Description
Book SynopsisArgues that far from being a marginal and insignificant figure, Toland counted queens, princes and government ministers as his friends and political associates
Trade Review'This is a significant contribution based on extensive new research, and is likely to be the standard account of Toland for many years to come.' Professor David Wootton, Queen Mary, University of London 'Justin Champion's Republican Learning ... manages to be both a scholarly and very readable account of the life and thought of the 17th-18th-century freethinker.' Greg Neil, Editor, BBC History Magazine
Table of ContentsPreface
Abbreviations
Introduction: locating John Toland
Part One: Republics of Learning
1. “The traffick of books”: Libraries, friends and conversation
2. Publishing reason: John Toland and print and scribal communities
3. Reading Mystery: the reception of Christianity not mysterious 1696-1702
Part Two: The war against tyranny and prejudice
4. Editing the republic: Milton, Harrington and the Williamite Monarchy, 1698-1714
5. Anglia Libera: Protestant liberties and the Hanoverian succession, 1700-1714
6. Sapere aude: ‘Commonwealth’ politics under George I, 1714-1722
Part Three: Subversive Learning
7. Respublica Mosaica: impostors, legislators and civil religion
8. De studio theologia: patristic erudition and the attack on scripture
9. “A complete history of priestcraft”: the druids and the origins of ancient virtue
Conclusion: writing enlightenment
Index
