"Margaret L King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant -- but by no means the most obvious -- texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is simply the best introduction to the subject now available ." -- Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters
Margaret L. King is Professor of History Emerita, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is editor-in-chief of the Renaissance and Reformation module of Oxford Bibliographies Online, and co-editor of the text series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.
"King offers an ambitious and exciting anthology , bringing together both classic and previously overlooked texts from men and women from very different national backgrounds and languages. It provides critical materials for thinking about issues of the Enlightenment that still resonate with us, as we untangle the relationships between nature, reason, religion, and rights. King's translation work is particularly impressive and her translations accessible, even for novice readers." -- Jennifer Heuer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of The Family and The Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France, 1789-1830