The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe I: Selling Enlightenment

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This volume is a ground-breaking contribution to enlightenment studies and the international and cross-cultural history of print. The result of a five year research project, the volume traces the output and dissemination of books and how reading tastes changed in the years 1769-1794. Mapping the book trade of the Socit Typographique de Neuchtel (STN), a Swiss publisher-wholesaler which operated throughout Europe, the authors reconstruct the cosmopolitan elite culture of the later enlightenment, incorporating many engaging case studies. The STN's archives are uniquely rich in both detail and range, and while these archives have long attracted book historians (notably Robert Darnton, a leading scholar of the Enlightenment), existing work is fragmentary and limited in scope. By means of comparative study, the author considers the entire book market across Europe, making local, regional and chronological nuances, based on advanced taxonomies of subject content, author information, markers of illegality and much more. This volume is, in short, the most diverse and detailed study of the late 18th-century book trade yet, while offering fresh insights into the enlightenment.

Reviews

A striking achievement. Currans commendably exhaustive delving into the STNs superb business archives and his use of digital humanities methodologies to form and to test hypotheses adds a renewed level of relevance to key questions about the European Enlightenment and the role of the STN within it. * Colin Jones, Professor of History, Queen Mary University of London, UK *
For those with an interest in the history of the 18th-century book trade and the dissemination of knowledge in Enlightenment Europe, this is a work of major importance. Curran knows the rich archives of Neufchatel as well as anyone, and he communicates his important and provocative findings with liveliness and grace. * Darrin M. McMahon, Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor, Dartmouth College, USA *

Author Bio

Mark Curran is a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. His monograph Atheism and Religion in Eighteenth Century France will be published in 2011.