Enlightenment : Britain and the Creation of the Modern World

Porter, Roy

ISBN 10: 0713991526 / ISBN 13: 9780713991529

Published by Allen Lane, 2000,, 2000

About this Item

1st edition, hardback, large 8vo, xxiv,728pp, owner's bookplate, top edges spotted, illustrated, text clean and binding tight, no inscriptions, Very Good / Very Good dustwrapper; wrapper spine slightly faded. ISBN: 0713991526. Seller Inventory # 467300

Bibliographic Details

Title: Enlightenment : Britain and the Creation of ...

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2000,

Publication Date: 2000

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

It is almost impossible to encapsulate briefly the range and variety contained in Roy Porter's major new book. For generations the focus for those wishing to understand the roots of the modern world has been France on the eve of the Revolution. Porter certainly acknowledges France's importance, but makes an overwhelming, fascinating case for considering Britain the "true" home of modernity - a country driven by an exuberance, diversity and power of invention comparable only to 20th-century America. Porter immerses the reader in a society which, recovering from the horrors of the Civil War and decisively reinvigorated by the revolution of 1688, had emerged as something new and extraordinary - a society unlike any other in the world. This explosion of activity left no one unchanged and created a society with many of the values we recognize and value today - sceptical, pleasure-obsessed, garrulous, innovative, meritocratic. This book's cast includes many of the most engaging and attractive writers and conversationalists that ever lived and the host of great figures who cross these pages, from Newton and Locke to Burke and Wollstonecraft, are brought to life by Porter. As an introduction to a unqiuely appealing world, "Enlightenment" could not be bettered and as an arrangement for Britain's central importance in catapulting the world into the modern era (for better and for worse) it is both compelling and entertaining.

About the Author:

Roy Porter is Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London.