The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (New Approaches to European History Series Number 23)

About this book

James Meltons accessible study examines the rise of "the public" in eighteenth-century Europe. Focusing on England France and the German-speaking territories this is the first critical reassessment of what the philosopher Jrgen Habermas called the "bourgeois public sphere" of the eighteenth century. Topics include the growing importance of public opinion in political life transformations of the literary public realm eighteenth-century authorship theater publics and new practices of sociability as they developed in salons coffeehouses taverns and Masonic lodges.