Title Details
384 Pages
23.4 x 15.6 cm
21 b/w, 9 line illus.
Series: Studies in the Eighteenth Century
Series Vol. Number:
11
Imprint: Boydell Press
The Geographies of Enlightenment Edinburgh
- Description
- Contents
- Author
- Reviews
This innovative book explores how the making of Edinburgh as an influential Enlightenment capital depended on a series of spatial processes that extended across urban, regional, national and global scales.
Edinburgh was an Enlightenment city of regional, national and global influence. But how did the people of Enlightenment Edinburgh understand and order their world? How did they encounter, compare and produce different kinds of spaces, from the urban to the world scale? And how did this city set the universal standards by which other places should be judged and transformed?
The Geographies of Enlightenment Edinburgh answers these questions by exploring the thousands of urban plans, county surveys, travel accounts and encyclopaedias that passed through a busy Edinburgh bookshop over four decades. It reveals how these geographical publications were produced and shared, and sheds light on the people who bought and used them - including moral philosophers, silk merchants, school teachers, ship's surgeons and slave owners.
This is the story of how specific methods of mapping space came ultimately to predict and organize it, creating a new world in Edinburgh's image. By connecting global processes of knowledge production to intimate accounts of its reception in the city, this book deepens our understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment and the world it made.
Edinburgh was an Enlightenment city of regional, national and global influence. But how did the people of Enlightenment Edinburgh understand and order their world? How did they encounter, compare and produce different kinds of spaces, from the urban to the world scale? And how did this city set the universal standards by which other places should be judged and transformed?
The Geographies of Enlightenment Edinburgh answers these questions by exploring the thousands of urban plans, county surveys, travel accounts and encyclopaedias that passed through a busy Edinburgh bookshop over four decades. It reveals how these geographical publications were produced and shared, and sheds light on the people who bought and used them - including moral philosophers, silk merchants, school teachers, ship's surgeons and slave owners.
This is the story of how specific methods of mapping space came ultimately to predict and organize it, creating a new world in Edinburgh's image. By connecting global processes of knowledge production to intimate accounts of its reception in the city, this book deepens our understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment and the world it made.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION: Mapping Enlightenment from an Edinburgh Bookshop
I PLANNING: EDINBURGH AND THE NEW TOWN
1. Projecting: Cadastral Mapping and the Genesis of the New Town
2. Combining: Mapping Old, New and Soon
3. Dividing: Properties of the Plan Beyond
4. Extending: Progress and the Enlightenment Capital
II SURVEYING: EDINBURGH AND ITS ENVIRONS
5. Counting: Political Arithmetic in the Parish of Cramond
6. Generalising: County Connections and Enclosures
7. Overviewing: Distant Perspectives in the Borders
8. Subscribing: Patronising Surveys and Provincial Libraries
III TRAVELLING: EDINBURGH AND THE NATION
9. Piecing: Pre- and Post-Tour Epistles for Thomas Pennant's Scotland
10. Improving: Robert Heron's Journey through the Commerce of Print
11. Moving: Sarah Murray and her Travelling Readers
12. Trading: Routes in Scotland
IV COMPILING: EDINBURGH AND THE WORLD
13. Summarising: Global Knowledge in an Elite High School
14. Supplementing: The Encyclopædia Britannica's Sources
15. Accessioning: The Family Collection
16. Institutionalising: Edinburgh Medical Students and Surgeons' Societies in the Nineteenth-Century World
CONCLUSION: Universalising Enlightenment Edinburgh
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION: Mapping Enlightenment from an Edinburgh Bookshop
I PLANNING: EDINBURGH AND THE NEW TOWN
1. Projecting: Cadastral Mapping and the Genesis of the New Town
2. Combining: Mapping Old, New and Soon
3. Dividing: Properties of the Plan Beyond
4. Extending: Progress and the Enlightenment Capital
II SURVEYING: EDINBURGH AND ITS ENVIRONS
5. Counting: Political Arithmetic in the Parish of Cramond
6. Generalising: County Connections and Enclosures
7. Overviewing: Distant Perspectives in the Borders
8. Subscribing: Patronising Surveys and Provincial Libraries
III TRAVELLING: EDINBURGH AND THE NATION
9. Piecing: Pre- and Post-Tour Epistles for Thomas Pennant's Scotland
10. Improving: Robert Heron's Journey through the Commerce of Print
11. Moving: Sarah Murray and her Travelling Readers
12. Trading: Routes in Scotland
IV COMPILING: EDINBURGH AND THE WORLD
13. Summarising: Global Knowledge in an Elite High School
14. Supplementing: The Encyclopædia Britannica's Sources
15. Accessioning: The Family Collection
16. Institutionalising: Edinburgh Medical Students and Surgeons' Societies in the Nineteenth-Century World
CONCLUSION: Universalising Enlightenment Edinburgh
Bibliography
Index
"A rich and highly original interpretation of geography and print culture in late eighteenth-century Edinburgh." Richard B. Sher, author of The Enlightenment and the Book
"Geographies of Enlightenment Edinburgh is destined to become a landmark book for scholars of the eighteenth century, the Scottish Enlightenment and the urban history of science." Stéphane Van Damme, Professor, Ecole Normale Supérieure
"The Geographies of Enlightenment Edinburgh represents a substantial contribution to Enlightenment studies, the history of geography, and historical-cultural geography. It merits attention from scholars and students in each of these fields, and from historians of science concerned with scientific practice in the Age of Reason." ISIS: A JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE SOCIETY
"Highly readable and well-structured with subtle and convincing arguments, critically but sympathetically marshalling evidence from a range of historical figures from book readers and subscribers to travellers, geographers and natural philosophers whose personalities are winningly conveyed. Dodds' approach provides an exciting template of how similar local to global studies of Enlightenment towns might be undertaken." SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL
Hardcover
9781783277032
May 2022
£90.00 / $135.00
Ebook (EPDF)
9781787448827
May 2022
£24.99 / $29.95
Ebook (EPUB)
9781800105508
May 2022
£24.99 / $29.95
Title Details
384 Pages
2.34 x 1.56 cm
21 b/w, 9 line illus.
Series: Studies in the Eighteenth Century
Series Vol. Number:
11
Imprint: Boydell Press
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