The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes studies have rarely been stronger. Dr Collins is properly respectful of the contribution made in recent years by three scholars of distinction, Quentin Skinner, Noel Malcolm and Richard Tuck. But Collins is his own man and has made, in his first book, a contribution to rival theirs. William Lamont, English Historical Review It is Collins' achievement to have laid down some very significant foundations for the reassessment of Hobbes' role as a fellowe traveller in the great turmoil of the mid seventeenth century. Justin Champion, JEMH Once in a blue moon a book comes along capable of effecting a Gestalt switch and Jeffrey Collins' The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes is just such a book... the first thorough archival investigation of the Interregnum Hobbes... Collins has put together a very convincing picture of the man who for so long has remained such an enigma to us. British Journal of the History of Philosophy ... a highly stimulating work. It invites fresh approaches not only to Hobbes but to the movements of ideas to which Jeffrey Collins relates him, and in which he repeatedly identifies patterns, and correspondences that cut across expectation. Not for nearly half a century... has there been so challenging an interpretation of the relationship between the political thought and the revolutionary events of seventeenth-century England. Blair Worden, TLS Collins has offered a valuable reappraisal of Hobbes's thought. The United Reformed Church History Society Journal