This collection of twelve essays plus introduction provides a remarkably varied yet tightly focused investigation into eighteenth-century conceptions of “character.” Each contributor has chosen to shape the concept—bounded between self and society—within terms primarily but not wholly shaped by Enlightenment thought. Thus the revered—David Hume, Adam Smith, and James Boswell—are considered alongside the admired—Hugh Blair, William Smellie, and a range of novelists. To develop their abstractions, “character” is then considered from analytical standpoints that include race, nation, medical knowledge, and the interplay of personal and published presentations of personality. Impressively, this approach frees analysis from narrow typecasting, offering instead a many-sided proposition from which diverse enquiries can follow. Throughout, the bigger picture remains one of societal development and “progress,” comparing nations and peoples around the world.

The editors set up the volume by observing that the “science of man” was associated with the formation of personality in eighteenth-century Scotland (7). Contemporaries assumed “character” formed in relation to others, in the interpretation of others, yet still was rooted within society. Thus women's more marginal role as public people meant consideration of women's character lacks the kind of sustained analysis provided of men. While we are forewarned that the “public character” of women is problematic, in these essays this “complication” is generally sidelined. Might the contributors have dared, then, to open up contemporary thought beyond its own parameters, to question the empirical narrowness of those working within the conjectural approach? Had such pressure been applied, perhaps other aspects of character might have appeared: the breakdown of society rather than looking for societal progress; character flaws over idealism; societal “differences” as outcomes, not obstacles to be overcome.

In forming the public sphere, the question of readership is not ignored, and neither is the existence of alternative ideas and narratives. The influence of religion in the construction of character is explored in Harris's examination of Hugh Reid and David Hume's contrasting support of Christian and ancient ethics; the range of alternate versions of the concept is also elicited from literature and medical science. These are important developments in their own right, although the greater universality of religious teachings upon the self within Scottish society—in the home, throughout everyday society, as well as institutionally on a Sunday—suggests this was the one theme that could, and perhaps should, predominate over philosophical summaries.

Quibbling aside, there are some excellent observations made by the essayists when unearthing both personal and universal theorizing: the private formation of character is uncovered from William Smellie's dreams (Phyllis Mack); James Boswell's relationship with his father is seen to influence his depression as well as his Hypochondriac essays (Anthony LaVopa); and McKenna shows Adam Smith's rhetorical art of character to be complementary to his moral theorizing and to his version of a civilized capitalist society. Still, this analysis could, or again perhaps should, be framed through the developing eighteenth-century urban worlds within which “public life” was negotiated. Clubs and societies were practical forms, creating defined “character roles” through action. The empiricist may question whether character was informed more by philosophy or by face-to-face interaction. “Character” may distinguish one individual or self from another and, as Hume and Smith showed, be crucial to a sense of self. But character was also dependent on relations with others: character did not exist outside society because it was constituted and created by the perceptions of others and was acquired through regular interaction with them. Character could be “read” and vouched for—indeed, one's personal correspondence could be published (as discussed by Eva Travor Bannet), allowing the individual to “enter” and be “accepted” into civil society. Character, then, was a form of currency that crossed the ethical to the commercial (10–11) or was conceived as “a set of qualities and moral values developed and displayed in social relationships, through idioms of politeness” (125). And while the complexities inherent in universalizing personal and societal behavior will always struggle to account for uneven historical progress, answers begin to flow from conceptual and empirical periodization. Thus we can accept, as Sebastiani argues, that the Enlightenment literati followed Hume in rejecting climate theory as an explanation for national characteristics. Yet the interplay of science and society would resurrect some of these ideas within anthropological theory in the next century. Time and place, the old historian's standby, are powerful stimuli in intellectual formation. By stressing the mix of context and theory, I'm already thinking of enquiries kindled by this excellent volume—for undoubtedly this is a collection of character.