This is the first intellectual biography of the British philosopher and historian David Hume.

James A. Harris is Professor in the History of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is the author of Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy (2005) and of articles on Hume, Hutcheson, Reid, Beattie, Priestley, and various themes in eighteenth-century British philosophy. He is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century (2013) and the coeditor with Aaron Garrett of Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century: Volume One (2015).

Introduction; 1. Pursuits of philosophy and general learning; 2. Anatomist of human nature; 3. Essayist; 4. Achievement of independence; 5. Two years at Ninewells; 6. The start of a history of Great Britain; 7. The completion of a history of Great Britain; 8. Paris, London, Edinburgh; Afterword: death and character.