THE CORRESPONDANCE (1676-1729). FREETHINKER

Anthony Collins was cast in an unflattering light and dismissed out-of-hand by early critics who included the classical scholar Richard Bentley, the philosopher Bishop Berkeley and the satirist Jonathan Swift. His correspondence, particularly with John Locke — the most intense and seminal of his friendships — and Pierre Des Maizeaux — among the most protracted and certainly best documented, shows him very differently and sets the stage for a proper appreciation of the most penetrating and philosophically acute of the early 18th century English free-thinkers.