Pirating and Publishing The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment

In the late-18th century in Paris, a group of booksellers and printers gained a dominant position in the sale and distribution of the writings of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot, among other luminaries. In short they controlled the business of the Enlightenment itself, and at a crucial moment in history. Outside of France, however, works by these authors were pirated, republished, and distributed to a broader public. Rather than depress the publishing industry, then in its infancy, book piracy vastly expanded its reach.

Robert Darnton offers a richly detailed and sweeping study of the world of writing, publishing, and bookselling in pre-Revolutionary France, expanding on his celebrated works devoted to the literary world of the Ancien R?gime, Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France and, most recently, A Literary Tour de France. In Publishing and Pirating, Darnton illuminates the ways in which audacious publishers and pirates brought the voices of the Enlightenment to every corner of France, feeding the ideas that would explode into the first revolution of modern times.

Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian, Emeritus of Harvard University, and the author of The Great Cat Massacre (1984) and A Literary Tour de France (2018), among others.

Introduction

Publishing
1. The Rules of the Game and How the Game was Played
2. The Landscape in Paris
3. The Fertile Crescent

Pirating
4. How to Pirate a Book
5. Portraits of Pirates and Their Businesses
6. Underground Geneva
7. A Confederation of Pirates
8. The Struggle to Pirate Rousseau and Voltaire

Inside a Swiss Publishing House
9. Business as Usual
10. Our Man in Paris
11. Relations with Authors
12. Making and Losing Money

Conclusion

Acknowledgements