In Robert Darnton's hands the accounts and letters of the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN) become an eye-opening story of how foreign publishers smuggled forbidden and pirated books into France between 1769 and 1789. Paris firms had a stranglehold on the nation's publishing, reinforced by state edicts suppressing ‘subversive' works. An illicit industry satisfied the appetite of readers for all kinds of writing, sanctioned or not.
Covert networks were extensive and professionally organised. From Amsterdam to Avignon, publishers not constrained by the laws of the ancien régime, let alone copyright, delivered books across France. Darnton follows the picaresque progress of one of the STN's travelling salesmen, Jean-François Faverger, who journeys for five months in 1778, from Lyon to Marseille to Bordeaux, Orléans and Besançon and back to Neuchâtel. His mission is to discover which booksellers inspire confidence (the scale is ‘good', ‘mediocre' and ‘not good'), encourage orders, collect debts and undercut rivals. He contends with filthy inns, scabies, muddy roads, a lame horse and duplicitous clients, dutifully returning reports to his employers.
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