• Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0838678310.
• Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0521425611.
• Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley's Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
• Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. 2 vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
• Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. 2 vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
• Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield's recent two-volume work; several one-volume treatments exist, all somewhat older: Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley's life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley's life in the context of other developments in science.

• Gibbs, F. W. Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965.
• Graham, Jenny. Revolutionary in Exile: The Emigration of Joseph Priestley to America, 1794–1804. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 85 (1995). ISBN 0871698528.
• Holt, Anne. A Life of Joseph Priestley. London: Oxford University Press, 1931.
• Jackson, Joe. A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat and the Race to Discover Oxygen. New York: Viking, 2005. ISBN 0670034347.
• Johnson, Steven. The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. New York: Riverhead, 2008. ISBN 1594488525.
• Schofield, Robert E. The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of his Life and Work from 1733 to 1773. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. ISBN 0271016620.
• Schofield, Robert E. The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. ISBN 0271024593.
• Smith, Edgar F. Priestley in America, 1794–1804. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son and Co., 1920.
• Tapper, Alan. "Joseph Priestley". Dictionary of Literary Biography 252: British Philosophers 1500–1799. Eds. Philip B. Dematteis and Peter S. Fosl. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002.
• Thorpe, T. E. Joseph Priestley. London: J. M. Dent, 1906.
• Uglow, Jenny. The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. ISBN 0374194408.

• Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0901805289.
• Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 027102951X.
• Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
• Conant, J. B., ed. "The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789". Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
• Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
• Crossland, Maurice. "The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the 'Philosophic Revolution'". British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
• Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 052156218X
• Eshet, Dan. "Rereading Priestley". History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
• Fitzpatrick, Martin. "Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration". The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
• Garrett, Clarke. "Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution". Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
• Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0871692457.
• Kramnick, Isaac. "Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley's Scientific Liberalism". Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
• Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0226458083.
• Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0521560608.
• McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 089391004X.
• McEvoy, John G. "Joseph Priestley, 'Aerial Philosopher': Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley's Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781". Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
• McEvoy, John G. "Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning". Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
• McEvoy, John G. "Priestley Responds to Lavoisier's Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment". Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 088135189X.
• McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. "God and Nature: Priestley's Way of Rational Dissent". Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
• McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0863030521.
• McLachlan, John. "Joseph Priestley and the Study of History". Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
• Philip, Mark. "Rational Religion and Political Radicalism". Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
• Rose, R. B. "The Priestley Riots of 1791". Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
• Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
• Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521461553.
• Schaffer, Simon. "Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey". History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
• Sheps, Arthur. "Joseph Priestley's Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England". Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
• Watts, R. "Joseph Priestley and Education". Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.