Publisher's Synopsis
This book examines the cult of the deathbed scene in eighteenth-century Britain and France, exploring the three currents of Enlightenment thought implict in the deathbed ""projects"" of Hume, Johnson, and Marat. The book describes the response of Boswell, Burke, Smith and Gibbon to Johnson's and Hume's projects: it also considers the complex relations between reformist and transformist thought in Britan during the last three decades of the century.
