James Edward Oglethorpe: A Life in the Enlightenment: A Life in the Enlightenment

James Oglethorpe was a significant figure in the eighteenth century and this biography is a chapter-by-chapter account of his life as a son of a secretive Jacobite family, a soldier who fought under two towering figures who were on Napoleon’s list of the greatest generals, a reform-oriented political figure, the founder of Georgia, a philanthropist, an abolitionist, and a patron of the arts. He was a direct influence on several people who would formalize Britain’s abolition movement (Hanna More and Granville Sharp to name only two).

While Newton and Locke began the British Enlightenment in the late 1880s with paradigm-shifting scientific and political concepts, Oglethorpe put those ideas in motion on multiple fronts in England, on the Continent, and in America. He led a fascinating life, and his story is yet to be told with the richness it deserves and in the full breadth of its Enlightenment context.

Two significant new contributions in the manuscript are an analysis of Oglethorpe’s extensive library, sold at auction in 1788, and maps prepared by my associate Teri Norris that detail his travels in Europe and America.