The first edition of Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful appeared in 1757. Its critical reception prompted Burke to publish a second and substantially revised text in 1759. In the introduction to his modern edition of the Enquiry, James T. Boulton informs us that although ‘each critic acknowledged the newness of many of Burke's assertions, and praised his perspicuity and provocative method of presentation … none fully accepted his theory’ (Boulton, p. xxiii). A good example of this is found in the most critical review which the first edition of the Enquiry received – that by Arthur Murphy in Johnson's Literary Magazine:

The second edition of the Enquiry included a new preface, an introductory essay ‘On Taste’, and a section on ‘Power’, as well as additions which meet attacks on the theory by dogmatically reiterating the initial argument. In the new preface, Burke explains that ‘though I have not found sufficient reason, or what appeared to me sufficient, for making any material change in my theory, I have found it necessary in many places to explain, illustrate and enforce it’ (Enquiry, p. 3).