List of figures and tables

Figure 1: Potential versus existing relationships in a social network.

Figure 2: Transmission of disease versus transmission of ideas.

Figure 3: Filtering mechanism between social groups.

Figure 4: Voltaire’s correspondence network (Humanities + Design Research Lab, CESTA, Stanford University). Reproduced with permission of Dan Edelstein.

Figure 5: French stamp, drawn by Henri Galeron, issued 1998 (wikitimbres.fr).

Figure 6: Catherine the Great’s connections with cultural figures in the 1760s and 1770s.

Figure 7: Algarotti’s travels across Europe. Map visualisation created in collaboration with Victoria Saenz, with assistance from Greg Houston.

Figure 8: Algarotti’s epistolary network: letters written by Algarotti. Map visualisation created in collaboration with Victoria Saenz, with assistance from Greg Houston.

Figure 9: Algarotti’s epistolary network: letters written to Algarotti. Map visualisation created in collaboration with Victoria Saenz, with assistance from Greg Houston.

Figure 10: Types of networks Algarotti relied on. Visualisation created in collaboration with Greg Houston.

Figure 11: Eighteenth-century editions and translations of Il Newtonianismo per le dame by language, city and date of publication. Map visualisation created in collaboration with Victoria Saenz, with assistance from Greg Houston. The * indicates editions containing false publication information. The 1737 Milan edition, the 1739 Venice and Padua editions, and the 1752 Venice edition all list the place of publication as Naples. The 1739 Padua edition also lists a false date of publication (1737).

Figure 12: Jacques de Pérard’s ex libris. © Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire.

Figure 13: ‘“J’étais trop communicatif”: Jacques Pérard (1713-1766), un Européen des Lumières’, in La Communication en Europe de l’âge classique aux Lumières, ed. Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire (Paris, 2014), p.176. © Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire.

Figure 14: The arms of the Masonic lodge of The Three Compasses in Stettin. © Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire.

Figure 15: Auction of Pérard’s personal library, Catalogue d’une très belle bibliothèque composée de livres choisis & d’éditions rares, d’une relieure elegante & bien conditionnée, dont la vente aura lieu le lundi 3 d’octobre & les jours suivans, dans la Maison des orphelins françois située au coin du marché de la Fredericstadt (1757). © Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire.

Figure 16: Proportions of knowledge networks in each social demographic. The first bar in each category indicates the number of people in each social or professional group, whereas the second bar designates the number of the individuals in that group who are also in a knowledge network. For example, twenty-four salon attendees were government officials, and twenty-one of those individuals were also gens de lettres.

Figure 17: Knowledge networks in Lespinasse’s salon.

Figure 18: Intellectual composition for attendees in a knowledge network. This graph shows the percentages of each knowledge network based on the subset of salon attendees who belonged to a knowledge network.

Figure 19: Academy membership in Lespinasse’s network.

Figure 20: Demographics of d’Holbach’s network based on subset of attendees with a VIAF ID.

Figure 21: Lespinasse’s and d’Holbach’s salon networks and the overlap between them visualised as undirected networks in Gephi. Nodes are sized by degree.

Figure 22: The appearance of Creutz’s network according to the Contrôle des étrangers: an example of visualisation. © Charlotta Wolff.

Figure 23: Zoom-in on the high-density nodes in Creutz’s social network. © Charlotta Wolff.

Figure 24: Type of intellectuals in Creutz’s knowledge networks. © Charlotta Wolff.

Figure 25: Example of simplified graphic representation of the social interactions in Creutz’s knowledge network. In this visualisation also persons not counted among the fifty-one ‘intellectuals’ themselves but who interacted with them have been included. © Charlotta Wolff.

Figure 26: Connections between eighteenth-century French academies.

Figure 27: Percentage of academy members born and/or died in Paris (1700-1815).

Figure 28: Percentage of provincial academy members born and died in Paris (1700-1815).

Figure 29: Percentage of provincial academy members born and died in academy city (1700-1815).

Figure 30: Network diagram of French academies and shared members with other European academies.

Figure 31: The renvois network of the Encyclopédie, coloured by community (modularity). From Ryan Heuser, Mark Algee-Hewitt and John Bender, ‘Knowledge networks juxtaposed: disciplinarity in the Encyclopédie and Wikipedia’, Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations annual conference, Sydney, 2015.

Figure 32: Citation frequency for the most cited authors in Johnson’s Dictionary.

Figure 33: The number of quotations from named Shakespeare plays in Johnson’s Dictionary (as identified by Johnson).

Figure 34: Full network of words defined by Johnson in the Dictionary, connected by shared quotations and colored by community (modularity).

Figure 35: Network of words in Johnson’s Dictionary with connections limited to authors that are distinctive of parts of speech.

Figure 36: Nouns in part-of-speech network (detail).

Figure 37: Verbs in part-of-speech network (detail).

Figure 38: ‘Print’ cluster of nouns in part-of-speech network.

Figure 39: ‘Negative affect’ cluster of verbs in part-of-speech network.

Figure 40: ‘Semiotic’ cluster of adverbs and adjectives in part-of-speech network.

Table 1: Social demographics of Lespinasse’s network. Note the percentages do not add up to 100 because many individuals belong to multiple categories.

Table 2: Origin of the persons in Creutz’s network.

Table 3: Authors by genre.

Table 4: Matrix of overlapping membership in the royal academies.

Table 5: Matrix of membership of royal academies and provincial academies.

Table 6: French eighteenth-century academy members with the highest number of academic affiliations.

Table 7: Example table from parsed Dictionary.

Table 8: Most distinctive authors in definitions of adjectives.

Table 9: Most distinctive authors in the definitions of adverbs.

Table 10: Most distinctive authors in the definitions of nouns.

Table 11: Most distinctive authors in the definition of verbs.

Table 12: Quotations of Richardson in the Dictionary.