Editing Intellectual (section)

=== "Man of letters" ===
{{anchor|Man of Letters}}
The term "man of letters" derives from the French term ''[[Belles-lettres|belletrist]]'' or ''homme de lettres'' but is not synonymous with "an academic".<ref>''The Oxford English Reference Dictionary'' Second Edition, (1996) p. 130.</ref><ref>''The New Cassel's French–English, English–French Dictionary'' (1962) p. 88.</ref> A "man of letters" was a literate man, able to read and write, and thus highly valued in the upper strata of society in a time when [[literacy]] was rare. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term ''Belletrist(s)'' came to be applied to the ''literati'': the French participants in—sometimes referred to as "citizens" of—the [[Republic of Letters]], which evolved into the [[salon (gathering)|salon]], a social institution, usually run by a hostess, meant for the edification, education, and cultural refinement of the participants.

In the late 19th century, when literacy was relatively common in European countries such as the [[United Kingdom]], the "Man of Letters" (''littérateur'')<ref>{{cite book|chapter=Littérateur, n. |title=Discover the Story of English|edition=Second (1989)|date=June 2012|url=http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/109241 |publisher=Oxford English Dictionary|orig-year=First published in New English Dictionary, 1903}}</ref> denotation broadened to mean "specialized", a man who earned his living writing intellectually (not creatively) about literature: the [[essay]]ist, the [[journalist]], the [[critic]], et al. Examples include [[Samuel Johnson]], [[Walter Scott]] and [[Thomas Carlyle]]. In the 20th century, such an approach was gradually superseded by the academic method, and the term "Man of Letters" became disused, replaced by the generic term "intellectual", describing the intellectual person. The archaic term is the basis of the names of several academic institutions which call themselves [[College of Letters and Science (disambiguation)|Colleges of Letters and Science]].