Enlightenment? What Enlightenment? Reflections on Half a Million Books (British, French, and Dutch Private Libraries, 1665–1830)

Presenting preliminary findings from the MEDIATE database, this essay explores how “big data,” or extremely large bibliographic corpora, can transform Enlightenment historiography. What happens when our dataset is no longer hundreds, but half a million books, recorded in hundreds of catalogues of private libraries sold across Europe from 1665–1830? How do the handful of canonical Enlightenment titles relate to the mass of reading material in these libraries? Focusing on the presence of classical authors in these catalogues, this essay argues that as vehicles transmitting the ideas of (long-dead) authors, books and libraries fundamentally transformed Enlightenment engagements with the past.