What is the full bibliography of Albert Pike and which books are still in print?
Executive summary
Albert Pike was a prolific 19th‑century writer whose output ranged from poetry and legal manuals to extensive ritual and esoteric works for the Scottish Rite; an authoritative, single printed bibliography compiled by William L. Boyden is widely used by Masonic libraries and researchers [1] [2]. The most famous of Pike’s works, Morals and Dogma , is widely reprinted and commercially available today, while many of his lesser titles survive only in historical bibliographies, archives and specialist reprints—making any “complete” public‑print list inevitably reliant on specialized bibliographies and digital archives [3] [4] [5].
1. The shape of Pike’s oeuvre: law, poetry, politics, and ritual
Albert Pike’s published corpus spans legal manuals and pamphlets from his Arkansas years, volumes of poetry beginning with Prose Sketches and Poems Written in the Western Country and later Hymns to the Gods and Other Poems , polemical Civil War material such as Charges and Specifications , and his sweeping Masonic ritual and esoteric synthesis Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite , among other translations and writings on Indo‑Aryan and Zend Avesta material identified in online book records [6] [7] [5].
2. Where the “full bibliography” lives: Boyden, HathiTrust, Internet Archive
Researchers seeking a near‑complete listing are pointed to William L. Boyden’s detailed bibliography created for the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction—described as a “valuable resource” by Cornerstone and preserved through catalog records like HathiTrust and Internet Archive entries that gather Pike’s many disparate titles and editions [1] [2] [5]. These compilations collect items ranging from anonymous legal guides (The Arkansas Form Book is attributed to Pike in historical noting) to published and unpublished manuscripts noted by encyclopedias and library catalogs [6] [2].
3. Which works remain in print — the major survivors
Morals and Dogma is the clearest example of a work continuously reprinted and sold today: it appears in library references and commercial sellers (reprints listed by Kessinger and retail sites such as ThriftBooks and Storytel), and remains the central, widely available Pike title [3] [4] [8]. Other titles—collected poems like Hymns to the Gods and posthumous poetry collections—appear in reprints and archive editions but have more sporadic commercial availability, often supplied by specialty religious/Masonic publishers or as digital facsimiles [6] [5].
4. The long tail: reprints, digital copies and the market that sustains them
Many of Pike’s other writings survive in scans and bibliographic records rather than steady bookstore listings; commercial second‑hand marketplaces (Biblio, ThriftBooks, Goodreads listings) and digital collections host numerous editions and fragments, but availability varies—some titles exist only as archival scans on Internet Archive or HathiTrust, others as occasional reprints by niche publishers who service Masonic collectors [4] [5] [2] [9] [10]. This patchwork reflects a publishing economy where the most notable works are perpetually reissued while minor pamphlets remain archival.
5. Caveats, competing narratives and research next steps
Claims about a neat “complete” published bibliography should be met with caution: public lists on commercial sites (Goodreads, ThriftBooks) aggregate many listings but are not authoritative bibliographies, while Boyden’s bibliography and library catalogs represent the strongest evidence for completeness [1] [10] [2]. Additionally, Masonic publishers and sellers have a commercial interest in promoting reprints of Pike’s ritual works, which can skew perceptions of which titles are truly “in print” versus intermittently available [4] [8].