The Irish Enlightenment

Scotland and England produced well-known intellectuals during the Enlightenment, but Ireland’s contribution to this revolution in Western thought has received less attention. Michael Brown shows that Ireland also had its Enlightenment, which for a brief time opened up the possibility of a tolerant society, despite a history of sectarian conflict.

By what channels did the French Enlightenment reach the eighteenth-century Irish reader, and what impact did it have? What were the images of Ireland current in the France of the philosophers like Voltaire? These are the questions which a team of scholars attempt to answer in this volume.

Reveals the contribution of Irish writers to the Georgian English stage; argues that theatre is an important strand of the Irish Enlightenment.

The late eighteenth century witnessed an explosion of intellectual activity in Scotland by such luminaries as David Hume, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, James Boswell, and Robert Burns. And the books written by these seminal thinkers made a significant mark during their time in almost every field of polite literature and higher learning throughout Britain, Europe, and the Americas. In this magisterial history, Richard B. Sher breaks new ground for our understanding of the Enlightenment and the forgotten role of publishing during that period. The Enlightenment and the Book seeks to remedy the common misperception that such classics as The Wealth of Nations and The Life of Samuel Johnson were written by authors who eyed their publishers as minor functionaries in their profession. To the contrary, Sher shows how the process of bookmaking during the late eighteenth-century involved a deeply complex partnership between authors and their publishers, one in which writers saw the book industry not only as pivotal in the dissemination of their ideas, but also as crucial to their dreams of fame and monetary gain. Similarly, Sher demonstrates that publishers were involved in the project of bookmaking in order to advance human knowledge as well as to accumulate profits. The Enlightenment and the Book explores this tension between creativity and commerce that still exists in scholarly publishing today. Lavishly illustrated and elegantly conceived, it will be must reading for anyone interested in the history of the book or the production and diffusion of Enlightenment thought.

Scotland and England produced well-known intellectuals during the Enlightenment, but Ireland’s contribution to this revolution in Western thought has received less attention. Michael Brown shows that Ireland also had its Enlightenment, which for a brief time opened up the possibility of a tolerant society, despite a history of sectarian conflict.

In 1979, 24-year-old Maura O'Halloran left her waitressing job in Boston and began her study of Zen in Japan. Today she is revered as a Buddhist saint, and a statue in her honor stands at the monastery where she lived. This is the story of her journey.

"First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Quercus as Castlereagh: Enlightenment, war and tyranny"--T.p. verso.