Exploring an Anglo-German network of thought and writing in Britain between 1700 and 1790, this volume offers a new approach to eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature and culture. It explores a set of radical figures and institutions that are exorbitant, with particular focus on William Blake and Johann Georg Hamann. Regier's first-order discovery of Anglo-German circuits of thought about language, religion, sexuality, nature, and social formation reveals an elaborate information highway. One of the many triumphs of this study is that it expands our field of vision even as it sharpens the focus on key practices within that field. With remarkable clarity, economy, and narrative brio, Exorbitant Enlightenment tells a truly gripping story about the most difficult artists and thinkers of the age. Like a high tide that floats all boats, Regier's contribution raises up for new appraisal the many writers we thought we had understood. Readers will close this book and say to themselves, all is changed, changed utterly.