Shaftesbury y Hutcheson", Thémata, 13 (1995): 11-35.
R. Paulson, The Beautiful, Novel, and Strange: Æsthetics and Heterodoxy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
F. Brugère, Théorie de l'art et philosophie de la sociabilité selon Shaftesbury (Paris: Champion, 1999).
B. Schmidt-Haberkamp, Die Kunst der Kritik: zum Zusammenhang von Ethik und Ästhetik bei Shaftesbury (Münich: Fink, 2000). Extensive treatment.
Wessely A., "The Knowledge of an Early Eighteenth-Century Connoisseur: Shaftesbury and the Fine Arts", Acta Historia Artium Hung., 41 (1999-2000), 279-309. Very fine study of Shaftesbury's connoisseurship, with new views on the illustrations of Characteristics.
D. Townsend, Hume's Æsthetic Sentiments (London: Routledge, 2001). A good deal on Shaftesbury.
R. Glauser, "Aesthetic Experience in Shaftesbury", The Aristotelian Society, sup. vol. LXXVI (2002): 25-54. A major study, with new views on "disinterestedness".
Woldt I., Architektonik der Formen in Shaftesburys 'Second Characters' (München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2004). The first monography on this set of manuscripts.
E. L. Tuveson, "The Origin of the Moral Sense", Huntington Library Quarterly, 11 (1947-1948): 241-259. The first essay on the connection between Shaftesbury and Thomas Burnet.
R. Voitle, "Shaftesbury's Moral Sense", Studies in Philology, 52 (1955): 17-38.
C. Taylor, Sources of the Self. The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). Good overview. Overrates Shaftesbury's sentimentalism.
S. Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal 'Ought' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995). A major account of Shaftesbury's place in the history of moral philosophy.
L. Jaffro, "La constitution de la doctrine du sens moral: Thomas Burnet, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson", in Le Sens moral. Une histoire de la philosophie morale de Locke à Kant, ed. L. Jaffro (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), 11-46.
E. A. Tiffany, "Shaftesbury as Stoic", Publications of the Modern Language Association, 38 (1923): 642-684. A starting point.
F. Uehlein, Kosmos und Subjektivität. Lord Shaftesburys Philosophical Regimen (Freiburg: K. Alber, 1976). This learned discussion of Askêmata unfortunately draws on B. Rand's edition.
L. Jaffro, "Les Exercices de Shaftesbury: un stoïcisme crépusculaire", in Le Retour des philosophies à l'âge classique, vol. 1, Le Stoïcisme, ed. P.-F. Moreau (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), 340-354.
L. Jaffro, "La question du sens moral et le lexique stoïcien", Shaftesbury. Philosophie et politesse, ed. F. Brugère and M. Malherbe (Paris: Champion, 2000), 61-78.
A. O. Aldridge, "Shaftesbury and the Test of Truth", Publications of the Modern Language Association, 60 (1945): 129-156.
A. O. Aldridge, "Shaftesbury and the Deist Manifesto", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 41 (1951): 297-385. A major study.
H. J. Schings, Melancholie und Aufklärung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977).
A. O. Aldridge, "Shaftesbury's Rosicrucian Ladies", Anglia, 103 (1985): 297-319. Bold interpretation of The Adept Ladys.
I. Rivers, "Shaftesburian Enthusiasm and the Evangelical Revival", in Revival and Religion since 1700: Essays for John Walsh, ed. J. Garnett and C. Matthew (London: Hambledon Press, 1993).
M. Heyd, "Be Sober and Reasonable". The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1995). Extensive treatment.
R. Glauser, “Shaftesbury : enthousiasme et expérience religieuse”, Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, 134 (2002): 217-234.
G. Ascoli, "L'affaire des prophètes français à Londres", Revue du Dix-huitième siècle, 1 et 2 (1916).
H. Schwartz, Knaves, Fools and Mad Men, and that Subtile Effluvium (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1978).
H. Schwartz, The French Prophets. A Study of a Millenarian Group in Eighteenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). The best study of the French Prophets affair, which also does much to interpret Shaftesbury's reaction.
W. E. Alderman, "Bibliographical Evidence of the Vogue of Shaftesbury in the Eighteenth-Century", Transactions of the Wisconsin Adademy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 21 (1926): 57-70.
B. Frey, Shaftesbury und Henry Fielding. Shaftesburys Ethik und Humorgedanke in Henry Fieldings komischen Epos (Berne: Arnaud, 1952).
I. Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1968).
I. Primer, "Mandeville and Shaftesbury: somes facts and problems", in Mandeville Studies: New Explorations in the Art and Thought of Dr. Bernard Mandeville, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 126-141.
L. E. Klein, "Berkeley, Shaftesbury, and the Meaning of Politeness", Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 16, (1986): 57-68.
C. Chapin C., "British references to Shaftesbury, 1700-1800. Additions, with commentary, to A. O. Aldridge's list", Philosophy Research Archives, 13 (1987-1988): 315-329. Aldridge's list is included in his "Shaftesbury and the Deist Manifesto" (above).
Ch. Elson, Wieland and Shaftesbury (New York: New York UP, 1913; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1966).
B. Croce, Shaftesbury in Italy (Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1924).
W. J. B. Pienarr, English Influences in Dutch Literature, and Justus Van Effen as Intermediary (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1929).
L. Stettner, Das Philosophische System Shaftesburys und Wielands Agathon (Halle, 1929; repr., Tübingen: Nimeyer, 1975).
N. L. Torrey, Voltaire and the English Deists (New Haven: Yale UP, 1930).
E. Casati, "Hérauts et commentateurs de Shaftesbury en France", Revue de Littérature Comparée, 14 (1934): 615-645.
E. Cassirer, "Schiller und Shaftesbury", Publications of the English Goethe Society, n. s., 11 (1935): 37-59.
L. P. Courtines, Bayle's Relation with England and the English (New York: Columbia UP, 1938).
D. B. Schlegel, Shaftesbury and the French Deists (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956).
P. Casini, "Diderot e Shaftesbury", Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana, 38 (1960): 253-273.
G. B. Walters, The Significance of Diderot's "Essay sur le mérite et la vertu" (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971).
L. Simonutti, "Shaftesbury e la Bibliothèque choisie", Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana, 7, 2 (1987): 235-281.
S. O'Connell, "Lord Shaftesbury in Naples, 1711-1713", Volume of the Walpole Society, 54 (1988 and 1991): 149-219.
L. Jaffro, "Vauvenargues et Shaftesbury: le lieu stoïcien de la prolepse", in Vauvenargues. Philosophie de la force active, ed. L. Bove (Paris: Champion, 2000), 133-150.
J. Dybikowski, "Letters from Solitude : Pierre Coste’s Correspondence with the Third Earl of Shaftesbury", in Réseaux de correspondance à l'âge classique (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle), Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, Jens Häseler, Antony McKenna (ed.), Saint-Etienne, Presses Universitaires de Saint-Etienne, 2006, 109-133.
D. A. White, "The Metaphysics of Disinterestedness: Shaftesbury and Kant", Journal of Æsthetics and Art Criticism, 32 (1973-1974): 239-248.
J. A. Bernstein, Shaftesbury, Rousseau and Kant. An Introduction to the Conflict between Æsthetic and Moral Values in Modern Thought (Rutherford: Fairlegh Dickinson UP, 1980).
J.-P. Larthomas, De Shaftesbury à Kant (Paris: Didier Erudition, 1985). Major study of Shaftesbury's reception in German thought.
D. Townsend, "From Shaftesbury to Kant: the Development of the Concept of Æsthetic Experience”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 48 (1987): 287-305.
D. Lories, "Du désintéressement et du sens commun. Réflexions sur Shaftesbury et Kant", Etudes Phénoménologiques, 9-10 (1989): 189-217.
E. E. Kleist, Judging Appearances. A Phenomenological Study of the Kantian Sensus Communis (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000).
A. O. Aldridge, "Two Versions of Shaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning virtue", The Huntington Library Quarterly, 13 (1949-1950): 207-214.
S. F. Whitaker, "The First Edition of Shaftesbury's Moralists", The Library, 7 (1952): 235-241.
H. Meyer Limae Labor: Untersuchungen zur Textgenese und Druckgeschichte von Shaftesburys "The Moralists" (Francfort: Peter Lang, 1978). Close study of the editorial process of The Moralists.
R. B. Wolf, "The Publication of Shaftesbury's Letter Concerning Enthusiasm", Studies in Bibliography, 32 (1979): 236-241.
H. Meyer, "Ein Philosoph gestaltet seine Bücher. Shaftesbury und die Drucklegung des Characteristicks (1711/14)", Imprimatur, n. s., 11 (1984): 255-267.
R. B. Wolf, "The First Two Editions of Shaftesbury's Characteristics: corrigenda and addenda to Meyer's Limae Labor", Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 78 (1984): 349-359.
P. Zanardi, "Shaftesbury e Des Maizeaux. La storia di una traduzione mancata", I castelli di Yale. Quaderni di filosofia, 3 (1998): 93-98.
L. Jaffro, "Les manuscrits de Shaftesbury: typologie et théorie", in Lire, copier, écrire: les bibliothèques manuscrites et leurs usages au XVIIIe siècle, ed. E. Décultot (Paris: CNRS éditions, 2003): 161-178.
L. Jaffro, "Le Socrate de Shaftesbury. Comment raconter aux Modernes l'histoire de Socrate ?", Socrate in occidente, ed. E. Lojacono (Firenze: Le Monnier Università, 2004), 66-90. A study of the manuscript of the Design of a Socratick History.
F. Paknadel, "Shaftesbury's Illustrations of Characteristics", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 37 (1974): 290-312. Widely cited and valuable essay on the engravings of the 2nd and subsequent editions of Characteristics.
H. Meyer, "Ex Libris Shaftesburys : die Bibliothek eines Europäischen Auflklärers”, Wölfenbütteler Forschungen, 2 (1977): 75-90.