Reading the Scottish Enlightenment

Books and Their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750-1820
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-90-04-18432-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 10, 366 Seiten, Format (B × H): 168 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 771 g

Reihe: Library of the Written Word / Library of the Written Word - The Handpress World

It has become commonplace in recent decades for scholars to identify in the books of the Scottish Enlightenment the intellectual origins of the modern world, but little attention has yet been paid to its impact on contemporary readers. Drawing on a range of innovatory methodologies associated with the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of the history of reading, this book explores the reception of books by David Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson and Thomas Reid (amongst many others), assessing their impact on the lives, beliefs and habits of mind of readers across the social scale. In the process, the book offers a fascinating new perspective on the fundamental importance of personal reading experiences to the social history of the Enlightenment.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Towsey, Mark

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction “Enlightenment Everywhere”: Locating the Reader in the Scottish Enlightenment 1

PART I: ENCOUNTERING ENLIGHTENMENT

Chapter One “One of the Greatest Ornaments to a Gentleman”: Private Libraries

Chapter Two “A Powerful Means of Improving the Neighbourhood”: Subscription Libraries

Chapter Three “Vice and Obscenity Dreadfully Propagated”: Circulating Libraries

Chapter Four “A Taste for Reading in the Country”: Religious and Endowed Libraries

PART II: EXPERIENCING ENLIGHTENMENT

Chapter Five “This Map of my Mind”: Recovering Historical Reading Experiences

Chapter Six “A Man of Moderate Passions”: Fashioning an Enlightened Self

Chapter Seven “That Independency which a Whole Nation had Renounced”: Negotiating Scottish Identity

Chapter Eight “The Patron of Infidelity”: Reading Hume and the Common Sense Philosophers

Conclusion “Improved and Enlightened by Reading”: A Provincial Enlightenment?

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Mark R. M. Towsey, Ph.D. in History (St Andrews, 2007), is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Liverpool. He has previously held fellowships at Harvard, Yale and London, and has published extensively on eighteenth-century libraries and reading habits.