In this monumental study of the Enlightenment in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and the United States from c. 1650 to the present, J. C. D. Clark shows that the Enlightenment was not a thing, but rather a historiographical concept.

J. C. D. Clark was educated at Cambridge, where he was a Fellow of Peterhouse. At Oxford, he was a Fellow of All Souls College; at Chicago, he held a Visiting Professorship at the Committee on Social Thought; he has held visiting posts elsewhere. Latterly he was Hall Distinguished Professor of British History at the University of Kansas. He lives now in Northumberland. His interests are primarily in intellectual history, philosophy, social history, literature, and historiography, especially in the 'long eighteenth century', 1660-1832.