This volume contains Bacon's earliest known writings, dating from 1584 to 1596. It includes position papers, commentaries on printed works, legal readings and opinions, and discourses of advice, usually written in response to specific events or demands and circulated in manuscript. There are detailed introductions, commentaries, and glossaries. The level of scholarship on display is deeply impressive; not only has Stewart obviously spent a considerable amount of time in archive and library collections, but he has also provided remarkably detailed commentaries accompanying each work. This edition will be considered definitive until new witnesses are (as they inevitably will be) uncovered.