Acknowledgements
This book represents the final step of a collective effort started with the conference “The Great Protector of Wits. D’Holbach 1789–2019”, held at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Göttingen on 9–11 May 2019. I wish to express my gratitude to all those who made this event possible: Franziska Meier, who organised the conference with me; Dominik Hünniger and Martin van Gelderen, who welcomed the idea of the conference and offered all their support; Patrick Anthony, Rachel Koroloff and Iryna Mykhailova for their friendly advice and help, and the endless discussions through the offices and the yard of the Historische Sternwarte in Göttingen; Hans Bödeker, Martin Gierl, Hanna Roman, Joanna Wharton and all the members of the Enlightenment Reading Group of the Lichtenberg-Kolleg; and finally, all those who took part in the conference as presenters of papers, commentators, advisors, chairs, reviewers, discussants and listeners.
The conference was funded by the Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Institute for Advanced Study, and the Romanistik Department of the University of Göttingen. I wish to thank these institutions and their wonderful staff, especially Heidemarie Hopf and Jan-Wilke Brandt.
I would like to warmly thank Tony La Vopa, who embraced the project of both the conference and the book from the very beginning and supported it to the very end, contributing to this volume as “ghost editor”, as he loves to say.
Finally, my gratitude goes to Jonathan Israel, who encouraged the publication of this volume, to Han van Ruler for having accepted it in the series Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, to the anonymous peer reviewers for their meticulous reading and precious suggestions, and to Ivo Romein, who took all his own steps in the making of the book with extraordinary care and amiability.