The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe II: Enlightenment Bestsellers

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This is a rich and path-breaking comparative study of reading tastes in the final years of old regime Europe. Based on extensive research in the account books of the Swiss publishers, the Socit Typographique de Neuchtel (STN), and related archives, it charts the dissemination of literature and reading tastes across Europe in the years leading up to the French revolution. In the process, it recasts our understanding of late 18th-century print culture and the contours of the enlightenment. The fruit of a widely acclaimed five year database project, the STN database, it is also a story of pioneering efforts to apply the latest digital technology and GIS mapping techniques to traditional historical and bibliographic problems. Although written to serve as a standalone study, this book is ideally complemented by its companion volume, Mark Currans The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe I: Selling Enlightenment, which offers a radical reinterpretation of the structure and practices of the European book trade. The STN database is now recognised as a cutting-edge digital project of global significance. Robert Darnton has called it "a prodigious accomplishment and a joy to use" while Jeremy Popkin adds, "No one working in the field of French Enlightenment studies can afford to ignore the rich mine of data that Simon Burrows and his collaborators have made accessible, in an eminently usable form, and the new possibilities it opens up for scholars." The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe I and II offer a roadmap of that data and what it can show us.

Reviews

Using the latest digital-humanities techniques, Simon Burrowss book gives us new insights into the readers and publishers of the Enlightenment era. His conclusions challenge the popular interpretations of scholars such as Robert Darnton and Jonathan Israel and force us to rethink the notion of Enlightenment bestsellers. This is a valuable contribution to book history and the history of the circulation of ideas. * Jeremy D. Popkin, William T. Bryan Chair of History, University of Kentucky, USA *

Author Bio

Simon Burrows is Professor of History at Western Sydney University, Australia. His many publications include A King's Ransom (2010), and The Chevalier d'Eon and His Worlds, edited with Jonathan Conlin, Russell Goulbourne and Valerie Mainz (2010).