Edited by David Armitage (NHC Fellow, 1996–97) and Henry St. John Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was one of the most creative political thinkers in eighteenth-century Britain. In this volume, modernised and fully annotated texts of his most important political works, the Dissertation upon Parties, the letter, 'On the Spirit of Patriotism', and The Idea … Continued
Edited by Wye J. Allanbrook (NHC Fellow, 1986–87; 2003–04)
By Anthony J. La Vopa (NHC Fellow, 1983–84; 1998–99) This book focuses on "poor students", young men in eighteenth-century Germany who owed their studies to charity, who formed a substantial minority within the theology faculties, and who entered careers in the clergy, the academic schools, and the universities. Professor La Vopa shows how a cluster … Continued
Edited by Elizabeth C. Mansfield (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) and Kelly Malone A moment in history when verbal satire, caricature, and comic performance exerted unprecedented influence on society, the Enlightenment sustained a complex, though now practically invisible, culture of visual humor. In Seeing satire in the eighteenth century contributors recapture the unique energy of comic images in the … Continued
By Richard Lyman Bushman (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) In the eighteenth century, three-quarters of Americans made their living from farms. This authoritative history explores the lives, cultures, and societies of America’s farmers from colonial times through the founding of the nation. Noted historian Richard Bushman explains how all farmers sought to provision themselves while still actively … Continued
By Martha Woodmansee (NHC Fellow, 1982–83) Analyzing the rise of art in the 18th century, this treatise demonstrates how painting, sculpture and literature were not regarded as valuable art forms before the emergence of a new bourgeois culture. The author reveals how Romantic poets and philosophers invented art as we know it today.
By Jonathan Lamb (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) The Rhetoric of Suffering draws on the book of Job as a touchstone for the contradictions and polemics that infect various C18th works – poetry, philosophy, political oratory, accounts of exploration, commentaries on criminal law – which tried to account for the relations between human suffering and systems of … Continued
The story seems familiar. A North American colonial empire, firmly established since the 1500s, is, by the 1700s, funneling great wealth to the mother country in Europe. The colonies are ethnically, ecologically, and geographically diverse. Slavery, an important part of the colonial economy, is widespread; yet some of the African-descendant population live as free people. … Continued