The creation of the modern world : the untold story of the British Enlightenment / Roy Porter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Porter, Roy, 1946-2002.

Contributor:

Porter, Roy, 1946-2002.

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Enlightenment

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Great Britain--Intellectual life--18th century.

Great Britain.

Intellectual life.

Enlightenment--Great Britain.

Enlightenment.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xxiv, 727 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : W.W. Norton, 2000.

Summary:

"With its representative government, religious tolerance, precocious industrialization, and pioneering individualism, eighteenth-century Britain was at the cutting edge of political, social, and intellectual innovation. Porter examines the influence of such heroic figures as Bacon, Newton, and Locke in shaping the British Enlightenment, as well as the impact of other English essayists and novelists in popularizing modern thought. He persuasively demonstrates how their writings launched the wild phenomenon of Anglomania that swept the Continent and cast the Enlightenment well beyond Europe's shores."--BOOK JACKET.

Contents:

A blind spot

The birth of an ideology

Clearing away the rubbish

Print culture

Rationalizing religion

The culture of science

Anatomizing human nature

The science of politics

Secularizing

Modernizing

Happiness

From good sense to sensibility

Nature

Did the mind have a sex?

Education : a panacea?

The vulgar

The pursuit of wealth

Reform

Progress

The revolutionary era : 'modern philosophy'

Lasting light?

Notes:

Originally published in Great Britain by Allen Lane/Penguin Press in 2000 under title: Enlightenment.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 616-693) and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

Related Work:

Porter, Roy, 1946-2002. Enlightenment.

ISBN:

0393048721

9780393048728

OCLC:

45172823