Early Eighteenth Century Freethinkers: Their Ideas and Social Organizations

FAIN: FT-12618-75

Margaret C. Jacob
UCLA; Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA 90024-4201)

To study European freethinkers in the period from 1700 to 1730, their ideas, their identities (since they often published anonymously), and their organizations, many of which were clandestine or Masonic. While we know a fair amount about radical thinkers in the Revolutionary period of the later 18th century, we know little about the origins of the political and philosophical radicalism of men like John Wilkes, the Baron d'Holbach, and Thomas Paine.