The Enlightenment & the Book: Scottish Authors & Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America
Richard B. Sher
Abstract
The late eighteenth century witnessed an explosion of intellectual activity in Scotland by such luminaries as David Hume, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, James Boswell, and Robert Burns. And the books written by these seminal thinkers made a significant mark during their time in almost every field of polite literature and higher learning throughout Britain, Europe, and the Americas. This book seeks to remedy the common misperception that such classics as The Wealth of Nations and The Life of Samuel Johnson were written by authors who eyed their publishers as minor fun ... More
The late eighteenth century witnessed an explosion of intellectual activity in Scotland by such luminaries as David Hume, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, James Boswell, and Robert Burns. And the books written by these seminal thinkers made a significant mark during their time in almost every field of polite literature and higher learning throughout Britain, Europe, and the Americas. This book seeks to remedy the common misperception that such classics as The Wealth of Nations and The Life of Samuel Johnson were written by authors who eyed their publishers as minor functionaries in their profession. To the contrary, it shows how the process of bookmaking during the late eighteenth century involved a deeply complex partnership between authors and their publishers, one in which writers saw the book industry not only as pivotal in the dissemination of their ideas, but also as crucial to their dreams of fame and monetary gain. Similarly, the book demonstrates that publishers were involved in the project of bookmaking in order to advance human knowledge as well as to accumulate profits, and explores this tension between creativity and commerce that still exists in scholarly publishing today.
Keywords:
Scotland,
David Hume,
Adam Smith,
Adam Ferguson,
James Boswell,
Robert Burns,
polite literature,
bookmaking,
creativity,
commerce
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226752525 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: March 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226752549.001.0001 |
