The English Deists:
Studies in Early Enlightenment
Wayne Hudson
The Enlightenment World
978 1 85196 619 6: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 85196 584 7
Hudson reinterprets the works of an important group of writers known as ‘the English deists’ including: Charles Blount (1654-1693), John Toland (1670-1722), Anthony Collins (1679-1729), Matthew Tindal (1656-1733), Thomas Woolston (1669-1733), Thomas Morgan (nd-1743), Thomas Chubb (1679-1747) and Peter Annet (1693-1769), as well as the 'father of English deism', Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648). Historians tend to assume that these figures accepted deism as a totalising outlook. Hudson, however, argues that this interpretation reads Romantic conceptions of religious identity into a period in which it was lacking. Adopting a distinctive position with implications for contemporary debates about the Enlightenment, Hudson contextualizes these writers within the early Enlightenment, which was multivocal, plural and in search of self definition.
Sample pages
Readership
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Philosophy of Enlightenment and Religious Studies
Contents
1 Who Were the English Deists?
2 Genealogies of Deism
3 Herbert of Cherbury
4 Charles Blount and His Circle
5 Three Writers
Conclusion
Appendix: Herbert’s Philosophical Poems
Reviews
'for readers who appreciate meticulous intellectual histories animated by complex characters adopting various personae as circumstances demand, Mr. Hudson's book will be a pleasure to read'
– James A Herrick, The Scriblerian
Related titles
