Enlightenment and Sociability in 18th-century Britain

Abstract

This monograph takes on the important task of securing a wider audience for one of the most extraordinary documents of the Enlightenment. An Account of the Fair Intellectual Club (1720) describes a small, secret club of teenage women who came together in Edinburgh for the purpose of mutual self-improvement.−When word of their secret was about to leak, they took the proactive step of publishing this account of their venture. Their document is a milestone in the history of our modern notions of “intellectual” work and of the types of associations–such as clubs–that enabled it. Formed in the first quarter of the eighteenth  This monograph takes on the important task of securing a wider audience for one of the most extraordinary documents of the Enlightenment. An Account of the Fair Intellectual Club (1720) describes a small, secret club of teenage women who came together in Edinburgh for the purpose of mutual self-improvement.−When word of their secret was about to leak, they took the proactive step of publishing this account of their venture. Their document is a milestone in the history of our modern notions of “intellectual” work and of the types of associations–such as clubs–that enabled it. Formed in the first quarter of the eighteenth