This is only modern biography of Hume. Very well written and researched, it concentrates on Hume's personal life and career as a man of letters. Hume is a wonderful subject for a biography; an important figure who is simultaneously a warm and attractive personality. Mossner does an excellent job of detailing Hume's personal life, friendships, and literary career. For individuals really interested in Hume, this book is a treasure trove of information. It is also a very valuable work on the intellectual culture of 18th century Scotland and the Enlightenment in general. Mossner describes very well the intellectual atmosphere of lowland Scotland, which produced not only Hume, but Adam Smith, the great chemist Joseph Black (though Mossner mentions him only as a physician), and numerous other important intellectuals. Mossner shows also the international quality of the Enlightenment. Within months of publication, Hume's Treatise on Human Nature was mentioned in German publications, and his later, more popular works were known across Europe. Hume had an international, even intercontinental (Benjamin Franklin), set of correspondents and friends. This books is a valuable companion to reading Hume's work.
What this book is not, however, is a full scale critical work. Actual discussion and analysis of Hume's important philosophical work is relatively brief. Nor is there much explicit discussion of the origins of Hume's thought in the work of prior 18th and 17th century thinkers. This biography was last revised in the late 1970s and apparently not greatly changed from the original version published in 1954. Over the course of the 20th century, Hume came to be regarded as one of the real titans of Western thought, with a corresponding increase in the secondary literature on Hume. We also know much more about the 18th century and the Enlightenment than Mossner. There is definitely a need for a major critical biography of Hume, though producing such a work could easily consume a scholar's career.

What is there not to like about this beautifully written account of the admirable David Hume? It conveys the time (American Independence, the flowering of Scottish genius, the major development of sceptical inquiry), the places (Scotland, England, France), the people: Rousseau, the French Court but most of all Hume himself whose good humour, decency and genius can only inspire others who have the courage to question. I think the full quality of this book is portrayed by the fact that twenty years after I gave a copy to my father he quotes Humes's comments on facing death in a letter to me. A book you could never give away without keeping a copy yourself.