Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Edinburgh Classic Editions) - Softcover

Sher, Richard B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1474407439 ISBN 13: 9781474407434

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Since its original publication in 1985, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment has come to be regarded as a classic work in eighteenth-century Scottish history and Enlightenment studies. It depicts Hugh Blair, Alexander Carlyle, Adam Ferguson, John Home, and William Robertson as an intimate coterie that played a central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, seen here not only as an intellectual but as a cultural movement. These men were among the leaders in the University of Edinburgh, in the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, and in Edinburgh's thriving clubs. They used their institutional influence and their books, plays, sermons, and pamphlets to promulgate the tenets of Moderatism, including polite Presbyterianism, Christian Stoicism, civic humanism, social and political conservatism, and the tolerant, cosmopolitan values of the international Enlightenment. Using a wide variety of sources and an interdisciplinary methodology, this collective biography portrays these "Moderate literati" as zealous activists for the cause in which they believed, ranging from support for a Scots militia, Ossian, and Roman Catholic relief to opposition to the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and the American and French Revolutions.

The Edinburgh Classic Editions series publishes influential works from the archive in context for a contemporary audience. These works shifted boundaries on first publication and are considered essential groundings in their disciplines. New introductions from contemporary scholars explain the cultural and intellectual heritage of these classic editions to a new generation of readers.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard B. Sher is Distinguished Professor of History in the Federated History Department of New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America (2006) and co-editor of The Glasgow Enlightenment (1995), Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (1993), and Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment (1990).

About this edition

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1474407439
• ISBN 13: 9781474407434
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 432