All Editions 1700-1800 lists the 250+ titles ranked by number of eighteenth-century editions. One challenge in counting eighteenth-century editions is that each title was first published in a different year, giving some books more advantage than others in determining popularity. For example, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) had only 24 years to become a bestseller, whereas Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) had a period three times as large.

The Per Annum Average recalculates the editions based on an average annual number of editions from first publication to 1800 (the years 1700 and 1800 are both included in this database). This ranking list may give a better sense of the relative importance of each title.

Quarter, Decade, and Year divides the first 1700-1800 list into smaller periods. The database is then isolated for editions that appear in French, English, or Latin.

Other Edition Lists:
1769-1789 isolates all titles for this twenty-year period to facilitate comparison with the Société typographique de Neuchâtel, for which there has been much recent scholarship.

Ten+ Editions and Three+ Lanugages lists alphabetically all books that were published in at least ten editions and three languages, perhaps best constituting an Enlightenment Bestseller List.

In defining an edition and a bestseller I generally follow Richard Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), especially 78-95 justifying the Appendix at the end of the book.