Beyond the Enlightenment - by Aileen Fyfe & Colin C Kidd (Paperback)

About the Book

A pioneering overview of Scottish intellectual life during the long 19th century, focusing in particular on the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Book Synopsis

This collection explores the richness of Scottish intellectual life, its currents and controversies, from the French Revolution to the First World War, focusing in particular on the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment. Offering a series of cutting-edge interventions, the contributors cast light on a range of individuals, themes and episodes from the period. Topics range from the role of women as intellectuals to the rise of a science of race, and from freethinking secularism to the debate over George Davie's influential account of 19th-century universities.
Collectively, the chapters represent a pioneering overview of Scottish intellectual life during the long 19th century.

Review Quotes

[The book's] purpose is to inspire a reconsideration of Scottish intellectual life between the French Revolution and the First World War. That it prompts questions about the organizing principles of intellectual life suggests it does just that.--Michael Brown, University of Aberdeen "Eighteenth-Century Scotland"

At last, a bold new map of a period that has hitherto been simply ignored as terra incognita or dismissed as the sorry afterglow of the Scottish Enlightenment. The authors that Fyfe and Kidd have drawn together bring major landmarks on the intellectual horizon of Scotland's long nineteenth century into clear focus for the first time, but also leave abundant signposts for others to continue the task of exploration.--David N. Livingstone, Queen's University Belfast

The history of the intellectual life of the nineteenth century has for too long been squeezed between the glories of the enlightenment and the rhetorical flourishes of the literary renaissance. In this wonderful collection Aileen Fyfe, Colin Kidd and their collaborators have written a rich and stimulating volume that restores the long nineteenth century to its proper place.--Ewen Cameron, University of Edinburgh