HIST 231: Imagining Enlightenment in 18th-Century Europe (HC)

A digital “aggregator,” 18thConnect gathers together information about and links to the best primary and secondary texts that are available in digital form, either freely available on the Web or available by subscription.

Database offering extensive access to the web of correspondence between intellectuals and writers of the long eighteenth century and their families and friends, bankers and booksellers, patrons and publishers. Coverage includes letters and documents, drawn from manuscripts, early printed editions, scholarly annotations, dictionaries, encyclopedias, newspapers, and online resources. The emphasis is on Britain and France with some French material in English translations.

Diderot's encyclopedia summarizes knowledge in all branches of study and provides important contextualization for your topic.
This record is for an original printed edition. It can be used in the Library but not checked out. See also the following versions:
Print copy at BMC
ARTFL text in French
University of Michigan collaborative English translation (in progress)
Encyclopedic Liberty: Political Articles in the Dictionary of Diderot and D'Alembert
Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert: Selected Articles in English translation
Illustrated Plates from the Encyclopédie available online on the Michigan site. Note that topics are listed on separate pages alphabetically. Plates are also available in print for checkout.

The author Eliza Haywood edited the magazine, The Female Spectator, for women readers beginning in 1744. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, it was quite successful and lasted longer tham many other magazines of the time. See the earliest complete edition in ECCO. It was reprinted over the next 30 years and these copies are also listed in Tripod and accessible full text in ECCO.

A reprint of this periodical which was edited and largely written by Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. It was published six times a week from March 1711 to December 1712 and June to December 1714.

A reprint of an earlier periodical edited by Steele with contributors including Jonathan Swift, attracted by Steele's essay format and Whig politics. It ran from April 1709 through January 1711.

This is a fully searchable database of Voltaire's written works aside from his correspondence (which can be searched in Electronic Enlightenment). The text does not include notes but is considered the most reliable version of Voltaire's writings until the Voltaire Foundation finishes publishing the Complete Works of Voltaire in 2018. Tout Voltaire is made available open access by the Voltaire Foundation and ARTFL Project. Example of a database search:
How often does Voltaire use the terms ‘nation’ and ‘esprit’ in the same sentence?


Topical Collections of Primary Source Excerpts

Diderot, the Enlightenment philosopher and critic, is recognized now as an art critic of the first rank. His Essai sur la peinture (Essay on Painting, 1796) won him posthumous praise as a critic of painting technique and aesthetics. See his writings in French about the Salon of 1765 and Essais sur la peinture.

The Enlightenment is an authoritative anthology of the key political writings from 'one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the life of mankind'. The texts are supported by a lucid introduction exploring their moral, philosophical, political and economic background, enabling the student to grasp both the context and the essence of each argument. Biographical notes and carefully selected bibliographies offer further help.

Music had a large influence over Rousseau's thinking on aesthetics. He wrote essays about music's origin, meaning, and importance. For the French version of these texts see Ecrits sur la musique, la langue et le théâtre. Œuvres complètes Vol. 5.

" Voir le monde ", écrivait Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740-1814), témoin privilégié des Lumières, et surtout des hommes et des femmes qui y vécurent. A propos de Paris, il écrivit en son époque douze tomes, soit plus de 2 000 pages, intitulés Tableau de Paris. En brefs chapitres, il entre dans Paris, ses moeurs, ses monuments, ses désirs, ses malheurs, ses arrogances et sa vie littéraire, avec une écriture mouvementée, saccadée, fidèle à cette vie fiévreuse qui fut celle de Paris avant la Révolution française. De ce témoignage inédit, Sabine Melchior-Bonnet en a extrait tout ce qui concerne les femmes, pour en faire une sorte de reportage sur la condition féminine telle qu'elle est vécue dans les diverses classes de la société, femmes du monde, bourgeoises, femmes du peuple.

Premier commissaire de police de Versailles, Narbonne était des mieux placés pour connaître les multiples facettes de la société des lumières. Volontiers espiègle, son sens de la narration rend à ses écrits un pittoresque bien savoureux.

This work offers English-language readers an introduction to one of the forgotten masterpieces of French literature, Louis-Sebastien Mercier's 12-volume "Le Tableau de Paris" (published from 1781 to 1788), an important and original work that helped shape many kinds of French writing. The text provides a portrait of everyday life in Paris on the eve of the French revolution, describing the interactions of workers, street peddlers, prostitutes, police spies, actresses, noblemen, parish priests, servants, and criminals. The full text of the 12 volumes in French is available online through the Hathi Trust.

English language versions of primary source texts from France, Germany, and North America.

This is the first English translation of many of Voltaire's key texts from his famous pamphlet war for tolerance, written from 1750 to 1768, originally published under pseudonyms to avoid imprisonment and to educate the average citizen. Included are "The Sermon of Rabbi Akib" (a searing attack on anti-Semitism), a "Prayer to God" (from the famous Treatise on Tolerance), the hugely popular "Catechism of the Honest Man," and other witty, sometimes acerbic pieces that point out the errors in the Bible, the corruption of the clergy, and the faults with religiously-inspired persecutions.

Gives access by topic, time period, artist and more to a wealth of digitized prints, artifacts and many other objects at the British Museum.