OAKESHOTT MICHAEL JOSEPH 1901-1990 PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Reference: GB 0097 OAKESHOTT
Title: OAKESHOTT MICHAEL JOSEPH 1901-1990 PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
Dates of creation: 1880c-1995c
Held at: British Library of Political and Economic Science
Extent: 51 boxes
Level of Description: fonds

Creation Information: Output from CAIRS using template 03 and checked by hand on June 13, 2000
Language of Material: ENG

Administrative/Biographical History

Michael Oakeshott was born in Chelsfield, Kent, on 11 December 1901, the second of three sons of Joseph Francis Oakeshott, a civil servant and member of the Fabian Society, and his wife, Frances Maude Oakeshott (nee Hellicar). He was educated at St George's School Harpenden, a progressive co-educational school, and then read history at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, graduating in 1923. He went on to study in Germany, including the universities of Marburg and Tubingen. He also worked briefly as an English teacher at Lytham St Anne's Grammar School. In 1925 he was elected/appointed Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. He enlisted as a gunner in the British Army in 1940 and by [1944] was in command of a squadron of GHQ Liaison ('Phantom') Regiment attached to the Canadian Second Army in Holland. He returned to Cambridge when the war ended in 1945. In 1949 he went to Oxford as a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and in 1951 he was appointed to the chair of political science at the London School of Economics. In the early 1960s he established a one-year Master's degree seminar at LSE on the history of political thought. He retired from LSE in 1969, although he continued to preside over the history of political thought seminars until his late seventies.

In 1927, he married Joyce Margaret Fricker. They had one son, Simon, born in 1931. The marriage was dissolved in 1938 and in the same year he married Katherine Alice Burton. They divorced in 1951. In 1965, Oakeshott married Christel Schneider. He died at his home in Acton, near Langton Maltravers, Dorset, on 18 December 1990.

For further information see: R Grant, 'Oakeshott', 1990, Dictionary of National Biography

Main Publications:

  • Experience and its Modes , 1933, repr. 1986
  • A Guide to the Classics (with GT Griffith), 1936, 1947
  • Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe , 1939
  • Hobbes's Leviathan , 1946
  • The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind , 1959
  • Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays , 1962
  • Hobbes on Civil Association , 1975
  • On Human Conduct , 1975, 1990
  • On History , 1983;
  • T Fuller (ed.), The Voice of Liberal Learning , 1989.
  • T Fuller (ed.), Rationalism in Politics (expanded edition), 1991
  • T Fuller (ed.), Religion, Politics and the Modern Life , 1993
  • S Letwin (ed.), Morality and Politics in Modern Europe , 1993
  • T Fuller (ed.), Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism , 1996

For further details about published work by or about Oakeshott, see:

Scope and Content

Papers created by or collected by Michael Oakeshott, including manuscripts of both published and unpublished works; notebooks; personal correspondence.

Also papers relating to Oakeshott collected or created by Shirley Letwin and Kenneth Minogue, including research papers for Shirley Letwin's proposed biography of Oakeshott.

System of Arrangement

The collection has been arranged in sections as follows:

  • Manuscripts
  • Notebooks
  • Other Notes
  • Press Cuttings
  • St George's School
  • Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
  • Army Service
  • London School of Economics
  • Personal Correspondence: Family
  • Personal Correspondence: Other
  • Other Correspondence
  • Photographs
  • Miscellaneous
  • Obituaries and Appreciations
  • Shirley Letwin's Papers
  • Kenneth Minogue's Papers

The papers were not ordered in any particular way when they were deposited at the Library, so the arrangement of material within files and the arrangement of files into sections is largely one that has been imposed during cataloguing.

A small amount of material was found stored in files; the arrangement of papers within these files has been preserved as far as possible, with original file titles (where they existed) given in bold.

Publication details of material are given where known, but are not comprehensive.

Administrative Information

Immediate Source of Acquisition

William Letwin via Kenneth Minogue/Oliver Letwin

Custodial History

After Oakeshott's death, the papers were moved from his cottage in Dorset to the London home of Shirley Letwin, Oakeshott's literary executor. The papers were used there by Letwin and Timothy Fuller, who both edited volumes of previously unpublished works by Oakeshott. Letwin also began work on a biography of Oakeshott, but died in 1993, before having completed the research for it.

Oakeshott's papers, along with Shirley Letwin's research papers on Oakeshott, remained in the care of Shirley Letwin's husband, William Letwin, until 1997, when they were deposited at the British Library of Political and Economic Science. Kenneth Minogue was a colleague of Oakeshott's at LSE and has added various papers to the main collection.

Access Conditions

MAINLY OPEN, SOME CLOSED FILES

Copyright/Reproduction

COPYRIGHT IS HELD BY THE LIBRARY.

Further Information

Finding Aids

Listed on database; unbound handlist also available