The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe II: Enlightenment Bestsellers

Description

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 Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (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 Curran’s 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 Title Page Copyright Page Contents Illustrations, Maps, Charts and Tables Acknowledgements Preface Prologue: At the Shield of Minerva Chapter 1: The Elusive Enlightenment Chapter 2: The Book in Print Culture Chapter 3: Searching for Enlightenment in a Swiss Print Shop Chapter 4: The Intellectual Geography of the STN Chapter 5: Forgotten Bestsellers Chapter 6: Troubling Taxonomies Chapter 7: Harvesting the Literary Field Chapter 8: Of Cosmopolitan Reading and Novel Concerns Chapter 9: The Anatomy of the Illegal Sector Chapter 10: Philosophie, Science, Faith Chapter 11: From Swiss Politics to Revolutionary History Conclusion Afterword: The Future of FBTEE—Towards a Digital History of the Book List of Online Appendices Notes Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Conclusion Afterword Bibliography Manuscripts Sources on microform Digital sources Select primary printed sources Secondary sources Subject Index Title Index