Publishing and the Book Trade in France and Francophone Europe, 1769-1789

This website offers an opportunity to explore the world of books on the eve of the French Revolution.  It brings together material from the vast archives of the Société typographique de Neuchâtel, a publisher and wholesaler who provided all kinds of books to all parts of France from 1769 to 1789.

By pursuing leads through links, users can follow the play of supply and demand in literature, town by town and bookseller by bookseller.  They can also study publishing strategies, pirating, smuggling, shipping, the role of booksellers as cultural intermediaries, and the pattern of best-sellers on a national scale.

Finally, the website brings together a great deal of information about writers and writing: 500 reports on authors from the files of the Parisian police, 1748-1753, and 185 letters by Jacques-Pierre Brissot, whose career as a writer in the 1780s culminated in his role as a leader of the French Revolution.