A look at how modern scepticism got it's training wheels off.

A rigorous study of how writers and thinkers in the eighteenth century—especially David Hume and Samuel Johnson—negotiated the boundary between fiction and reality. Leo Damrosch traces how narrative forms, cultural norms, and emerging ideas about truth shaped literature and life in an era that laid the groundwork for scepticism, biography, and the novel itself.

The book explores how literary imagination, factual claims, personal character, and philosophical reflection intersected in a period when distinctions between fact and fiction were being actively reconfigured.

Damrosch writes clearly and with close attention to texts and contexts, making this accessible to readers beyond strict academic circles. It’s useful for readers interested in the history of ideas, Enlightenment literature, and the evolving relationship between narrative and truth.