Published between 1780 and 1785, Les Contemporaines appeared in forty-two volumes.

Casanova's first attempt at an autobiography.

In the Logique (Logic, or the first development of the art of thinking) published in the year of his death, Condillac reconsiders the origin of ideas and the means to facilitate the acquistion of knowledge. Before he died Condillac was working on a comprehensive edition of his works and La Langue des calculs (The Language of Calculation). His collected works were published in 1798.

“He believed that truth had a natural superiority over error, if it could only be heard; that if once discovered, it must, being left to itself, soon spread and triumph, and that the art of printing would not only accelerate this effect, but would prevent those accidents which had rendered the moral and intellectual progress of mankind hitherto so slow, irregular and uncertain.” (Hazlitt)

Croft achieved notoriety with Love and Madness, a Story too true, in a series of letters between Parties whose names could perhaps be mentioned were they less known or less lamented; a work which consisted of a collection of letters supposedly exchanged between Martha Ray, the mistress of Lord Sandwich, and a clergyman who was in love with her and eventually shot her. The book is noteworthy for containing Chatterton’s letters and a memoir based on then unpublished material.

Croft planned a revised edition of Johnson’s Dictionary and contributed a life of Edward Young to his Lives of the Poets. He also wrote a critical French dictionary and a number of other books in French. He became vicar of Prittlewell, Essex in 1786, but spent much of his time in Paris where he died on 26 April, 1816.

The thirteen essays include “On the primeval Form of Society”, “On Language, as an universal Accomplishment”, “Of the Criterion of a polished Tongue”, “Of the Criterion of civilized Manners”, “Of the Rank of Nations, and the Revolutions of Fortune”, “Of the Relation of Man to the surrounding Elements”, “Of the Tendency of moral Character to diversify the human Form”, etc. Dunbar (died 1798) taught moral philosophy for thirty years at King’s College, Aberdeen. Among his pupils was Sir James Mackintosh.

This first volume contained an exposition of the rules on which legislation in general ought to proceed, the second, appearing at a later date, dealt with economic questions. They show Filangieri to be an ardent reformer of his time, insisting on unrestricted free trade and the abolition of institutional relics from the middle ages which were impeding national well-being. The work was a great success throughout Europe. Volume three appeared in 1783, concerned with criminal jurisprudence. Its suggestions regarding reform of the Catholic Church brought censure from the authorities, and it was condemned by the Congregation of the Index in 1784. In 1785 a fourth volume was published, devoted to education and morals. A fifth volume was completed just before Filangieri died on 21 July 1788, leaving an outline for the final and sixth volume. It was published in English as The Science of Legislation in 1806.

Filangieri was an enthusiastic philosophe: “the philosopher should not be the inventor of systems but the apostle of truth.” He is a “citzen of all places and ages”, he has “the whole world for his country and earth itself for his school. Posterity will be his disciples”. “It will remain the philosopher’s duty to preach the truth, to sustain it, to promote it, and to illustrate it”.

Completed in 1780 but not published until 1800. In opposition to his friend and mentor Kant, Hamann published Metakritik to demonstrate that knowledge has always existed in language, and especially in poetry, “the mother-tongue of the human race”, since cognition depends on words.

Published in four parts between 1780 and 1781.

Holbach's translation of a work by Woolston, an author much admired by Holbach. The translation appeared sometime around 1780 although copies of the book were in circulation in France prior to this date.

Holcroft’s first novel, drawing on his experience as a strolling actor.

Hugely successful. Lee was elder sister of Harriet Lee and friend of Ann Radcliffe. Her historical fiction include The Recess, or a Tale of Other Times (1783-5) and she co-wrote with her sister Canterbury Tales for the Year 1797.

Based on an optimistic philosophy of history, Lessing last work seeks to reconcile reason and revelation by anticipating a time when people ‘will do good, because it is good’. In 100 paragraphs he lays down his belief in mankind’s infinite progress; in the history of religion Lessing discerns the development of human consciousness, which he views as preparing the way for moral freedom, and considers that salvation and eternity are possible but form an infinite distance.

Madan was a lawyer who turned to Methodism after hearing John Wesley preach. He was ordained in 1750 and appointed chaplain of Lock Hospital, London (1750-80) where he championed the cause of prostitutes and became known as ‘Counsellor Madan’. His career was blighted when a storm of protest greeted his Thelyphthora (“ruination of women”) . . . A Treatise on Female Ruin, with its advocation of polygamy as a remedy for the evils of prostitution, adultery and seduction. Madan maintained, though, that his views were consistent with Holy Scripture.

Included one of the first calls for a national convention (anticipating something like the federal constitution) to remedy the Articles of Confederation; it also displayed his belief that a strong union should exist to which state’s rights should be subordinated.

A German translation appeared in 1782.

Thomas Sheridan, godson of Swift, father of the playwright and an influential lecturer on public speaking, wrote extensively on grammar, language, education and elocution. Sheridan believed strongly in “fixed and stated rules”, in contrast to the “chance and caprice” which seemed to have governed the evolution of the English language.

Sheridan followed Johnson’s orthography but added what he considered to be the correct pronunciation of each word. In the Preface, he described Queen Anne’s reign as the golden age of spoken English, before the Hanoverian succession brought excessive French influence. He feared the decline of English into “a mere jargon, which every one may pronounce as he pleases”.

"Following a revolution in “Crusonia"" Spence's novel creates a democratic utopia in England."

Published in five volumes between 1781 and 1788 Les Helviennes is a an attack on contemporary philosophy including the writings of Buffon, Robinet, Voltaire and Rousseau.

A Treatise, now lost, which sought to defend salvation based on the universality of the grace.

Victorin, the novel's central character, is shown visiting a variety of utopias using a pedal-operated flying machine; he finally ends up at the ultimate Australian utopia of Megapatagonia.

Condorcet reflexions on the enslavement of blacks, published under the pseudonym Joachim Schwartz.

Diderot’s passionate defence of Raynal’s Histoire against Grimm’s criticisms; “the book I like, and which kings and their courtiers detest, is the book which causes Brutuses to be born”.

Dohn was inspired to writing this treatise, a plea for Jewish emancipation, by Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn felt that such a plea would be more effective if it came from the pen of a non-Jew. A second edition appeared in 1783, a French translation appeared in 1782.

Publication of volumes 2 and 3.

Holcroft’s first comedy, staged at Covent Garden.

The 2nd edition was published in 1787.

Keate had visited Voltaire at Ferney. In 1768 he drew attention to himself by publicly contesting Voltaire denigration of Shakespeare.

Published in Edinburgh.

The object of history “is not merely to delineate the projects of Princes, or the intrigues of Statesmen; but to give a picture of society and represent the character and spirit of nations.”

Published in two volumes in 1781 and then in twelve volumes between 1782-89, the Tableau is Mercier’s best-known work; it consists of a collection of short philosophical reflections, satirical comments on the mores of the day, journalistic pieces and gossip.

Schiller’s first play, printed at his own expense with borrowed money, a Rousseauesque critique of convention and corruption.

Schiller was one of the first, along with Washington, Franklin and Paine, who was honoured, in September 1792, with the diploma of citizenship by the French government. It was signed by Danton.

First English translation.

Based on lectures Walker held at Oxford in which he outline the main principles of oratory. Walker was a friend of Samuel Johnson.

A selection from Hume and Bolingbroke’s writings, including an essay discussing the similarities between the two authors.

Includes a critique of David Hume's account of the virtues.

Poetry, other collections include L’Homme des champs (1800) and Les trois règnes de la nature (1809). Delille’s poetry was highly praised in his day; however “posterity has accepted Sainte-Beuve’s verdict that not only was Delille not a great poet, but that he was scarcely a poet at all”. (Encyclopædia Britannica). Delille also translated the Aeneid (1804), and during time spent in London Paradise Lost (1805).

“O Seneca! you are and will always be, with Socrates, with all the illustrious unhappy men, with all the great men of antiquity, one of the sweetest links between my friends and me, between the educated men of all ages and their friends. You have remained the subject of our frequent conversations; and you will remain the subject of theirs.”

“The magistrate deals out justice; the philosopher teaches the magistrate what is just and unjust. The soldier defends his country; the philosopher teaches the soldier what a fatherland is. The priest recommends to his people the love and respect of the gods; the philosopher teaches the priest what the gods are. The sovereign commands all; the philosopher teaches the sovereign the origins and limits of his authority. Every man has duties to his family and his society; the philosopher teaches everyone what these duties are. Man is exposed to misfortune and pain; the philosopher teaches man how to suffer.”

“I love wisdom in evidence, like the athlete in the arena: the strong man recognizes himself only on the occasions that he has to show his power.”

In 1782 Diderot worked on the final revisions to Est-il bon? Est-il mechant?, Jacques le fataliste, La Religieuse and Le Neveu de Rameau, completing them by the following year.

Genlis's best known novel.

Described by Roy Porter as a "Vaudeville medical messiah" and "exhibitionist impresario, dramatising himself as a magus, a Prospero" and "Promethean enlightened despot of the body natural", Graham was most notorious for his Temple of Love. Known as the Temple of Health and Hymen, its conjugal altar was a celestial bed through which were passed electrical currents in order to give couples "superior ecstasy" and to increase fertility for those when "powerfully agitated in the delights of love". All of this was for a nightly fee of £50.

Tract which includes a description of Graham's "celebrated celestial bed".

"""As to the question whether there is such an existent Being as an atheist, to put that out of all manner of doubt, I do declare upon my honour that I am one. Be it therefore for the future remembered, that in London in the kingdom of England, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-one, a man publicly declared himself to be an atheist."" Quoted in Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, 2000, p.514."

An English translation was published in 1784 entitled Dangerous connections: or, letters collected in a society, and published for the instruction of other societies

A letter published in Philadelphia and London in which Paine accuses Raynal of plagiarism in Book Eighteen of the Historie des Deux Indes.

A work that was officially burned in 1785.

Publication of Part I; Part II appeared in 1789. (Trans. Confessions, 1783-90).

Published posthumously.

Posthumously published epistles to society friends including David Garrick, Laurence Sterne and Samuel Johnson. It proved to be a best-seller, with nearly 1,200 subscribers, including the Prime Minister, Lord North. The first edition sold out within six months, and the book was reprinted regularly during the next twenty years. Sancho was born in 1729 on a slave ship in mid-Atlantic and was the first ‘Afro-American’ prose writer published in English.

Joint published with William Hammon, this was the first avowed work of atheism in Britain.

The remarks accompanying the edition include criticism of Hume's “Of Suicide” and “Of the Immortality of the Soul.”

Published between 1783 and 1789.

A fictional attempt to marry Rousseauistic naturalism with conventional morality.

Published in 3 volumes. Ferguson’s only important non-philosophical work.

Godwin was one of Pitt’s earliest biographers.

The Essay on Suicide, with Of the Immortality of the Soul was originally intended for publication in a work called Five Dissertations (1757). Hume and publisher Andrew Millar agreed to have the essays removed from the printed edition and the work was subsequently published as the Four Dissertations. The Gentleman's Magazine published the following account of the eventual appearance of the Essay on Suicide: "if report says true, and sometimes it does, the Essay on Suicide has been published [in 1756], and was suppressed by public authority. A great legacy was left to an eminent bookseller to publish it again, and, on his refusal, was offered to others; and when the more generous of the trade in Britain refused to give birth to such a national evil, it was dispatched into Holland [in 1770], to return hither again [in 1777], and scatter its pestilential influence over the fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens of the good, and Essays on suicide, and the immortality of the soul, ascribed to the late David Hume, Esq. Never before published. With remarks, intended as an antidote to the poison contained in these performances, by the editor. To which is added, two letters on suicide, from Rosseau’s [sic] Eloisa. humane, the social Mr. Hume". [“Laicus,” “Observations on the Address to One of the People called Christians,” Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1777, Vol. 47, pp. 322–328.]. This edition of the work was based on a corrupted edition of the Essays which appeared in 1777. A French translation of the Essays appeard in sections 9 and 10 of Recueil philosophique, ou, Mêlange de pièces sur la religion & la morale (1770).

De Laclos claimed that the corruption of the ancien regime had gone too far to allow for the intellectual development of women; and that only revolution - which only women alone could bring about - could create a change in their position.

Jerusalemdescribed the limits of the state and the necessity for tolerance; it promulgated the highly influential view of Judaism as a rational religion and the non-mystical religon of law. Mendelsshon distinquished between moral and political obligations founded on natural law and natural rights, from the less perfect rights and less stringent laws and duties, as they develop in civil society.

Mendelssohn wrote Jerusalem after an anonymous writer accused him of betraying Judaism in a preface (1782) Mendelssohn had written to a German version of Manasseh ben Israel’s Vindiciae Judaeorum.

Beaumarchais completed Le Mariage de Figaro in 1779 and fought for five years against political opposition to the play before it was first performed on 27 April; it was then published in 1785. Louis XVI was unhappy with the play and his attempt to have it banned was ignored: “the Bastille would have to be pulled down before such a play could be safely staged”. “Persons of every condition”, wrote one contemporary, flocked to see Figaro “as though to find consolation in laughing at the foolishness of those who are the cause of their miseries.” Louis XVI sought revenge, when, displeased by an attack Beaumarchais had made on a hostile critic of the play, incarcerated him in a prison usually reserved for juvenile delinquents, Saint Lazare. However, due to the uproar this provoked, Beaumarchais was released after a few hours (March 1785), although he refused to leave until six days later. Beaumarchais was surprised by the reaction to the play: "If there is a greater folly than my play, it is its success".

Danton observed that Figaro killed off the aristocracy and Napoleon said he would have someone like Beaumarchais locked up: “Le Mariage de Figaro, c’est la Révolution en action”. Up until 1870, and the end of monarchy and Empire in France, Le Mariage was viewed as a subversive play. During the occupation the Germans refused to allow it to be performed in Paris and Mussolini banned it in Italy.

A work directed against Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, order über religiöse Macht und Judenthum, (1783).

Includes criticism of David Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion

An unsuccessful tragedy.

Published in four parts between 1784 and 1791, it was translated as s Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man in 1800).

“It is silly to take a single Egyptian virtue out of the context of its country and time, out of the youth of the human spirit, and then to appraise it with a standard of a different time! Even if the Greek could...be so mistaken in his judgement of the Egyptian, and if the Oriental could hate the Egyptian; yet it seems to me, one’s first thought should be to see him in his proper place. Otherwise one sees, especially from the European viewpoint, a most distorted caricature”.

Includes criticism of Pratt’s Apology, and Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion and “Of Suicide.”

What is Enlightenment?, with Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, was published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in November and December respectively. Appeared in an English translation by Richardson in 1798.

“The Enlightenment which concerns man as man is universal, without regard to differences of estate; the Enlightenment of man when when he is viewed as a citizen modifies itself according to estate and occupation.”

A defence of the ‘natural’ theism of Leibniz at a time when the ‘critical’ philosophy of Kant was increasingly gaining ground.

Necker’s best-known work, which, with its lament over the slave trade, was translated into English as the Treatise on the Administration of the Finances of France.

A work in which Ramsay challenges the notion of racial inferiority.

In 1786, Smith produced a translation of Prevost’s Manon Lescaut, which was subsequently withdrawan on grounds of morality.

Publication of ‘Kehl’ edition of Voltaire’s works; they appeared in 70 volumes between 1784 and 1789. Begun in 1799 they were edited by Beaumarchais. For this edition Beaumarchais brought eighty printing presses, used special paper and acquired Baskerville's type and typographers. He spent over 2 millions livres on the edition and lost half of his investment because he failed to attract enough subscribers. When the Revolutionary mob ransacked his house in 1792, looking for arms, they found only stocks of unsold copies of Voltaire's works.

Published in 6 volumes betweem 1785 and 1787). When in 1772 d’Alembert became permanent secretary to the French Academy - he had been a member since 1754 - he was required to continue the Histoire des membres de l’Académie. This meant writing the biographies of all members who had died between 1700 and 1772. He paid tribute to his predecessors by means of Éloges that were delivered at public sessions of the Academy.

A critique of Hume’s determinism.

An early example of the long French tradition of the mathematical treatment of the social sciences. In the Essay Condorcet investigated the calculus of probability and the conditions under which majority decisions prove correct.

A second edition, enlarged and completely recast, appeared in 1805 under the title Éléments de calcul des probabilités et son application aux jeux de hasard, à la loterie, et aux jugemens des hommes.

The second edition which appeared in 1788 defined c**t as "a nasty name for a nasty thing".

Known as a classic, the Notes were written for the information of a French correspondent and deal with social, political and economic life in the 18^th century. They also contain some notorious comments on the inferiority of negroes.

Lamourette sought to reconcile religion with the Enlightenment, he viewed the Gospels as "the true source of pure enlightenment".

Samuel Romilly penned a reply in 1786.

An autobiographical novel published in 4 volumes between 1785-90 and regarded, with Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, as one of the most mature novels of contemporary life.

In the Preface Paley explains that one of the reasons for him writing the Principles was the effect which Rousseau’s political theory was supposed to have had on the civil crisis in Geneva. Paley lectured on moral and political philosophy at Cambridge and became the Archeacon of Carlisle in 1782, a canon of St Pauls in 1794 and subdean of Lincoln in 1795. Paley’s work exercise a considerable influence for many years. Paley challenge both scriptural and economic arguments for slavery and advocated gradual emancipation.

Sade worked on the unfinished manuscript of The 120 Days of Sodom in the Bastille during October and November of 1785 based on sketches he had made earlier in the year. He hide the long manuscript roll in his cellar and it was discovered only after the destruction of the Bastille. The manuscript was eventually sold to a German collector at the end of the nineteenth century. It was first published privately by Eugen Dürhen, pseudonym of Iwan Bloch, in Berlin in 1904. It was published only for scientists, doctors and lawyers. A more accurate edition was published by Maurice Heine in France in 1931.

Only seven copies published, none of which circulate until after Walpole’s death in 1797. Walpole began the Hieroglyphic Tales in August 1766. It appears that he wrote the last tale around 1772.

Includes an account of David Hume's moral theory.

A satire on shamanism as a deceitful profession which preys on the gullible. The play was part of a group of three plays usually known as Catherine's 'anti-masonic' trilogy, written as a warning against the growing influence of the freemasons.

Published between 1786 and 1788.

Published in 1786–1787, Hunter, a physician and comparative anatomist, was Britain's leading vitalist.

Laclos joined the army in 1759 but lost his commission in 1786 after criticizing the army in the Lettre

Published in November and better known as Aux mânes de Diderot, a work that paved the way for later interpretations of Diderot. Meister became editor of the Correspondance littéraire after Grimm. In this tribute to Diderot, published as a pamphlet, Meister writes: “I dare compare his soul to Nature, such as he pictured her himself: rich, fertile, abounding in seeds of every species, whether tame, wild, simple, majestic, kindly or sublime, but with no governing principle - without master and without God.”

Autobiographical novel.

A work of aesthetics which greatly impressed Goethe.

First of two histories Pufendorf wrote on Sweden. The second, De rebus a Carolo Gustavo Sueciae rege gestis commentariorum libri septem appeared in 1696.

Published between 1786 and 1787 in Wieland's Teutscher Merkur, a journal that Reinhold edited. Arthur Schopenhauer called Reinhold the “first apostle” of Kant and the Letters did much to popularize Kant.

Rommilly argued that capital punishment should be abolished for minor offences. His tract was written in opposition to Madan’s Thoughts of the previous year. Madan had claimed that it was the uncertain enforcement of the death penalty, not its widespread availability, which rendered it questionable as a deterrent: it was the perogative of mercy that needed curbing.

Early in his career Romilly was influenced by Rousseau. He was a Chancery lawyer (from 1783), chancellor of Durham (1805-15) and M.P. (from 1806). Rommilly actively supported the early leaders of the French revolution and became associated with Jeremy Bentham and the circle of English law reformers. After the death of his wife he committed suicide.

Thrale, the wife of a wealthy brewer, met Johnson in 1765 and in the following year she offered Johnson her home while he recuperated from a long illness. Boswell contested the accuracy of Thrale’s biography of Johnson. Regarding Bowell’s Life of Johnson, Thrale remarked, “how miserably do all these Wits and Scholars show in such a Concave Mirror as this Book is”.

Published in 2 volumes and an expanded edition was published in 1798. A treatise on the etymology of English words in which Tooke was one of the first to insist on the importance of studying Gothic and Anglo-Saxon philology.

"Easy to digest in its dialogue format, it is full of classical allusions and philosophical arguments, directed at a cultivated audience familiar with classical and modern languages and nicknamed the 'Botheration Dictionary'. Many of its ideas were wrong-headed, absurd or fanciful, but it was a pioneer work of philology, notable for the attention to Anglo-Saxon roots. Apart from establishing his credentials as a scholar, Tooke had other motives for compiling this work: venting his spleen and making money. The commentary and examples are laced with his prejudices against the political system and men of his day, and it earned him nearly £5000 altogether, an important consideration to a man who was always short of money." (P.D.G. Thomas, review of Gentleman Radical: A Life of John Horne Tooke 1736-1812, by Christina Bewley and David Bewley, Tauris, 297 pp., 1998, in LRB, 19 August 1999.)

Tooke was ordained to curacy in 1760. In 1769 he helped John Wilkes found the Bill of Rights Society, but broke with Wilkes in 1771 to create the Constitutional Society to agitate for parliamentary reform and independence for the American colonies. After Tooke promoted a subscription in 1778 for the relief of relatives of Americans 'murdered' at Lexington and Concord he was fined and imprisioned for a year. Between 1782 and 1790 he supported Pitt in pamphlets, he was tried but acquitted for high treason in 1794 and in 1801 was debarred as MP by a special act rendering clergy ineligible.

A three-volume work written in London while Adams was serving as diplomatic envoy to Great Britain, a position he held from 1785 to 1788. It served as a refutation of a French critic of American politics and reinterated Adams’s belief that only formal restraints on the exercise of power and on the needs of the people could check human evil.

“The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigations, and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is every day rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.”

Bahrdt was arrested in 1788 for Das Religionsedikt (The Edict of Religion, 1787), a play that satirized the king and his prime minister for a repressive edict. A review essay in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek of 1793 placed Bahrdt's play first on a list of forty-eight pieces that made up the controversy about the edict. It was reprinted five times in 1789. Bahrdt spent nearly two years in prison during which time he wrote, Handbuch der Moral für den Bürgerstand (Handbook of Morals for the Middle Class, 1789), Geschichte und Tagebuch meines Gefängnisses (The Story and Diary of My Imprisonment, 1790), and his autobiography, Geschichte meines Leben (1791).

The first book-length defence in German of the right to a free press, a right Bahrdt described as a Menschenrecht (“human right").

An English translated in 1794. Begun in 1757 after Barthélemy accompanied, in 1755, the French ambassador, the comte de Stainville (later duc de Choiseul), to Italy, where he spent three years in archaeological research.

The book became one of the most widely read works in 19^th-century France. The hero is a young Scythian who goes to Greece and returns to his native country where, in his old age, he describes his experiences. Barthélemy describes the laws, government, religion, philosophy, art and antiquities of ancient Greece. A long introduction covers Greek history and there are accounts of Greek music, Athenian literature and the life and society of the surrounding states.

Barthélemy was elected to the Académie Française in August 1789. He was arrested in 1793, and spent 16 hours in prison but was released on orders from the Convention.

Beaumarchais opera, his “drama with music”, was a complete failure. When he revived it in 1790 he added cautionary lines – “liberty means obeying the law” – that made him a suspicious figure on both Left and Right.

As part of his Report of the Privy Council of the Lords of 1788, Clarkson had managed to obtain the names of twenty thousand seamen involved in the slave trade.

Published in 3 volumes and including Colman’s writings in verse and poetry.

Volumes 4-6 published on Gibbon’s 51^st birthday, May 8. Gibbon had finished writing the last lines of his history the on 27 June 1787. It’s completion was greeted with universal acclaim.

The play, first written in prose, was performed in 1779. Its final, classical version, written in blank verse was published in 1787.

Guguano was an ex-slave who worked with the royal miniaturist Richard Conway.

Posthumously published diary.

A work of fantasy typifying the Sturm und Drang movement. Heinse “leads his central characters, after a bloodstained succession of wild experiences of more than ‘Gothic’ intensity, to an island where there is total freedom in personal relations, all rules and conventions have finally been flung to the winds, where man in an anarchist-communist society can at last stretch himself to his full stature as a sublime creative artist”. (Berlin)

The first analysis of Hume's philosophy published on the continent.

“Two things move the mind with ever increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” (An identical formula is found in St John Chrysostom and derives from the 19^th Psalm).

Published in 4 Volumes. Millar was a member of Scottish School and friend of Adam Smith. “The great Montesquieu pointed out the road. He was the Bacon in this branch of philosophy. Dr. Smith is the Newton.”

Dedicated to Mirabeau’s father and written with the assistance of a Brunswick friend, Jacob Mauvillon, after Mirabeau had undertaken a secret mission to Berlin in 1786.

An attack on Pitt’s war policy.

An affirmation of a rationalist theory of ethics against the moral subjectivism of Hume and Hutcheson. Reid criticizes Hume on causality, determinism, artificial justice and moral sentiment.

Generally taken as Sade's first novel. Sade completed the work, writing 138 manuscript pages, in two weeks during his time in the Bastille, finishing on 8 July 1787. Sade reworked the novel in later versions; it was not published until 1930.

The novel's status as an example of philosophical fiction are clear from its opening sentences: "Philosophy's truimph would be to illuminate the darkness shrouding those methods which Providence employs to accomplish the destiny of man. This would then lay down some pattern of behaviour, revealing to the wretched two-legged creature who is continually buffeted by her arbitrary whims, the manner in which he must interpret the laws of Providence in his own case. It would show the path he must follow in order to avoid the bizarre dictates of that fate which we call by a score of different names without ever being able to settle upon a single definition".

Translated into English by Helen Maria Williams while she was incarcerated in the Luxembourg prison during the Robespierrian period of the French Revolution.

Letters on Rousseau.

Includes David Hume’s essays “On the Balance of Trade,” “On the Jealousy of Trade,” and “On the Balance of Power”.

Volney visited the Middle East and Egypt in 1782.

Published between 1788 and 1790.

Exaggerated accounts of scandels involving Sade that took place in Arcueil and Marseille.

The modern meaning of the word "anthropology" was found on Chavannes text. Chavannes

Published in 3 volumes.

A comprehensive critique of Holbach's Système de la Nature.

Published anonymously, a story based on the correspondance between two ostracized females. It was reprinted thrice during 1788.

Collection of 28 essays in 2 volumes on biblical passages written by Pratt years earlier while a candidate for holy orders. The book was circulated privately.

A satirical attack on contemporary writers.

Written while Bahrdt served time in prison.

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure...They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think.”

Bowles’ work was hailed as a revivial of natural poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. He aroused controversy with Campbell and Byron over Pope' s poetical merits.

Chénier’s first success, written in 1788 but produced after censorship in November 1789. The antimonarchical play caused demonstrations in the theatre and such dissensions within the company that the lead actor Talma formed his own troupe, known as the Théâtre de la République.

Published as the final volume of the Kehl edition of Voltaire’s works.

Work consisting of 5 essays, the first of which attacks David Hume's views on morality

Including engravings by Blake, Fuseli and others, The Botanic Garden consisted of two parts, "The Economy of Vegetation", and "The Loves of the Plants". The poem was published by the radical publisher Joseph Johnson

Equiano autobiography became extremely popular, several thousand copies were sold and subscribers included the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York and the Duke of Cumberland. It appeared in nine editions between 1789 and 1794 and pirated versions appeared in Holland, New York, Russia and Germany.

Classical drama in which Goethe deals with the status of the modern poet in feudal society and with emergence of bourgeois literature during the eighteenth century.

Abolitionist play performed by the Comédie-Française in 1789.

Written in the late 1750’s, Mably offers a discussion of nature and cause of the political condition in France and engages in the established historical polemic about the alleged constitutional relationship between the parlements and the crown.

“Every man at birth brings into the world his needs, a capacity to meet them, to reproduce, a constant desire for happiness and a limitless love of himself, an imperious sentiment upon which hangs the preservation of the human race, but which is also a fertile source of quarrels, fights, violence, outrage and murder, in short, of all the disorders which seem to disturb the order of nature and really do disturb the order of society.” (From the opening of the draft submitted to the National Assembly in August).

A work which created a scandal on publication in 1789. It was based on an unscrupulous use of material Mirabeau had collected during his mission to Germany in 1786.

A comparison of ancient and modern philosophy.

A famous sermon welcoming the French Revolution.

Burke sought to refute Price's political philosophy in the Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

The most famous pamphlet of the Revolution. “The nation is prior to everything. It is the source of everthing. Its will is always legal. The manner in which a nation exercises its will does not matter; the point is that it does exercise it; any procedure is adequate, and its will is always the supreme law.” Rousseau, Les Confessions, Part II.