Making British Culture explores an under-appreciated factor in the emergence of a recognisably British culture. Specifically, it examines the experiences of English readers between around 1707 and 1830 as they grappled, in a variety of circumstances, with the great effusion of Scottish authorship - including the hard-edged intellectual achievements of David Hume, Adam Smith and William Robertson as well as the more accessible contributions of poets like Robert Burns and Walter Scott - that distinguished the age of the Enlightenment.
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
PART I: PROBLEMS
Chapter 1: A Question of Perspective: Scotland and England in the British Enlightenment
PART II: CONTEXTS
Chapter 2: "The Self-Impannelled Jury of the English Court of Criticism": Taste and the Making of the Canon
Chapter 3: "For Learning and For Arms Renown'd": Scotland in the Public Mind
Chapter 4: "An Ample Fund of Amusement and Improvement": Institutional Frameworks for Reading and Reception
Chapter 5: Readers and Their Books: Why, Where and How Did Reading Happen?
PART III: CONTINGENCIES
Chapter 6: "One Longs to Say Something": English Readers, Scottish Authors and
the Contested Text
Chapter 7: "Many Sketches & Scraps of Sentiments": Commonplacing and the Art of Reading
Chapter 8: Copying and Co-opting: Owning the Text
PART IV: CONSTRUCTIONS
Chapter 9: Reading and Meaning: History, Travel and Political Economy
Chapter 10: Mis-reading and Misunderstanding: Encountering Natural Religion and Hume
PART V: CONSEQUENCES
Chapter 11: The Making of British Culture: Reading Identities in the Social History of
Ideas
Notes
Bibliography
Index
