Sloane was Secretary and, from 1727, President of the Royal Society, placing him at the heart of the interchange of scientific knowledge in Early Enlightenment London. Roy Porter’s ground breaking work (2001) gives a thorough account of this period and Britain’s role. Evans (2006) focusses on the importance of societies’ curiosity in this period, something which was mirrored in Sloane’s own collection.
Clark, W, Golinksi, J and Schaffer, J (editors)., (1999) The sciences in enlightened Europe. University of Chicago Press.
Evans, R. J. W (2006), Curiosity and wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Routledge, UK.
Goldgar, A., (1995) Impolite learning: conduct and community in the Republic of Letters, 1680-1750. Yale University Press.
Hunter, Michael (1981) Science and Society in Restoration England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Jardine, Lisa (1999) Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution. Little Brown, UK.
Johns, Adrian, (1998) The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the making. Chicago.
Outram, Dorinda (2005) The Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Palmira Fontes da Costa, (2009) The Singular and the Making of Knowledge at the Royal Society in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge Scholars Press, Cambridge.
Porter, Roy (2001) Enlightenment: Britain and the creation of the modern world. Penguin, London.
Robertson, John (2015) Enlightenment. A very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Shapin, Steven (1994) A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-century England. Chicago University Press, Chicago.
Sloan, Kim, Burnett, Andrew (2003) Enlightenment. Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century. The British Museum Press, London.