The Fable of the Bees (Penguin Classics)

"The Fable of the Bees", published in its final form in 1724, consists of a poem, "The Grumbling Hive", and a series of essays arguing the necessity of vice as the foundation of the emerging capitalist economy. Intended as a commentary on England as the author saw it, on first publication it was virtually ignored, but once the new edition in 1723 included two further essays ("An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools" and "A Search into the Nature of Society"), it became the centre of one of the most heated controversies of the century and the target of a furious onslaught in the press, the pulpit and even the courts. Written with a glorious, pugnacious wit, Mandeville's "Fable" is a masterpiece of the great age of English satire.