Compressed summaries are given in Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, 2nd ed. (2005); Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (2001); Paul Hyland, Olga Gomez, and Francesca Greensides (eds), The Enlightenment: A Sourcebook and Reader (2003); Norman Hampson, The Enlightenment, new ed. (1990); and Robert Anchor, The Enlightenment Tradition (1967, reissued 1979). A broader picture is presented in Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (eds.), The Enlightenment in National Context (1981). Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1951, reissued 2009; originally published in German, 1932), considers the metaphysical basis of 18th-century thought. Important studies of individual thinkers include Elisabeth Labrousse, Pierre Bayle (1963–64, reissued 1985); Robert Shackleton, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography (1961, reprinted 1970); Ira O. Wade, The Intellectual Development of Voltaire (1969); Ronald Grimsley, The Philosophy of Rousseau (1973); Roy Porter, Edward Gibbon: Making History (1988); and S.C. Brown (ed.), Philosophers of the Enlightenment (1979). Peter Gay, The Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment (1964, reissued 1971), is a good introduction to the philosophes.
Intellectual life in its broader aspects is explored in Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter (eds.), Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (2000); Marshall Berman, The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society, new ed. (2009); and Alfred Cobban, In Search of Humanity: The Role of the Enlightenment in Modern History (1960). The production and distribution of the Encyclopédie is examined in J.L. Talmon, The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy (1952, reprinted 1985), which sees the Enlightenment as hostile to the idea of freedom; also iconoclastic is Lester G. Crocker, An Age of Crisis: Man and World in Eighteenth Century French Thought (1959). George Boas, “In Search of the Age of Reason,” pp. 1–19 in Earl R. Wasserman (ed.), Aspects of the Eighteenth Century (1965, reprinted 1967), discusses difficulties in interpreting words such as “reason” and “nature.” R.R. Palmer, Catholics & Unbelievers in Eighteenth Century France (1939, reissued 1970), describes the religious counterattack against the Enlightenment. Other views are expressed in Lynn Hunt (ed.), The French Revolution in Culture (1989); and Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (1994).
Good general accounts of the experience of other countries include Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff (eds.), Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (1983, reissued 1985); Walter H. Bruford, Germany in the Eighteenth Century (1935, reissued 1971); Henri Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century Prussia (1974; originally published in French, 1947); Stuart J. Woolf, A History of Italy, 1700–1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change (1979, reprinted 1986); Richard Herr, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (1958, reprinted 1973); and Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (1976). Interaction of thinkers and “enlightened” absolutism is explored in C.B.A. Behrens, Society, Government, and the Enlightenment: The Experiences of Eighteenth-Century France and Prussia (1985); Leonard Krieger, Kings and Philosophers, 1689–1789 (1970); and H.M. Scott (ed.), Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe (1990). Geoffrey Russell Richards Treasure Revolution and the growth of industrial society, 1789–1914
Robin W. Winks and Thomas Kaiser, Europe, 1648–1815: From the Old Regime to the Age of Revolution (2004); T.C.W. Blanning (ed.), The Nineteenth Century: Europe, 1789–1914 (2000); and Theodore S. Hamerow, The Birth of a New Europe: State and Society in the Nineteenth Century (1983), provide excellent introductions to the period. Comprehensive coverage is offered in E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (1962), The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (1975, reissued 1984), and The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (1987). Treatments of the Industrial Revolution and related social developments include Lenard R. Berlanstein (ed.), The Industrial Revolution and Work in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1992); Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution, 2nd ed. (1979), an economic history; David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (1969), more comprehensive and less quantitative, on society; Peter N. Stearns, European Society in Upheavaclass="underline" Social History Since 1750, 2nd ed. (1975); Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760–1970 (1981); and William L. Blackwell, The Industrialization of Russia: An Historical Perspective, 2nd ed. (1982).
Women’s history is reviewed in Susan G. Bell and Karen M. Offen (eds.), Women, the Family, and Freedom, 2 vol. (1983); Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, Work, and Family (1978, reissued 1987); Bonnie G. Smith, Changing Lives: Women in European History since 1700 (1989); and Richard J. Evans, The Feminists: Women’s Emancipation Movements in Europe, America, and Australasia, 1840–1920 (1977), an overview of feminism. Important special topics in family history are covered in Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (1975); John R. Gillis, Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1770–Present (1981); Peter N. Stearns, Old Age in European Society: The Case of France (1976); and Angus McLaren, Birth Control in Nineteenth-Century England (1992), and Sexuality and Social Order (1983); and Rachel Fuchs, Poor and Pregnant in Paris (1992). Analysis of major social classes is provided in Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (1976); and E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, new ed. (1968, reissued 1980). Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (1986), studies popular protest patterns. Other important studies include Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution: c. 1780–c. 1880 (1980); and Harvey J. Graff (ed.), Literacy and Social Development in the West (1981).