My favorite books on eighteenth-century Scotland

I think understanding the intellectual background to a historical period is always important, and I was introduced to the Scottish Enlightenment at West Virginia Wesleyan College through this book. I have since had the pleasure to meet and work with Alexander Broadie while at Glasgow, and he is a kind, generous, and supportive scholar.

The Scottish Enlightenment covers the significant breakthroughs in the thought of the movement, and the contributions of the characters behind it such as David Hume and Adam Smith. The importance of studying history, morality in civil society, religion, and art. The Enlightenment laid the groundwork for our modern society, so how could anyone not study it?

I’ll go ahead and admit that taking issue with David Johnson is one of my favorite pastimes. However, his work is the only work focused on eighteenth-century Scottish music, and as such is a major contribution. Johnson gives a very readable, very enjoyable (one needn’t know music…) overview of what was then known (1972) about Scottish musical culture. Arts and Enlightenment went hand in hand in Scotland, so read Broadie for the ideas and then Johnson for what these same philosophers were doing for entertainment.

I couldn’t make this up: one night masked men broke into the Edinburgh townhouse of Lord and Lady Grange, gagged Lady Grange, bound her to a chair, and carried out of the house to a waiting horse. From there, they travelled across Scotland to the remote islands of St Kilda, where she was left for the next seven years. Lady Grange was by all accounts unbalanced and difficult to live with, so her husband decided to have her abducted, and told his friends she had died. The west of Scotland at the time was essentially a different country from Edinburgh society, complete with an English-Gaelic language barrier. This story is so outrageous that it is difficult to believe it is true. Pair it with any edition of Johnson and Boswell for another look at life in the west of Scotland in the eighteenth century, and read their versions of the unfortunate Lady Grange’s story.

This is a collection of essays for a major exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland in 2017. It features essays on aspects of the endurance of the Jacobite cause, and objects associated with Jacobitism (like Bonnie Prince Charlie’s silver picnic set). It also has over 200 pictures. This myth has endured through the writings of Sir Walter Scott through Outlander, and this book presents the much, much larger, and more complex story.

Published in 1779, this book shows far more about Enlightenment Edinburgh than it does Edinburgh history, and should be read for that reason. Full of myth, legend, bloody Scottish history, and contemporary events, it is written with the perspective of the historical enquiry of the Enlightenment as described by Broadie. Plus, it’s just fun to see how historic people saw and expressed themselves.