The Scottish Town in the Age of Enlightenment, 1740–1820
2014 book by Bob Harris and Charles McKean
The Scottish Town in the Age of Enlightenment, 1740–1820 is a book by Scottish historians Bob Harris and Charles McKean. It was first published in August 2014, almost a year after McKean's death, by Edinburgh University Press. The book won the Saltire Book of the Year award for 2014. The book examines how Scottish burghs improved themselves during the Enlightenment period.
Reception
The judging panel of the Saltire Book of the Year Award described the work as 'book that people will value for many years to come' and noted that 'It is also extremely well researched and readable'. The judging panel also praised it as being '‘magisterial' and considered it to be a 'pioneering study'. In addition to winning the overall Saltire Award, the book was named as the 2014 Saltire Society Scottish Research Book of the Year.
Scottish historian Professor Ian Donnachie praised the book as 'a major contribution to urban, social and cultural history' and felt it was an appropriate tribute to the research and work of Charles McKean who died when the book was being written.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Scottish Town in the Age of Enlightenment, 1740–1820” is 2014 book by Bob Harris and Charles McKean. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Scottish, Town and Enlightenment, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18786689. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1740, 1820 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Scottish Town in the Age of Enlightenment, 1740–1820” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.