"With its representative government, religious tolerance, precocious industrialization, and pioneering individualism, eighteenth-century Britain was at the cutting edge of political, social, and intellectual innovation. Porter examines the influence of such heroic figures as Bacon, Newton, and Locke in shaping the British Enlightenment, as well as the impact of other English essayists and novelists in popularizing modern thought. He persuasively demonstrates how their writings launched the wild phenomenon of Anglomania that swept the Continent and cast the Enlightenment well beyond Europe's shores."--Résumé de l'éditeur.