LITERARY TOUR DE FRANCE

France and Culture

by Robert Darnton

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 Encyclopedie, 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-Francois 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.

Genres: History, France, Books About Books, Nonfiction, Literature, French Literature, French Revolution

376 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2018

About the author

Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library

Reviews

[Ned · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lifetime of work went into this journey across the book trade across central and southern France in the decades before their revolution. The lens here shows how books were sold and distributed in a time of increasing agitation amid class and legal divisions then.

The frame that holds the lens' view is the Swiss publishinghouse Société typographique de Neuchâtel from which time has left a treasure-trove of detailed records. While these records account for just one such house among the many publishers throughout Europe, perched just outside of France, the makers there had license to print whatever they thought might sell and crucially without being shut down by the French censors. The difficulty was in getting the books to customers and the intermediary sellers- it was the disastrous disruptions between the supply and the demand that the publishers most often had to contend with, wondering when they might get paid for their work.

The crafter fleshing out these frames of activity is Robert Darnton our author who uses the subject of the travelling salesman from Neuchatel as prime example and focus of his lens in order to show how difficult it was to sell quantities of books then. I'd like to know more and happily the author's website has MUCH MORE.
Though many such sites and gates or windows will be needed to learn about such swarms of human behavior, even if just from merely the commercial aspects (leaving alone how the substance of such books interacted with the brains of the readers). This one seems a great way to start exploring.
http://www.robertdarnton.org/

[Robert Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A difficult book to read because of the level of detail. Its emphasis on the book trade in all of its physical aspects is a useful antidote to an exclusive emphasis on the author. Concentrating on one long sales trip focuses attention on the details. Probably helpful to have some knowledge of 18 century France

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should be more than a laundry list and datebook.

[Qwerty88 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
obviously the outcome of a lot of research and analysis, sometimes difficult to keep track of the different players

[Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

《法国大革命前夕的图书世界》（美）罗伯特·达恩顿。

[Claire Binkley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've heard of much of this before - it's a good and solid backdrop to have, just in case you were snoozing through your European Literature course.

I thought it was in the essence, however, a reference to Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot. (I've heard a couple others say those are the three big names you have to know but I just shrugged it off in the past. Now, hmmm.)

So, I didn't think much of this book, but you might like it instead.