The Construction of a Bestseller: The Case of Thomas Nettleton's <i>Some Thoughts Concerning Virtue and Happiness</i> (1729)

Abstract Scholars have tended to interpret Thomas Nettleton's bestselling Virtue and Happiness (1729) as an Epicurean work. In contrast, I argue that this book was constructed partly from extensive paraphrases of the writings of Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson. It both reflected and shaped emerging tendencies in eighteenth‐century English thought by propounding a distinctive new moral synthesis mid‐way between Lockean hedonism and Shaftesbury's ethic of benevolence. Nettleton also adapted some traditions of Anglican devotional literature to make them compatible with Shaftesbury's emphasis on the pursuit of virtue for its own intrinsic excellence, creating an ethic centred around practical improvement on earth.