Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind

by James Buchan

In the early eighteenth century, Edinburgh was a filthy backwater town synonymous with poverty and disease. Yet by century's end, it had become the marvel of modern Europe, home to the finest minds of the day and their breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, science, the arts, and economics—all of which continue to echo loudly today. Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations . James Boswell produced The Life of Samuel Johnson . Alongside them, pioneers such as David Hume, Robert Burns, James Hutton, and Sir Walter Scott transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence. In Crowded with Genius , James Buchan beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of a historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and the men whose vision brought it into being.

Genres: History, Scotland, Philosophy, Nonfiction, 18th Century, European History, Biography

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

James Buchan is a Scottish novelist and historian who writes on aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Reviews

[Jim]

James Buchan's Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind tells of the Scottish capital's 18th century renaissance, when the city was home to great poets (Burns), philosophers (Hume), biographers (Boswell), administrators (Drummond), physicians (connected with the University of Edinburgh) -- and many more. Even Benjamin Franklin spent some time there and spoke highly of the city's high culture.

What is unusual is that the city's growth came shortly after a failed revolution to return the crown to the Stuarts. While the Highlands, where the revolt was centered, suffered greatly, the non-Jacobite lowlands flourished.

This is a well written and documented study of a period little known to Americans.

[Dave Franklin]

An interesting history; it is an overview of philosophy, and a look at the Scottish Enlightenment milieu. This book covers much of the Edinburgh scene through the eighteenth century, and touches on some of the seminal thinking that the American Founders found compelling. Adam Smith, David Hume, James Hutton, Joseph Black, Adam Ferguson and other leaders of Scottish scene are discussed, and their role in establishing the intellectual standards that all European universities aspired to is highlighted. Maps of the city- if they had been included in this volume- would have enhanced the narrative for non-Scots. Nonetheless, Buchan's prose is concise, clear, and entertaining.

Overviews of this nature will always disappoint some readers. Scientists, philosophers, soldiers, and poets will inevitably believe that their interests have not been vindicated.

This said, this book is well worth reading.

[Miranda Ruth]

This one takes a bit of getting into. Buchan moves at a brisk pace and takes no prisoners - if you're unfamiliar with Scottish English in the 18C or the details of the 1745 Rebellion you might find the first chapters a rough ride. But after that, things pick up. Buchan's a wonderfully atmospheric writer with wit as well as intellect and a happy knack of choosing exactly the right detail to bring an era to life. Who could forget the Duchess who once rode up the High Street on a pig, for instance - or the damning fact that turnips were once served as a dessert in Auld Reekie?

If you've ever arrived in Edinburgh by train - by far the best way IMHO - you'll be familiar with the city's schizophrenic character. Turn south from Waverley and you're immediately confonted with the vast romantic bulk of The Scotsman Building and its Gothic turrets seemingly scraping the sky. You'll also notice impossibly narrow steep passages through the warren of crowded buildings, once known as "wynds". This is your gateway to the ghostly romance of the old city.

Alternatively, you can ascend the impressively long escalator to the North, the side of the New Town. You'll emerge into the dizzying openness of a perfect Enlightenment vista, with solid elegant terraces and squares named after Hanoverian Royalty, and in the airy distance you'll spot classically-inspired monuments. It feels like a completely different place.

The immense North Bridge, which once spanned a loch (now occupied by the railway and the Gardens) is your link between these two wolds, and in this book you will find out how it was built (killing several people in an earth fall at one point). The Mound, named with a characteristically Scottish utilitarianism, is basically a landscaped heap of human waste. Buchan tells the fascinating and colourful story of how this apparently unlikely candidate for a modern Athens reinvented itself as an intellectual powerhouse, cultural leader and centre of social refinement in the second half of the 18th Century, producing an atmosphere where the Scottish philosopher David Hume could be feted in the leading salons of pre-revolutionary Paris, and a young Benjamin Franklin described his stay there are one of the great pleasures of his life.

What a catalogue of genius is here - Hume, Adam Smith, Ferguson, Boswell, Burns, the visionary town developer Drummond, and the great pioneering geologist James Hutton, to name but a few. The chapters on the development of the New Town and the improvement in the condition of women are particularly interesting. Many stories send a shiver of horror up the spine - obviously, the notorious body-snatchers Burke and Hare get a mention, but some of the excesses of Calvanist piety and repression are equally horrifying, not to mention the mortality statistics which, sadly, the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary did little to ameliorate at first (and when you read about the things they tried as medicine, you'll understand why).

If you're looking for a quick introduction to the history of Edinburgh this may be a bit too abstract and intellectual in parts for you - I'd recommend it after you've formed a first impression of this amazing city and you're wondering how on earth it could have ended up the way it did. At that point in your journey, you won't find a better guide.

[Brett]

I found this book at a second-hand book store. It read well at first glance. This is a book without an identity. It is sort of biographical, it is sort of historical and it sort of catalogs the ideas of the day.

[Craig Bolton]

Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind by James Buchan (2004)

[Vikas Datta]

Very riveting account of how a city can raise itself from squalor to become a repository of considerable wisdom...