Studies in the Booktrade of the European Enlightenment

£50.00

23 x 16 cm
404 pp.
Publication: 1994
ISBN 0 907132 73 1
ISBN-13 978 0 907132 73 8

Book Description

The eighteen studies reprinted in this volume have appeared in leading British and European bibliographical journals during the last thirty years. This period of time is exactly that in which Anglo-Saxon techniques in analytical bibliography have been taken up in Europe and merged there with the more historically and sociologically based ones of the French “Annales” school to produce the new “Histoire du Livre” or “history of the book” approach to cultural history which is so much to the fore today. These essays by Giles Barber, who has been a constant intermediary in this evolution, are both something of a witness to this, and, at the same time, a factual contribution to the history of the European booktrade in the past three hundred years. They cover both of the basic sides of the trade: book production, meaning printing and binding, and bookselling, meaning both publishing and bookselling, trades which were only then beginning to separate the one from the other. In a trade vital in the history of ideas, the period covered, from 1720 to 1830, sees the end of the domination of the Dutch, the defeat of the colonial aspirations of the French, and the world-wide spread of the English language. A general rise in the reading habit led to new marketing, to new conceptions of authors’ rights, and to technical innovations, all of which were to force a radical reorganization of the trade in the next century.

Contents:

  • Preface
  • Martin-Dominique Fertel and his Science pratique de l’imprimerie
  • From Canaletto to the ostrich: Parisian popular entertainment in 1755
  • Voltaire et la présentation typographique de Candide
  • Modèle genevois, mode européenne: le cas de Candide et de ses contrefaçons
  • Flowers, the Butterfly — and Clandestine Books
  • From press to purchase: the making of the book after its printing
  • Le vocabulaire français de la reliure au dix-huitième siècle
  • Continental paper wrappers and publishers’ bindings in the eighteenth century
  • French royal decrees concerning the booktrade from 1700 to 1789
  • The Cramers of Geneva and their trade in Europe between 1755 and 1766
  • Voltaire and the “maudites editions de Jean Nourse”
  • Books from the Old World and for the New: the British international trade in books in the eighteenth century
  • Who were the booksellers of the Enlightenment?: Pendred abroad: a view of the late eighteenth century book- trade in Europe
  • The financial history of the Kehl Voltaire
  • J. J. Tourneisen of Basle and the publication of English books on the Continent c. 1800
  • Galignani’s and the publication of English books in France from 1800 to 1852
  • Treuttel and Wurtz: some aspects of the importation of books from France c. 1825
  • Additional Notes
  • Index

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