Books that Made the European Enlightenment

Gary Kates is H. Russell Smith Foundation Chair in the Social Sciences and Professor of History at Pomona College, USA. He is the author of Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791 2nd Edition (2015; with Jennifer Popiel and Mark C. Carnes) and Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade (1995), which has been translated into three different languages. He is also the editor of The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies (1988).

• List of IllustrationsPreface1. The Enlightenment Reading Public2. Fénelon’s Adventures of Telemachus (1699)3. Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721)4. Voltaire’s History of Charles XII (1731) & Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Greatness and Decline of the Romans (1734)5. Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters (1733-1734)6. Richardson’s Pamela (1740)7. Hume’s Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-1742)8. Graffigny’s Letters from a Peruvian Woman (1747)9. Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748)10. Rousseau’s Emile (1762)11. Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776)12. Raynal’s Philosophical and Political History of the Two Indies (1770-1780)Index

Scholars will have much to learn from this book; more importantly, it now represents the best introduction to the Enlightenment, and (quietly) provides an effective refutation of the widespread postmodern belief that the Enlightenment stands for imperialism, patriarchy and cold-blooded, scientific rationalism. And it is already available as a reasonably priced paperback, the modern equivalent of a cheap duodecimo.