Reading the Scottish Enlightenment
Books and their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750-1820
Biographical note
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.
Readership
All those interested in the social history of ideas, the Scottish Enlightenment and the cultural history of eighteenth-century Britain, as well as book history, library history and the history of reading.
Reviews
Shortlisted for the Saltire Society's 2011 Scottish History Book of the Year Award
“[This] book is a triumph. Towsey’s primary research is both impressively detailed and extraordinarily wide-ranging, even by the high standards of studies in this field generally.”
Matthew Bradley, Pembroke College, Oxford. In: Library & Information History, Vol. 27, No. 3 (September 2011), pp. 199-200.
"Towsey pays particular attention to letters, diaries, marginalia and commonplace books. On all these matters he is a splendid mine of well-structured information [...]. In this exhaustively researched book Towsey provides a most persuasive argument for the claim that the works of the literati reached deep into Scottish society, not only in the university towns but across Scotland more generally, and that the books of the literati were not just accessible, but accessed and interpreted."
Alexander Broadie, University of Glasgow. In: The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 2 (2012), pp. 365-367.
"This book gets to the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment ... [Towsey] convincingly sets out his methodologies, provides detailed evidence to support them, and develops and provides new insights into our knowledge and understanding of the social impact of the Scottish Enlightenment in provincial Scotland."
Heather Holmes, Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society.
"The story Towsey tells here is intellectually compelling, even moving."
Stephen W. Brown, Trent University, Ontario. In: The Library, 7.13.3 (September 2012). pp. 347-349.
“[This] book is a triumph. Towsey’s primary research is both impressively detailed and extraordinarily wide-ranging, even by the high standards of studies in this field generally.”
Matthew Bradley, Pembroke College, Oxford. In: Library & Information History, Vol. 27, No. 3 (September 2011), pp. 199-200.
"Towsey pays particular attention to letters, diaries, marginalia and commonplace books. On all these matters he is a splendid mine of well-structured information [...]. In this exhaustively researched book Towsey provides a most persuasive argument for the claim that the works of the literati reached deep into Scottish society, not only in the university towns but across Scotland more generally, and that the books of the literati were not just accessible, but accessed and interpreted."
Alexander Broadie, University of Glasgow. In: The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 2 (2012), pp. 365-367.
"This book gets to the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment ... [Towsey] convincingly sets out his methodologies, provides detailed evidence to support them, and develops and provides new insights into our knowledge and understanding of the social impact of the Scottish Enlightenment in provincial Scotland."
Heather Holmes, Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society.
"The story Towsey tells here is intellectually compelling, even moving."
Stephen W. Brown, Trent University, Ontario. In: The Library, 7.13.3 (September 2012). pp. 347-349.
Table of contents
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
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
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