All Burke's biographers, from James Prior in 1826 to Stanley Alyling in 1988, state that Edmund Burke was born in Dublin and that his father, an attorney, Richard Burke, was a Protestant and his mother, born Mary Nagle, a Catholic. The date of birth is now believed to have been New Year's Day, 1729. It is not certain that he was born in the Blackwater Valley. The fact that his sister's baptism is recorded in Castletownroche has raised Co. Cork suspicions.At the age of six, he was sent by his parents to live with his maternal uncle, Patrick Nagle, in Ballyduff. It is said that he was sent there as a child for the sake of his health and indeed he was a sickly child and the city of Dublin in the eighteenth century was an unhealthy place. He spent the next five years in Ballyduff. During this time he attended the local hedge-school. Here he was taught by the schoolmaster, Mr. O'Halloran. This school was under the walls of the ruined castle of Monanimy. Burke was a cousin and contemporary of Nano Nagle, the foundress of the Presentation Order of Nuns.

At the age of 12, in 1741, Burke went to boarding school in Ballintore, Co. Kildare. In April 1744 Burke sat successfully for entrance to Trinity College, Dublin. Burke's University career was distinguished. He became a scholar of the House in his senior Freshman year in 1746. Between then and taking his degree in January 1748, and for a short time after that, he busied himself to some purpose with the debating club, which he founded, and with a miscellany paper, "The Reformer" which he also founded and largely wrote. There is very little known about Burke's life for the nine years after his graduation in January 1748.

In the spring of 1757 Edmund Burke married Jane Nugent, the daughter of a well-known Irish Catholic physician, Christopher Nugent. In the late 1750's Burke published two books, "A Vindication of Natural Society" in 1756 and "A Philosophical Enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" in 1757. By the early 1760's Burke was laying the foundations of his political career in London. In 1759 he became an assistant to a well-known Parliamentarian of his own age, William Gerard Hamilton, (1729 - 1796). In April 1761 Hamilton became Chief Secretary for Ireland and asked Burke to accompany him as his private secretary. Burke accepted the position. In this role he had an officially minor but significant part to play in the government of Ireland from 1761 to 1764 when Hamilton was dismissed. Burke was in Dublin for sessions of the Irish Parliament in the winters of 1761 and 1762. His principal objective as far as he could influence policy was to improve conditions for the Catholics.

In the autumn of 1761, while the Irish Parliament was in session, he is said to have been already at work on a "Tract Relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland". This Tract was never completed nor was any part of it published during his lifetime, but fragments of it occupy some seventy pages in the collected works, where they are dated 1764. On the 11th July 1765 he became Private Secretary to Charles Watson Wentworth, second Marquis of Rockingham (1730 - 1782), who was just then forming a government which was to last for a year. Burke was elected to Parliament for the Borough of Wendover in December 1765. The first Rockingham Government fell in July 1766, the Rockingham Whigs were to remain in opposition for 16 years. Overtures were made to Burke and his political career could have been much more brilliant than it was, had he chosen to abandon Rockingham in, or after, 1766.

In 1744 Edmund Burke was elected member for Bristol. This was a great step forward in his political career and a great parliamentary status. Hitherto he had been member for the insignificant pocket borough of Wendover. In May 1778 he helped to bring about the first legislative measure which relaxed the Penal Code against Catholics. Concern about Ireland was paramount with Burke. In August 1794 Edmund Burke retired from Government. He died on 9th July 1797. His wife was with him. Unfortunately his beloved only child, his son Richard, had pre-deceased him by three years. In Trinity College, Dublin, there is a statue of Edmund Burke designed by John Foley.