The Transmission of Knowledge in Eighteenth Century Britain: A Digital Investigation

This book uncovers how knowledge was transmitted and transformed in 18th-century Britain, using digital tools to reveal collective patterns in science, philosophy, and commerce. It explores the commodification of ideas and the politics of knowledge movement, offering fresh insights for both specialists and general readers.

John Regan is Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research interests fall into two main areas. Firstly, he is interested in the new forms of knowledge that might be discovered or indeed wrought by digital technology. Secondly, he has published extensively in eighteenth-century literature and aesthetics. He is the author of Poetry and the Idea of Progress, 1760-1790 (2018)) and he co-edited Rethinking British Romantic History 1770-1845 (2014). In October 2023 he published his second monograph entitled Semantic Change and Collective Knowledge in 18th C Britain. This is a digital enquiry into the forms of knowledge embodied in historical corpora and only made visible using digital tools. He is currently funded by the British Academy on a two-year project investigating the United Nations’ corpus.