PANEL 66    Enlightenment Edinburgh

Perhaps the most glittering period in Scotland’s history was the second half of the 18th century – what is known as the Enlightenment. Between 1768 and 1771, Encyclopaedia Britannica was established in Edinburgh by William Smellie, a printer, editor and antiquary. At Anchor Close, just off the High Street, work began on setting down all human knowledge – it was an age when such a feat was thought possible, the organisation of all there is to know. The Encyclopaedia appeared in 100 weekly instalments and could be pithy. The entry for Woman was four words long – ‘the female of man’. But it proved popular and a second edition was soon put in train. It was published at a time of great intellectual ferment in Scotland and in Edinburgh in particular. An English visitor, a chemist called Amyat, left a famous observation, ‘Here I stand at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh [the Mercat Cross in the High Street] and can, in a few minutes, take 50 men of genius and learning by the hand.’ It was an intense environment. The medieval tenements of the Old Town piled people on top of each other and intellectual clubs met to discuss and dispute in the taverns off the High Street and the Canongate. The Select Society was founded by the painter Allan Ramsay, and the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith. The Poker Club was intended to ‘poke things up a bit’. Publishing was busy but this remarkable period of intellectual achievement was underpinned and understood by a society where, at 75 per cent, mass literacy was the highest in the world.

 

Panel stitched by:

Shepherd House Group

Jean Cameron

Ann Fraser

Sarah Hynd

Marianne More Gordon

Frances Stevens

Stitched in:

Inveresk, Musselburgh, North Berwick