The Enlightenment was a period of intense activity devoted to discovery and learning about the natural world, the past and other civilisations.

Classification, collecting and deciphering were all important stages on the way to understanding of the world. The King’s Library was built to house the books donated from the royal libraries of King George II and King George III, and they epitomise the interest in the late 18th and 19th centuries in scholarship and study.

Aimed at the general reader and relevant to many academic disciplines, this book explores the ways people acquired new information, organised their ideas and reached their conclusions.