The Enlightenment World

Political and Intellectual History of the Long Eighteenth Century

Series Editor: Michael T Davis
Series Co-Editors: Jack Fruchtman, Jr, Iain McCalman and Paul Pickering
Advisory Editor: Hideo Tanaka

This series features monographs that take an innovative and challenging look at the political and intellectual history of the Enlightenment period.

The Enlightenment is a rich historical epoch, an age of political, intellectual, social and cultural change in Europe that had an ideological foundation among philosophes who believed human reason could be used to combat ignorance, superstition and absolutism. As a progressive movement, it aimed at making the world a better place: ‘our first concern,’ declared Richard Price, one of the leading lights of the Enlightenment, ‘as lovers of our country, must be to enlighten it’.

Although the Enlightenment was a broadly European phenomenon, the focus of this series is on the British Enlightenment and includes works with a comparative approach to the Enlightenment experience in Britain and other European centres, encompassing the concept of an ‘Enlightenment World’.

The beginning of the Enlightenment is difficult to determine. It is useful to talk of the pre-Enlightenment period, dating to the new natural science of Isaac Newton, the social and political theories of thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and James Harrington, the empirical psychology of John Locke, and the epistemological revolutions of Blaise Pascal and René Descartes. Equally difficult to pinpoint is the ‘end’ of the Enlightenment. Traditionally, the movement is said to extend to 1800, however a phenomenon as diverse, influential and complex as the Enlightenment can not be properly delineated as stopping abruptly at a set date. The Enlightenment, or at least its ideals, extended beyond 1800, having a profound impact permeating early nineteenth-century society. For this reason, the series will adopt a fluid conception of dating the Enlightenment, with the concept of the ‘long eighteenth century’ as the chronological measure of its boundaries.

The richness of the Enlightenment experience makes it a significant topic for study. It had a profound impact on nearly every aspect of life during the long eighteenth century and many of its values are familiar to modern society. Some of the key themes that this series embraces include the scientific revolution; philosophical origins and progress of the Enlightenment; high and popular culture; the political impact of the Enlightenment; and its comparative impact in a broad European context.

Readership

Many scholars throughout the world are actively engaged in studying, researching, and teaching the Enlightenment period. The broad implications of the Enlightenment movement means that works published in the series will have a multi-disciplinary approach. Scholars in History, Political Studies, Political Science, Political Thought, English Literature, Religion, and Philosophy will find the works of interest.

Editorial board

Michael T Davis is a Lecturer in Humanities at the University of Tasmania. He is editor of Radicalism and Revolution in Britain, 1775–1848 (2000); London Corresponding Society (Pickering & Chatto, 2002); Newgate in Revolution: An Anthology of Radical Prison Literature in the Age of Revolution (2005) (with Iain McCalman and Christina Parolin); Unrespectable Radicals? Popular Politics in the Age of Reform (2008) (with Paul A Pickering); and Terror: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism in Europe, 1605 to the Future (2008) (with Brett Bowden).

Jack Fruchtman, Jr, is at the Department of Political Science, Towson University, where he teaches on constitutional law and legal theory. He has published widely, including The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley (1983), Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature (1993), Atlantic Cousins: Benjamin Franklin and His Visionary Friends (2005) and Newgate in Revolution: An Anthology of Radical Prison Literature in the Age of Revolution (2005) (with Michael T Davis and Christina Parolin). He has edited Helen Maria Williams’s eyewitness account of the French Revolution (1997) and served as associate editor for history, politics, and philosophy of Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 1714-1837 (1997).

Iain McCalman is a specialist in British and European cultural history of the late Enlightenment period. He is author of Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London , 1795-1840 (1988); editor of An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (1999); author of The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro (2003); and co-editor of The Enlightenment World (2004). He has served as President of the Australian Academy of Humanities and Director of the Humanities Research Centre, The Australian National University, and is currently a Federation Fellow.

Paul A Pickering is a Senior Fellow and Director of Graduate Studies at the Humanities Research Centre, The Australian National University. His publications include Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford (1995); The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League (2000) (with Alex Tyrrell); Friends of the People: Uneasy Radicals in the Age of the Chartists (2003) (with Owen Ashton); Contested Sites: Commemoration, Memorial and Popular Politics in Nineteenth Century Britain (with Alex Tyrrell) (2004); and Unrespectable Radicals? Popular Politics in the Age of Reform (2008) (with Michael T Davis).

Hideo Tanaka is at Kyoto University.

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