Circulating Enlightenment: The Career and Correspondence of Andrew Millar, 1725-68

Historians of the intellectual and literary culture of the Enlightenment have recognised the importance of Andrew Millar (1705-68). His publisher's imprint adorned the title-pages of the most important works of the eighteenth century, in fiction, poetry, drama, medicine, and philosophy. This is the first extended study of Millar's commercial and social role in the commissioning, production, circulation, and consumption of Enlightenment literature in Britain. Providing a new intervention on the culture of Enlightenment this study shows how and why Millar provoked major controversies through his role as friend, patron, and publisher to great rivals in the republic of letters. An unprecedent analysis of publishing and authorship at the intersection of politics, business, visual arts, moral debate, and literary self-fashioning, this study of Andrew Millar also shows the degree to which Scottish identity shaped a professional career within London's rise as the cosmopolitan centre of learning and trade at the heart of the British empire. This volume presents hundreds of previously unpublished letters that passed between Millar and his literary network, and includes the 52 letters that passed between Millar and David Hume, the majority of which have been edited for the first time since 1931. This is a major contribution to the material and intellectual worlds that defined the culture of Enlightenment in Britain during the eighteenth century, casting new light in the history of publishing and authorship.

Table of Contents:
Table of Letters Chronology The Career The Correspondence Appendix 1: Andrew Millar's Last Will and Testament Appendix 2: A Catalogue of the Copies and Shares of Copies of the Late Andrew Millar Biographical Directory of Correspondents and Associates Bibliography

About the Author :
Adam Budd is Lecturer in Cultural History at the University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow and Councillor of the Royal Historical Society. His studies in eighteenth-century culture have been published by Ashgate, Cambridge University Press, and Routledge, and he is a recipient of major research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK.

Review :
This is a huge work, with a vast quantity of materials, multiple cross-references, accurate texts and deeply informative annotation, above all a volume that is consistently full of surprises, being educative, often entertaining, and a very significant contribution to the field. ...this volume is admirable, and I agree with Barbara Benedict's back-cover blurb that overall Circulating the Enlightenment, with its wealth of analysis and new information, is "a must-read for any scholar of book history, eighteenth-century culture and Scottish studies." This expertly annotated edition of the letters of one of the greatest eighteenth-century publishers and booksellers is an invaluable addition to the history of the book trade and authorship in Britain. The introductory life of Millar is a must-have resource, reassessing an ingenious, well-connected and highly influential literary entrepreneur; the notes to the letters are a bibliographical and historicaltour-de-force. In this monumental and comprehensive edition of the correspondence of Andrew Millar, the important bookseller who stood at the crux of the enlightenment, Adam Budd does more than provide an authoritative biography: he paints a delightful portrait of the complex life of a deeply social, highly committed, intelligent and serious man in mid-eighteenth-century London. The book's extensive Introduction could stand alone as a dazzling monograph on Scottish cultural history, so rich are its details and so deep is its reach. Plentiful and informative paratexts abound, including explanatory sections on diction, technical terms, money, and publishing procedures, a genealogy tree, chronology, bibliography, and lavish illustrations and reproductions of manuscript pages. Circulating Enlightenment is a stunning achievement and a must-read for any scholar of book history, eighteenth-century culture and Scottish studies.