What causes revolutions? How does public opinion influence events? This work answers these questions by asking what the French people read in the 18th century. The answer lies only partially in the canon of the great Enlightenment philosophers: Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Rousseau. More popular than these works were other books bought and sold "under the cloak". Salacious, blasphemous, often pornographic and treasonous, these formed a libertine literature that undercut all the orthodox values of the old regime. This history of these books, and of the booksellers who sold them, presents an idiosyncratic guide to the ancien regime and its citizens.

The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France

DARNTON, Robert

Literature & Fiction

Fontana

When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730's held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously funny that they choked with laughter when they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the 18th century version of "Little Red Riding Hood" did the wolf eat the child at the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpelier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions Robert Darnton attempts to answer in this dazzling series of essays that probe the ways of thought in what we like to call "The Age of Enlightenment."

The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Peregrine Books)

History

Europe

Penguin Books, Ltd.

Revolutionary Temper

The publishing industry in France in the years before the Revolution was a lively and sometimes rough-and-tumble affair, as publishers and printers scrambled to deal with (and if possible evade) shifting censorship laws and tax regulations, in order to cater to a reading public's appetite for books of all kinds, from the famous Encyclopédie, repository of reason and knowledge, to scandal-mongering libel and pornography. Historian and librarian Robert Darnton uses his exclusive access to a trove of documents-letters and documents from authors, publishers, printers, paper millers, type founders, ink manufacturers, smugglers, wagon drivers, warehousemen, and accountants-involving a publishing house in the Swiss town of Neuchatel to bring this world to life. Like other places on the periphery of France, Switzerland was a hotbed of piracy, carefully monitoring the demand for certain kinds of books and finding ways of fulfilling it. Focusing in particular on the diary of Jean-François Favarger, a traveling sales rep for a Swiss firm whose 1778 voyage, on horseback and on foot, around France to visit bookstores and renew accounts forms the spine of this story, Darnton reveals not only how the industry worked and which titles were in greatest demand, but the human scale of its operations. A Literary Tour de France is literally that. Darnton captures the hustle, picaresque comedy, and occasional risk of Favarger's travels in the service of books, and in the process offers an engaging, immersive, and unforgettable narrative of book culture at a critical moment in France's history.

A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution

Business & Money

Economics

Oxford University Press

In the late-18th century, a group of publishers in what historian Robert Darnton calls the "Fertile Crescent" -- countries located along the French border, stretching from Holland to Switzerland -- pirated the works of prominent (and often banned) French writers and distributed them in France, where laws governing piracy were in flux and any notion of "copyright" very much in its infancy. Piracy was entirely legal and everyone acknowledged -- tacitly or openly -- that these pirated editions of works by Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot, among other luminaries, supplied a growing readership within France, one whose needs could not be met by the monopolistic and tightly controlled Paris Guild. Darnton's book focuses principally on a publisher in Switzerland, one of the largest and whose archives are the most complete. Through the lens of this concern, he offers a sweeping view of the world of writing, publishing, and especially bookselling in pre-Revolutionary France--a vibrantly detailed inside look at a cut-throat industry that was struggling to keep up with the times and, if possible, make a profit off them. Featuring a fascinating cast of characters -- lofty idealists and down-and-dirty opportunists -- this new book expands upon on Darnton's celebrated work on book-publishing in France, most recently found in Literary Tour de France. Pirating and Publishing reveals how and why piracy brought the Enlightenment to every corner of France, feeding the ideas that would explode into revolution.

Pirating and Publishing: The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment

Dust Jacket in Very Good condition.

The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

WW Norton & Co.

An eyewitness account of the transformation of East Germany shows the human face of revolution as it probes behind the headlines to introduce us to the everyday people who made a dictatorship fall

Berlin Journal, 1989-1990

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Exploring the cultural and political significance of forbidden books in France, a historian considers the ideological origins of the Revolution and its connections with the Enlightenment by examining what the French read in the eighteenth century--with substantial excerpts included.

The world of illegal publishing in eighteenth-century France was large and varied, taking in the greatest works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Diderot, as well as the scandalous books of grub street writers. Here we have a map of that world, constructed by Robert Darnton based on his many years of research in the field.Darnton shows us the scope of this literary underground with a complete bibliography of the hundreds of books that circulated "under the cloak." He documents their geographical distribution throughout France, and measures the levels of demand for these books. By ranking these levels of demand he compiles a bestseller list of illegal books, with surprising results.Having thoroughly mined the sources, Darnton provides a trove of information on the illegal literature of Old Regime France. The result is an invaluable resource to specialists in French cultural history, the history of the book, the social history of ideas, and problems of censorship and state control of ideas.

The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France 1769-1789

History & Criticism

Arising out of a project intended to examine Thomas Jefferson's excursions in Paris, this text explores "out-of-the-way corners" of the 18th century focusing on the interrelated themes of "French-American connections, life in the Republic of Letters, modes of communication, and ways of thought peculiar to the French Enlightenment." Darnton (European history, Princeton U.) obliquely refers in his title to the almost ubiquitous prevalence of toothaches at the time, reflecting his belief that by focusing on the ways the period differed from ours, we can come to a greater understanding of its actualities. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century

World

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DARNTON, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by DARNTON, Robert

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DARNTON, Robert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France

The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Peregrine Books)

Revolutionary Temper

A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution

Pirating and Publishing: The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment

The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History

Berlin Journal, 1989-1990

The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France

The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France 1769-1789

George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century