Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe: French Cosmopolitanism and German Literary Markets 9780812206449

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Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe

MATERIAL TEXTS

Series Editors Roger Chartier Joseph Farrell Anthony Grafton Leah Price Peter Stallybrass Michael F. Suarez, S.J. A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

B O OK S W I T HOU T B OR DE R S IN E N L IGH T E N M E N T EU ROPE French Cosmopolitanism and German Literary Markets

Jeffrey Freedman

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Freedman, Jeff rey. Books without borders in Enlightenment Europe : French cosmopolitanism and German literary markets / Jeff rey Freedman. p. cm. (Material texts) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-8122-4389-5 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Book industries and trade—France—History—18th century. 2. Book industries and trade—German-speaking countries—History—18th century. 3. Literature publishing—France—History—18th century. 4. French language—German-speaking countries—History—18th century. 5. Enlightenment—Europe. I. Title. II. Series: Material texts. Z305.F74 2012 381'.45002094409033—dc23 2011046058

To the memory of my mother, Njuty Greenberg Freedman

Le Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise, dans lequel on n’avait d’abord eu pour objet que d’être utile à la Nation, est devenu un Livre pour l’Europe. La Politique & le Commerce ont rendu notre Langue presque aussi nécessaire aux Etrangers que leur Langue naturelle.

(The Dictionary of the Académie Française, whose first object was only to serve the Nation, has become a book for Europe. Politics and commerce have made our language almost as necessary to foreigners as their natural language.) —Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise, new edition (Paris, 1765)

contents

Note on Terminology and Sources

Introduction

ix

1

Chapter 1. Rite of Spring: The Leipzig Easter Fair and the Literary Marketplace

16

Chapter 2. Whom to Trust? Insolvent Booksellers and the Problem of Credit

43

Chapter 3. French Booksellers in the Reich

62

Chapter 4. Demand

119

Chapter 5. The Word of God in the Age of the Encyclopédie

146

Chapter 6. Against the Current: Translating the Aufklärung

167

Chapter 7. From Europe Française to Europe Révolutionnaire: The Career of Jean-Guillaume Virchaux

220

Conclusion. What Were French Books Good For?

264

Appendix A. STN Trade with Booksellers in Germany, 1770–1785

275

Appendix B. The Folio Bible of 1773: Diffusion

278

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co nt ents

Appendix C. The Folio Bible of 1779: Prepublication Subscriptions

280

Appendix D. The Bible in Germany: The Neuchâtel Folio of 1779 and the Bienne Octavo

282

Appendix E. Diffusion of Sebaldus Nothanker in French Translation

283

Notes

287

Bibliography

355

Index

371

Acknowledgments

381

note on terminology and sources

In the eighteenth century, Germany did not exist as a political entity, but contemporaries used the term nevertheless. When I speak of “Germany,” I am referring to the lands of German-speaking Europe, excluding Switzerland but including the German-speaking parts of the Habsburg Empire. The distinction between Germany and the German-speaking parts of the Habsburg Empire had its origins in the Prussian-dominated kleindeutsch (small-German) nationalism of the nineteenth century. To project it back onto the eighteenth century would be anachronistic. Unless otherwise indicated, all the original manuscript sources cited in the notes come from the papers of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), which are housed in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel. References to letters that the STN sent to its correspondents are to the copies of those letters contained in the chronologically organized folio volumes of the STN’s “Copies de lettres”; references to letters that the STN received from its correspondents are to the original letters contained in the dossiers of the STN’s correspondents. The notes do not indicate the manuscript call numbers of the individual dossiers, which can easily be located in the Neuchâtel archives from the names of the STN’s correspondents. The notes indicate call numbers only for documents other than letters to and from the STN—shipping records, account books, stock inventories, printers’ logs, and so on. The other archives to which notes refer are the following: Staatsarchiv Hamburg; Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin; Archives Nationales Paris; Préfecture de Police Paris; and Archives de l’État Neuchâtel. All the original sources cited in the book were written in French or German. The translations into English are my own.

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Introduction

Th is is a study of the transnational French book trade in Enlightenment Eu rope. As such, it belongs to what is known as the history of the book, a vast field of interdisciplinary research, whose subject matter embraces every aspect of the “communications circuit” between author and reader. It belongs to that field, and yet it does not fit snugly within it. The field of book history has long been divided into separate, self-contained national histories, from Johann Goldfriedrich’s early twentieth-century classic, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, to the multiauthor, multivolume Histoire de l’ édition française published in the 1980s, to the more recent History of the Book in Britain. This study cuts across those divisions. Based on never-before-studied documents from the archive of an eighteenth-century publisher, it presents a challenge to the dominant national model of book history. Why challenge that model? In part, because books have not been as respectful of national borders as the historians who study them. Even in the age of the wooden hand press, from the mid-fifteenth to the late eighteenth century, when books traveled in horse-drawn wagons along muddy, unpaved highways or in sailing vessels down poorly dredged, unevenly flowing rivers, they traversed great distances, connecting communities of readers across as well as within national borders. The geography of their diff usion cannot be folded neatly into the geography of nations, let alone that of states. Like the products of the wooden hand press, moreover, the booksellers of early modern Europe moved back and forth across national borders. Many of them would undertake long journeys to visit their customers in foreign lands, or they would travel to the famous fair at Frankfurt on Main, a rendezvous of the Latin book trade, which drew booksellers from beyond the Rhine and across the Alps until its decline during the Th irty Years’ War. Some of them established themselves permanently in foreign countries— Germans in Russia, Huguenots in the Low Countries, Frenchmen in London. And in such linguistic border areas as Switzerland, an important center of early modern

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printing, the journeymen typographers who tramped from one establishment to another in search of work made the cramped rooms of printing shops resound with the accents of different dialects and languages. In those noisy shops no less than in the quiet studies of scholars, books belonged to worlds in which cultures met and collided. Of course, not all the books printed in early modern Europe came from the presses of polyglot printing shops, traveled to international book fairs, and reached readers in distant lands. Some led a much more parochial existence. Books printed in German, for example, were unlikely to reach many readers who were not native speakers, because German occupied one of the lower rungs in the international hierarchy of modern literary languages, at least until the late eighteenth century when it began its rapid ascent. German books were mainly for Germans— a fact that publishers expressed typographically by printing German books in a separate type font, Fraktur rather than the international Roman. Even in Germany, however, indeed especially in Germany, the literary market absorbed books in other languages too—in Latin throughout the early modern period and in French beginning in the eighteenth century. And to those books in other languages were added during the course of the eighteenth century an increasing number of German translations of French books, so many, in fact, that contemporaries described the publishing houses of Leipzig as “translating factories.” By the last decades of the century, German translations and German originals, both of them printed in spiky Fraktur, and French books printed in elegantly rounded Roman were jostling for shelf space in bookshops all across the politically fragmented lands of the old Reich. While international and national typographical styles and French and German literature mingled promiscuously in the bookshops of eighteenthcentury Germany, other forms of cohabitation prevailed elsewhere. During the eighteenth century, booksellers in London published French books as well as English ones, but they also imported French books from the Continent, above all from the Low Countries; and booksellers up and down the Italian peninsula from Turin to Naples supplemented their stocks of Italian literature by importing French books from Switzerland. Bound to one another through commercial exchanges, the booksellers of the eighteenth century sent the products of their presses coursing through the circulatory system of the European book trade, and so gave new life to an old ideal, that of the Republic of Letters, an egalitarian community of authors and readers transcending the divisions of politics, religion, and language.

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Admittedly, the reality fell short of the ideal. With the gradual decline of the Latin-reading respublica litterarum, modern literary languages rose to prominence—first in Italy, then in France and England, and finally in Germany— and those languages certainly did not exist on a footing of equality. German, as already noted, enjoyed hardly any international prestige (and even in Germany, it had numerous detractors); Italian as the oldest of the national literary languages and English as the language of Shakespeare and Milton enjoyed somewhat more; but only French was recognized everywhere in eighteenth-century Europe as the language of culture. In its modern incarnation, therefore, the Republic of Letters was francophone, the république des lettres. And yet French did not impose itself on Europeans as a form of national domination. It was, mutatis mutandis, what English is today: not a national tongue so much as a lingua franca. Codified by the grammarians and rhetoricians of the seventeenth century, modeled on the bon usage of the Bourbon court and Parisian salons, and enriched by the works of its “classical” authors (Corneille, Racine, Molière), it shone with such luster that its adoption as the language of diplomacy, princely courts, and learned academies seemed self-evident. No less than the Web surfers and Internet denizens of the twenty-first century, the book readers of the eighteenth century shared a universal language. Far from being exclusively French, therefore, the French book trade of the eighteenth century was transnational. The works of such famous authors of the French Enlightenment as Voltaire, Rousseau, Raynal, and Diderot reached readers all across the Continent. So also did the works of foreign authors who wrote in French—the Baron d’Holbach or the Prussian king Frederick the Great. And so too, in some cases, did the French translations of foreign works. True, the publishers of those translations often took great liberties in adapting them to the demands of “French taste.” Unconstrained by international copyright agreements or any ethical concern to respect the integrity of an author’s creation, they embellished, emended, and abridged as they saw fit. And yet, simply by translating foreign works into French, they endowed them with the authority of the French language—a form of cultural consecration that brought those works to the attention of a European public. When translated into French and circulated through the transnational French book trade, even works of German literature were able to surmount the prejudices and the snobbery of educated Europeans—notably, Goethe’s Werther, which was elevated from national to Weltliteratur thanks in large part to its French translations. Agents of consecration as well as vehicles of diff usion,

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the French books circulating in Enlightenment Europe were European as much as they were French. And the same can be said of the booksellers who published French books. With the aid of Huguenot refugees, who had taken up residence in many of the Protestant states of Europe following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, French-language publishing firms flourished along the borders of the French kingdom, from Amsterdam to Geneva. Unencumbered by the strict censorship and tight regulations to which their competitors inside the kingdom were subject, the extraterritorial firms multiplied and expanded during the course of the eighteenth century, gaining in importance at the same time that the domestic French publishing industry in the provinces was contracting. By the last decades of the Old Regime, presses located outside of France were turning out roughly 50 percent of all the books printed in French, including nearly all the works of the philosophes. And yet, until now, most of the scholarship devoted to the subject of extraterritorial French publishing has focused on the production of French books for the French market. We know a great deal about how pirated and prohibited books were smuggled into the kingdom from shops beyond the French borders, but comparatively little about how those same books spread outward to far-flung markets across Europe. Annexed to the history of the French book trade, the subject of extraterritorial French publishing has shed its European dimension, as if that dimension were merely peripheral. Books Without Borders treats it as central. The first detailed study of the literary traffic between France and the lands of German-speaking Europe, this book tells a story of crucial importance to understanding the circulation of ideas in Enlightenment Europe: the story of how booksellers mediated the transmission of literature across the frontiers of language, nation, and culture. Why German-speaking Europe? Admittedly, Germany was only one of the many foreign markets for French books in the eighteenth century. From the geographic distribution of the foreign booksellers who corresponded with Parisian publishers in the early 1780s one can infer that French books reached readers at a few scattered outposts on the edges of the Continent, in Italy south of Naples, in Scandinavia, and even as far afield as Moscow. The core regions of the transnational French book trade, however, lay in western and central Europe: in London, which was home to a large community of French expatriates; in the Low Countries, which had absorbed many Huguenot refugees and had dominated the extraterritorial French publishing industry until the mideighteenth century; in the French-speaking cantons of western Switzerland; in

Introduction

5

Italy north of Naples; and in the states of Germany—above all in the states of Germany. Nearly a third of the foreign booksellers who corresponded with Parisian publishers in the early 1780s were located in German states (261 booksellers distributed across ninety different cities); and there were more of them in the city of Leipzig alone (twenty-seven) than in any other city with the exception of London, which was by far the most populous city in all of Europe. Just a few decades earlier, moreover, French books had accounted for nearly 10 percent of the German literary market as measured by the Leipzig book-fair catalogues. Thereafter, their share of the market shrank, but only because the market as a whole was expanding: the total number of French books listed in the catalogues remained constant, notwithstanding the vast quantity of German translations of French works—2,678 in the years from 1770 to 1788—that inundated the market. Add together the volume of translations, the figures on French books derived from the Leipzig catalogues, and the number of German booksellers corresponding with Parisian publishers, and only one conclusion seems possible: in Europe during the last decades of the Old Regime, the currents of literary transmission flowed thickest between France and Germany. It’s no wonder. After all, the most powerful German monarch, Frederick the Great of Prussia, disdained the German language, wrote almost exclusively in French, and maintained a lifelong correspondence with Voltaire. During Frederick’s long reign, which spanned more than four decades from 1740 to 1786, the Prussian Academy in Berlin functioned like a clubhouse for expatriate French philosophes; and, in 1783, it sponsored an essay competition on the question of why French had become the universal language—a competition for which it awarded first prize to a French author, the comte Antoine de Rivarol. Elsewhere in Germany, lesser German princes followed Frederick’s lead by converting their courts into miniature replicas of Versailles—and there were many such courts, so fragmented was Germany politically. In those bastions of aristocratic exclusivity, where some works of German literature were not deemed hoff ähig unless translated into French, French books belonged to a culture of representation. Objects of prestige as well as books to be read, they symbolized the elevated social status and lofty cultural aspirations of their owners. Further down the social hierarchy the situation was somewhat different. Unlike their Francophile princes, middle-class German men of letters were often quite critical of what they regarded as the amorality, frivolity, and superficiality of French culture. But they read French books nevertheless— Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in Düsseldorf, a devoted admirer of Rousseau, who received regular shipments of French books from Rousseau’s Amsterdam

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publisher, Marc-Michel Rey; Goethe, who during his adolescence in Frankfurt read (and vehemently condemned) d’Holbach’s notorious materialist treatise, Le Système de la nature, and who later, as a courtier in Weimar, translated Diderot’s Neveu de Rameau into German; Kant in Königsberg, a man of impeccably regular habits, who became so engrossed in his reading of Rousseau’s Emile that he forgot to take his daily walk; and even Herder, one of the most outspoken critics of French cultural influence in Germany, whose personal library was filled with French books. In the libraries of bourgeois intellectuals, no less than in those of aristocratic courtiers, French books bulked large. Of course, the currents of literary transmission between France and Germany have never ceased to flow, not even in the darkest moments of FrancoGerman rivalry during the twentieth century, when the French and the Germans seemed to view one another as if across a Maginot Line of mutual incomprehension: all borders, even the most heavily fortified ones, connect as well as separate. In the long history of the cultural transfer between France and Germany, however, the years of the mid- and late eighteenth century stand out as unique. In no other period did French books make up so large a share of the German literary market as they did during those years. There are compelling reasons, then, to focus a study of the transnational French book trade in the eighteenth century on the Franco-German axis. The question is what kinds of sources are available for such a study. One of the chief impediments to the study of the eighteenth-century book trade is the lack of documents from booksellers of that time. But there is one French-language publisher from the eighteenth century whose papers have survived almost intact, a Swiss fi rm called the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), which conducted a wide-ranging trade as a publisher, printer, and wholesaler during the last two decades of the Old Regime. Founded in 1769, in the Prussian principality of Neuchâtel, the STN was one of the many extraterritorial French publishing firms that sprang up along the eastern frontiers of the French kingdom. Unlike Marc-Michel Rey, Rousseau’s publisher in Amsterdam, or the brothers Cramer, Voltaire’s publishers in Geneva, the STN did not publish any original editions of works by the most famous of the philosophes. In fact, it published very few original editions of any kind. It preferred to turn out cheap pirated editions of works that had already proved their worth in the literary market. By saving on the cost of manuscripts, while also trimming what it called “typographical luxury,” and printing its editions in small formats (octavo or duodecimo), the STN was able to sell its books at a lower wholesale price (roughly one sou per printed sheet) than that of the

Introduction

7

original publishers. And, in the absence of international copyright agreements, it was free to pirate just about any books it pleased, including irreligious books whose contents seemed offensive to the Calvinist authorities in Neuchâtel. Rather than compromise a lucrative branch of the local economy, the Neuchâtel authorities preferred to look the other way when the STN published irreligious books (unless they were really irreligious), especially as the STN was a wholesaler, whose books were intended for export and were not going to be circulating among the local population in any case. Largely untroubled by censors and unconstrained by copyright, the STN turned out cut-rate editions of works belonging to a wide range of genres. Some of its editions were of works by the philosophes (Voltaire, Rousseau, abbé Raynal, abbé Mably, Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Restif de la Bretonne); others were of works that had passed the censorship in France and that had been published inside the kingdom with official royal “privileges”— everything from sentimental novels, travelogues, and popular medical tracts to works of history and pedagogy. By the time its trade began to decline in the mid-1780s, the STN had made a significant contribution to broadening the circulation of contemporary French literature—above all in France, where it conducted the lion’s share of its trade, but also in other countries of Europe, chief among them Germany. Its papers, therefore, make it possible to retrace the movement of French books as they made their way from the printing shop in Neuchâtel to the book shops of Germany. All the documents that the historian needs to reconstruct the life cycle of books in the age of the wooden hand press have survived in the Neuchâtel archives—printers’ logs, account books, stock inventories, records of shipments, invoices from shipping agents, copies of the STN’s letters, and, most important, the letters and the book orders of the STN’s customers. For anyone researching the eighteenth-century book trade, the documents in Neuchâtel are a uniquely rich source. Unfortunately, they are also unique. Nothing remotely comparable to them exists anywhere else, and that fact is bound to raise some doubts in the minds of skeptical readers. Granted, the STN was an important publishing house. Still, it was only one of many French-language publishers supplying French books to the German market in the last decades of the Old Regime. French books reached German readers from publishers in a wide range of geographic locations, in the Low Countries, London, France, other cities of western Switzerland apart from Neuchâtel, and Germany itself— notably, Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, and various locations in the Rhineland. How, then, can the papers of the STN alone support general conclusions about the French book trade in Germany?

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At bottom, that objection comes down to the question of whether the STN’s trade in Germany was representative of the French book trade in Germany as a whole. I would argue that it was; but to persuade the skeptics, I will need to clarify a few technical points about the wholesale book trade in Germany, retail book selling in Germany, and the general nature of publishing in the eighteenth century.

The Wholesale Book Trade In the late eighteenth century, there was only one way to market hundreds of copies of a new edition in Germany, and that was to transport them to the Leipzig Easter fair, where booksellers from all over central and eastern Europe gathered every spring. No doubt the STN and the other French-language publishers of western Europe would have preferred to distribute their editions from some other location nearer to them than Leipzig—Frankfurt, for example, which had indeed been a central point of distribution for French books in Germany until the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Unfortunately for the publishers of western Europe, the Frankfurt book fairs had gone into permanent decline by the 1770s. Despite the inconvenience and the expense of transporting books to Saxony, the foreign suppliers of French books had no choice but to accommodate themselves to the geography and the commercial practices of the wholesale book trade in Germany. It did not matter, therefore, where French books began their journey, whether from Amsterdam, Paris, or Neuchâtel. In the wholesale book trade of late eighteenth-century Germany, all roads led to Leipzig. Since Leipzig was the main outlet for the dissemination of the STN’s editions in Germany, the Neuchâtel archives contain a great many documents of general significance pertaining to the Leipzig Easter fairs: they reveal the modalities of the wholesale trade in French books, not just the peculiarities of the STN’s trade.

Retail Book Selling The centrality of Leipzig for the wholesale book trade did not prevent the STN from selling small quantities of books to individual booksellers at scattered sites across Germany—fortunately for the historian since the direct

Introduction

9

correspondence between the STN and booksellers in Germany provides an opportunity to analyze the precise demand for French books. But what guarantee do we have that the demand was of any more than local significance? The STN made regular shipments to booksellers in five German cities: Mannheim, Hamburg, Cologne, Prague, and Frankfurt. Fine, the skeptics will say—and so what? The STN’s correspondence with those booksellers means relatively little if their orders reflected nothing more than the demand for French books at five isolated points on the map of eighteenth-century Germany. That objection sounds damning—until we understand the nature of retail bookselling in Germany. With the possible exception of Vienna, there were no cities in Germany large enough to sustain the trade of local booksellers. To survive, booksellers had to supply retail customers at a considerable distance from their shops, and they had to cast their nets all the more widely if they were selling French books, which had a smaller public than did German books. In all likelihood, the STN’s correspondent in Cologne sold French books throughout the region of the lower Rhine, its correspondent in Frankfurt throughout the RhineMain region and the states of Hesse, and its correspondent in Prague across Bohemia and the territories of the Habsburg monarchy. We know for a fact that the STN’s correspondent in Mannheim supplied French books to princely courts all across southwestern Germany, from the Palatinate to Bavaria, and that its correspondent in Hamburg sent French books up the Elbe to Saxony and eastward along the Baltic to Prussia, Scandinavia, and Russia. Only a fraction of the retail customers of the STN’s correspondents in Cologne, Frankfurt, Prague, Mannheim, and Hamburg were in those cities— and some of them were not even in Germany, however one defines “Germany” in an age before Germany as a political entity had come into existence. The STN’s correspondent in Hamburg did not bother about trying to define “Germany.” To describe the area of his retail trade, he used a geographic designation: “the North.” The case of the STN’s Hamburg correspondent illustrates one of the difficulties of studying the French book trade in eighteenth-century Germany: the subject is always threatening to overflow its banks and to spill out beyond the frontiers of Germany. In the eighteenth century, Germany was not only a destination for French books, it was also a conduit for them, one link in an international chain of transmission; and so some small fraction of the French books traded in Germany were not for German readers. That was true of the French books ordered by the STN’s correspondent in Hamburg, but it was

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equally true of the French books traded at the Leipzig fairs, which could have gone from Leipzig to bookshops in Riga or Warsaw, as well as to bookshops in cities of Germany. It cannot be claimed, therefore, that the orders the STN received from booksellers in Germany reflected the demand for French books among the German public exclusively. But neither can it be said that their orders were of merely local significance. Because of the nature of the retail French book trade, the orders of the STN’s correspondents in Germany reflected the demand for French books across broad swathes of (mainly German) territory— or so I would argue. The skeptics, however, might still counter with one final objection: how do we know that the orders represent the demand for French books in general, as opposed to the demand for those books the STN happened to have published? To deal with that final objection, we need to turn our attention to the nature of publishing in the eighteenth century.

Publishing in the Eighteenth Century In the eighteenth century, most publishers were also booksellers. Their catalogues therefore contained both books from their own lists ( fonds) and those they had obtained from other publishers by means of swapping (assortiment). The STN conducted regular exchanges with other publisher-wholesalers, mainly, though not exclusively, in Switzerland; and, as a result, its stock inventory came to resemble that of other Swiss houses. Of course Switzerland was only one of the centers of French publishing in the late eighteenth century. Piracy, however, was rampant throughout the extraterritorial French publishing industry, in the Low Countries no less than in Switzerland; and popular French books were promptly pirated in such cities as Liège, Bouillon, and Amsterdam as well as Neuchâtel, Lausanne, and Bern. The STN’s correspondents in Germany stressed repeatedly that they could obtain many of the same books from both the Low Countries and Switzerland and that their choice of where to purchase them depended primarily on two factors: price and speed of delivery. There is no reason to believe, therefore, that they would have turned, say, to Liège for one kind of book and to Neuchâtel for another. Because of widespread piracy and the practice of swapping among publishers, the same basic stock of books, though not necessarily the same editions, were available in Switzerland as in the Low Countries.

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In short, once one realizes how the wholesale book trade, retail bookselling, and publishing worked in the late eighteenth century, it seems quite reasonable to treat the STN’s trade in Germany as a representative slice of the French book trade in Germany: representative, however, more in the rhetorical sense of a synecdoche— of a part standing in for the whole—than in the social science sense of “typical.” Social scientists create types by abstracting from them the elements of human individuality. But one cannot abstract those elements from the STN’s commercial relations in Germany. The STN’s trade in Germany was not some vast impersonal mechanism guided by an “invisible hand” according to the laws of supply and demand. It involved dozens of middlemen, who played various roles in transmitting French books from Neuchâtel to readers in (and sometimes beyond) Germany. The Neuchâtel archives contain more than 150 dossiers with over 2,500 pieces of correspondence (letters, balance sheets, shipping invoices, legal documents) from correspondents of the STN in more than forty locations in Germany and German-speaking Switzerland, from booksellers, shipping agents, bankers, magistrates, lawyers, Protestant ministers, members of the public, and a few authors, as well as from employees and associates of the STN. And those dossiers reveal some remarkable eighteenth-century characters: a Hamburg bookseller who prided himself on selling expensive editions of French books to princes and high-ranking aristocrats at courts across northern Europe and who hosted the most elegant salon in Hamburg but whose trade collapsed in bankruptcy in 1785 and who turned up six years later as a militant Jacobin in revolutionary Paris; a native-born Parisian and Freemason who performed secret diplomatic missions for Frederick the Great of Prussia before establishing himself as a publisher of French pornography in the German Rhineland; a French Protestant minister in Cassel who volunteered to flog both the STN’s edition of a French Bible and its edition of Diderot’s Encyclopédie; an expatriate former French military officer and occasional author who resided at a small princely court near Frankfurt and who volunteered to promote the sales of the STN’s books but who then swindled the STN and fled to Berlin, where he won election to the prestigious Prussian academy; and one of the STN’s own associates, a hard-bitten, unsentimental former textile manufacturer with little patience for idle chitchat, who traveled through the Rhineland in the summer of 1779 inspecting book shops and enduring interminable conversations with loquacious booksellers. The dossiers are endlessly fascinating, but not because they provide information about the typical eighteenth-century

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bookseller, or French Protestant minister, or expatriate French author, or traveling commercial agent. To do justice to the documentary riches in the Neuchâtel archives, one has to study the STN’s trade in Germany from two perspectives: both as a representative slice of the French book trade in eighteenth-century Germany and as an ensemble of individual life stories. Throughout this book, I have tried to give equal weight to both of those aspects—the individual as well as the representative— and that applies also to how I have treated the STN itself. On the face of it, it might not seem that there was all that much to distinguish the STN from other French-language publishers of the late eighteenth century—not its location outside of France (dozens of French-language publishers, as already noted, plied their trade along the eastern frontiers of the French kingdom), nor its pirating of original editions (piracy was rampant in the eighteenth century), nor its printing of books in small formats (by the 1780s, contemporaries were speaking of a “mania for small formats”). And in its commercial correspondence, the STN usually wrote in the first-person plural and signed its letters with the company name, as if to expunge any traces of individuality. Behind the impersonal collective “we” of the STN’s letters, however, stood the directors of the firm, book dealers whose individual characteristics did, in fact, color the nature of the STN’s trade— especially, and most important for this study, the nature of its trade in Germany. Before beginning with the story of the STN’s trade in Germany, therefore, it seems important to say just a few words about the directors of the firm and what set them apart from the other French-language publishers who were plying their literary wares in the international marketplace of ideas. A small group of enterprising Neuchâtelois owned and directed the STN: Frédéric-Samuel Ostervald (1713– 95), a high-ranking local magistrate and distinguished man of letters, who was the author of several works on geography; Jean-Elie Bertrand (1737– 79), Ostervald’s son-in-law, who was an ordained Protestant minister and professor of belles-lettres at the collège in Neuchâtel; Abraham Bosset de Luze (1731–81), a wealthy textile manufacturer who joined the STN in early 1777; and Samuel Fauche (1732–1803), the only one of the founders of the STN to have performed an apprenticeship as a bookseller but who fell out with his associates in 1772 and then went on to create his own firm specializing in the publication of prohibited books. All the directors of the STN were native French speakers; they were steeped in French culture; and their personal sympathies lay with the philosophes. But they were not French. As Swiss Protestants, they were much closer, both geo-

Introduction

13

graphically and culturally, to the world of German-speaking Europe than were publishers in France. Neuchâtel was only a few miles away from Germanspeaking towns and villages in the canton of Bern. The STN’s directors lived, therefore, in a linguistic border area, and one of them, Bertrand, spoke German fluently. Not that it was really necessary for French-language publishers to know German in order to sell French books in Germany. Many of the French booksellers in Germany were native French speakers (either French, Swiss, or descendants of Huguenot refugees), and those who were native German-speakers usually had at least a smattering of French, enough to conduct a business correspondence. The STN indicated to its German-speaking correspondents that they could write in German if they preferred, and some of them did prefer it; but even those correspondents who wrote to the STN in German were able to read business letters in French. The STN, therefore, did not have to go to the trouble of writing in German; it simply had to decipher the occasional letter in German— a task that it would probably have been able to manage even without Bertrand’s aid. What made Bertrand’s knowledge of German important was not so much that it facilitated the STN’s correspondence with booksellers in Germany as that it allowed the STN to translate German books into French. The two decades of the STN’s existence coincided with a period of extraordinary creativity in the world of German letters. Less than a century earlier, when Leibniz wrote his Théodicée in French, German had scarcely existed as a literary language. Now, suddenly, it was serving as a vehicle of expression for the boldest and most innovative works in nearly every field of literature. Kant inaugurated the “Copernican revolution” in philosophy; the theology of the Aufklärung expunged mysteries and miracles from the Word of God; the Göttingen school of historiography laid the foundations of historicism; the Stürmer und Dränger liberated the theater from the straitjacket of classical poetics; and Goethe touched a generation of novel-readers with his Werther. In retrospect, the enormous importance of German literature in the last third of the eighteenth century seems obvious, but, at the time, the French knew almost nothing about it (with the exception of Werther, which was translated into French). Shortly after setting itself up in trade, therefore, the STN spotted an opening in the market. Instead of confining itself to the publication of French works, as most of its competitors were doing, it announced an ambitious plan to publish French translations of the “best of contemporary German literature.” In the end, a combination of factors prevented

14

int ro du c t io n

the STN from realizing that ambitious plan: Bertrand was too busy to devote himself full time to translating; freelance translators demanded more money than the STN could afford to pay; and, in 1779, Bertrand died, still a relatively young man at the age of forty-two, leaving the STN without any in-house translators. Before Bertrand’s death, however, the STN did manage to publish seven translations of German works, including a translation of Friedrich Nicolai’s Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker, a major work of the Berlin Aufklärung and one of the most popular and widely disseminated German novels of the entire eighteenth century. In its German editions, Sebaldus Nothanker probably did more than any other work to disseminate the rationalist theology of the Aufklärung among Germanspeaking readers—but only among German-speaking readers. In the STN’s French translation, by contrast, Nicolai’s novel reached readers all across Eu rope. Located astride the linguistic border between the French- and German-speaking worlds, the STN performed the role of Helvetia mediatrix, introducing the Aufklärung to a European reading public decades before another one of its compatriots, Madame de Staël, “discovered” the romantic paradise of “poets and thinkers.” Unlike nearly all of its competitors, then, the STN transmitted books in both directions across the Franco-German border—from Germany to France as well as from France to Germany. That was one thing that set it apart. Another was that none of the STN’s directors, with the exception of Fauche, had had any previous experience with printing, publishing, or selling books. When Ostervald and Bertrand set up shop in late 1769, they were rank beginners. They knew precious little about the book trade in general and still less about the book trade in Germany— about its seasonal rhythms and its geography, the central role of the Leipzig fairs, and the professional jargon of German booksellers. Even for the most knowledgeable of book dealers, the old Reich was forbidding terrain, what with its political fragmentation, its overlapping and competing jurisdictions, and its innumerable tariff barriers, currencies, and legal systems: it was all the more so for the STN. Reading through the STN’s correspondence with booksellers in Germany, one often gets the impression that Ostervald and Bertrand were feeling their way in the dark, casting about like explorers in an uncharted land. They took many wrong turns, endured numerous accidents, and became embroiled in bitter disagreements with the native tribes of booksellers, whose language they could usually understand, more or less, but whose ways of doing business seemed strange and exotic to inexperienced publishers from French-speaking

Introduction

15

Switzerland. Throughout their careers, the STN’s directors were learning as they went, and so the story of their efforts to sell French books in Germany has all the drama of a voyage of discovery. By accompanying them on that voyage, we can begin to map the contours and the topography of what has remained until now a virtual terra incognita: the French book trade of late eighteenth-century Germany.

chapter 1

Rite of Spring The Leipzig Easter Fair and the Literary Marketplace

Le commerce de l’Allemagne ne peut se faire autrement que par les foires. (Trade in Germany cannot be conducted otherwise than through the fairs.) —Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 7 June 1780

In early March 1770, as the STN’s presses were turning out the first of its publications, a puzzling letter arrived at the shop in Neuchâtel. It came from a correspondent in German-speaking Switzerland, a firm called the Société Typographique de Berne, that had ordered a considerable quantity of the STN’s books for sale at the Easter book fairs in Germany. The STN had already dispatched some of those books to Bern but not all; and in their letter of early March, the booksellers in Bern announced that after the middle of the month, it would be too late to transport any more of the STN’s books to the fairs. Why too late? the STN wondered. Without any previous knowledge of the book trade in Germany, the STN was under the impression that its correspondents in Bern intended its books for the fairs at both Frankfurt and Leipzig. The fairs would not start till sometime in the following month, and the STN had observed that textile merchants in Neuchâtel continued to make shipments of printed calicoes to Frankfurt as late as early April. If textiles

The Leipzig Easter Fair

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could still be sent to Frankfurt at that late date, then why not books? the STN asked its correspondents in Bern. And without waiting for a reply, it proceeded to send a crate of books to Bern on 1 April, followed a week later by a letter in which it expressed the hope that the books had arrived “in time to be sent to Frankfurt before the fair.” In fact, the STN’s correspondents in Bern had never expected to sell more than a handful of its books at the fair in Frankfurt: “You are perhaps unaware, Messieurs, that the fair in Frankfurt is of little significance for the book trade—in any case, for us,” C. A. Serini, an employee of the Société Typographique de Berne, explained to the STN in a letter of 11 April: The few booksellers from the surrounding Catholic areas who go there are certainly not worth the trouble of undertaking a journey of 80 leagues. . . . Leipzig, where there is an assembly of five- to sixhundred booksellers from all countries, is the only location suitable for the book trade. . . . Let us suppose, Messieurs, that your crate arrives here on the 14th of this month. . . . They [the books in the crate] could not be in Frankfurt any earlier than 9 or 10 May, from there to Leipzig it will take at least thirteen to fourteen days; thus the crate would arrive after my departure, for I plan to depart from Leipzig on 21 or 22 May. The letter read as if written by a schoolmaster for his pupils. And, in a sense, the directors of the STN were pupils, neophyte book dealers who had a great to deal to learn about the business of selling books in Germany. Many years would go by before all the mysteries of that business were finally revealed to them. But the spring of 1770 was a decisive moment in their early education. Succinctly and plainly written, Serini’s letter made it clear to the Neuchâtelois that their mental map of the German book trade had been all wrong and that they would have to re-imagine it, Copernicus-like, from an utterly new perspective. The German book trade revolved around Leipzig: that was the main lesson Serini’s letter imparted, and it was a crucial lesson for any foreign publishing firm hoping to sell its books in the German literary market during the last third of the eighteenth century.

* * * Unlike most markets today in the age of global capitalism, the German literary market of the late eighteenth century had not yet broken free of its moorings

18

c ha pt er 1

in time and space. Tightly bound, both temporally and spatially, to the Leipzig Easter fairs, it was still, quite literally, a market place. For roughly two or three weeks every spring, Leipzig was transformed into a vast book emporium. Nearly all the major booksellers in Germany transported their new publications to the fairs, and hundreds of them attended the fairs in person, selling their own editions and buying those of others. While the fair lasted, the streets of Saxony’s commercial capital were a whirlwind of activity: book dealers dashed to and fro, account books tucked under their arms, inspecting one another’s stock, doing deals, and settling accounts. Then, once the fair had ended, they packed up what they had purchased and transported it to their shops throughout German-speaking Europe, from Frankfurt to Riga. Some of them might return to Leipzig for the autumn fair, but the volume of trade conducted at the autumn fair was small—too small to justify a second annual trip to Leipzig in the view of the Société Typographique de Berne. If a publisher wanted to ensure that his new publications would be able to reach readers all across German-speaking Europe, there was only one reliable method—to transport those publications to Leipzig for sale at the Easter fairs. In no other European country of the late eighteenth century was the book trade so highly centralized as it was in Germany. Not even in France, the country of centralization par excellence, was there a single location where booksellers from every corner of the realm gathered annually. To be sure, all the major French publishers were located in Paris, and so they did not have to go anywhere else to trade with one another directly. But there were also hundreds of French booksellers scattered throughout the provinces. If the STN wished to enter into direct contact with them, it had no choice but to engage the ser vices of a “traveling commissioner” (commis voyageur). Setting out from Neuchâtel, the traveling commissioner would journey around the kingdom on horseback for months at a time, passing from one province to another as he met with booksellers individually. In Germany, no such lengthy and arduous journey was necessary or even useful. On one occasion, in early 1776, Barthélemy de Félice, a French-language publisher in the Swiss town of Yverdon, offered to hire Serini as a traveling commissioner for Germany; Serini felt duty bound to turn down that offer: “As I know this country and the principal booksellers,” he explained in a letter to the STN, “I made him [i.e., Félice] realize the senselessness of such a journey, for one can accomplish everything and make all the necessary arrangements during the Leipzig fair.”

The Leipzig Easter Fair

19

Since the Leipzig fair had no parallel anywhere else in Europe, it is not surprising that its significance had to be explained to a French-language publisher in Yverdon. The Leipzig fair was like Gothic type or convoluted syntax, a German peculiarity whose meaning foreigners had a hard time deciphering. From the standpoint of German booksellers, however, the fair made perfectly good sense because it provided an institutional corrective to a characteristically German deficiency: the lack of a cultural capital. With the possible exception of Vienna, there was no city in the German-speaking world with enough booksellers and enough book buyers to absorb the entire pressrun of a new edition. Had it not been for the fairs, the marketing of a new publication would have entailed hundreds of small shipments to widely scattered booksellers. Instead, publishers were able to make bulk shipments to a single location— a method of trade that was both easier and cheaper than making hundreds of small shipments. Easier, cheaper— and yet a hardship all the same. According to Friedrich Nicolai, a leading publisher in Berlin, the fairs were a “necessary evil”: necessary because they provided the only practicable remedy for the cultural, political, and economic fragmentation of Germany; an evil because the annual trek to Leipzig was expensive and time-consuming. Nicolai knew what he was talking about. During the course of his long career in the book trade, he made roughly forty trips to Leipzig. And his trips there were relatively short. If traveling to the fairs was a hardship for Nicolai in Berlin, how much more of a hardship must it have been for booksellers from western Germany, let alone for the French-language publishers of the Low Countries, France, and Switzerland. Fortunately for publishers in western Europe, there was a way to sell books in Leipzig without going there in person: the so-called commission trade (Kommissionsbuchhandel). Publishers who wished to avoid the hardship of traveling to the fairs would send their publications to commissioners, and the latter would take charge of everything else: the storage of books in a Leipzig warehouse, the announcing of titles in the fair catalogues, and the negotiating of sales with other booksellers during the fairs. In the 1770s, French-language publishers in Amsterdam, Liège, Bouillon, and Paris were availing themselves of the Kommissionsbuchhandel, as were German publishers in southern and western Germany. And the arrangement worked splendidly. Indeed, it worked so well that it eventually spread beyond the circle of booksellers whose geographic distance from Leipzig precluded personal attendance at the fairs. By

20

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the turn of the century, nearly all the major publishing firms in Germanspeaking Europe were employing the ser vices of commissioners in Leipzig. The Kommissionsbuchhandel was a commercial innovation of farreaching significance. Originally designed in the eighteenth century to facilitate trade at the fairs, it gradually developed into a permanent, year-round institution. By the early nineteenth century, commissioners in Leipzig were receiving new publications and releasing them to other booksellers throughout the year. Fewer and fewer books therefore changed hands at the fairs, until, finally, the historical link between the German literary market and the fairs was severed altogether. Looking back from the perspective of the nineteenth century, it seems clear that the Kommissionsbuchhandel was the way of the future. The STN’s directors, however, did not have the benefit of hindsight. In fact, they had no idea what the Kommissionsbuchhandel was. German booksellers tried to explain it to them, but the explanations did no good since they were couched in an ambiguous commercial jargon whose meaning was intelligible only to those who already understood how the German book trade operated. The ambiguity stemmed from the specious resemblance between the German and French expressions “in Kommission” and “en commission.” If a German commissioner, call him “Herr X,” were selling books on behalf of another publisher at the Leipzig fairs, the standard way of describing that relation in German was to say that the books were being sold “bei Herrn X in Kommission.” Translated into French, that became “en commission chez Monsieur X.” It is hard to imagine how else one could have translated the German. Unfortunately, however, “en commission” had another, far more common meaning, one with which the STN’s directors were indeed familiar and that caused them no end of confusion in their dealings with would-be commissioners in Germany. Usually, when a publisher consented to release his books to a bookseller “en commission,” it meant simply that the bookseller was obligated to pay only for such books as he managed to sell and that he was at liberty to return unsold copies after a specified lapse of time. Gradually, as the functional distinction between publisher and bookseller crystallized during the course of the nineteenth century, the sending of books “en commission” became an increasingly common practice. But it was not common in the late eighteenth century, and the STN disliked it— quite naturally since no publisher from Gutenberg to the present has ever relished the prospect of being saddled with returns. If the STN consented to release books “en

The Leipzig Easter Fair

21

commission,” it was only because it considered those books so old or otherwise undesirable as to be unsaleable by any other means. New publications that had just come off the presses it expected booksellers to purchase for their own accounts, without any provision for the return of unsold copies. The two terms, in short, had utterly different meanings: to send books “en commission” to individual retail booksellers was an option of last resort; to send them to a German commissioner was a tried-and-true method for marketing new publications to hundreds of booksellers simultaneously. The STN, however, mistook the latter for the former, and responded accordingly when German booksellers volunteered to serve as its commissioners at the fairs. During the early 1770s, the STN received overtures from two wellestablished Frankfurt book dealers who offered to represent the STN as commissioners in Germany: Friederich Varrentrap and Johann Georg Esslinger. It is true that neither Varrentrap nor Esslinger would have made ideal commissioners, in part because both of them had their main shops in Frankfurt rather than Leipzig, but also because they were old. As doyens of the Frankfurt book trade, they had built their businesses in the days before the final decline of the Frankfurt fairs, and they seem to have had some difficulty adjusting to the fact that Frankfurt had ceased to be a good location for the dissemination of French editions in Germany. In the altered circumstances of the early 1770s, their offers to the STN seemed a trifle out of date. And yet both Varrentrap and Esslinger maintained shops in Leipzig as well as Frankfurt, they attended the Leipzig Easter fairs regularly, and they were serving as commissioners for other French-language publishers: Varrentrap for the Société Typographique de Bouillon, Esslinger for Bassompière in Liège. Either one of them, therefore, could have done the job of representing the STN if the STN had given them a chance. Varrentrap was the first of the two to make overtures to the STN. In a letter of October 1770, he offered to receive the STN’s books for its account and to market them on its behalf from his shops in Frankfurt and Leipzig. Once a year, he explained, the STN would receive payment for the value of the books that he had sold during the previous year, while, for its part, the STN would have to agree to bear all shipping, storage, and publicity costs; to set its prices low enough for him to realize a profit; not to release its books to any other bookseller in Germany; and to direct to him all the orders that it received from Germany. It was the normal business arrangement between a foreign publisher and a German commissioner. And clearly Varrentrap was eager to snare the STN’s business, for the following year, after having made

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his offer to the STN by letter, he dispatched his son to Neuchâtel to confer with the STN’s directors in person. But that personal appeal was no more effective than Varrentrap’s original letter. Despite the advice of a bookseller in Basel who knew of Varrentrap’s offer to the STN and who urged the STN to accept it, the STN was not interested. At around the same time that Varrentrap’s son made his trip to Neuchâtel, the STN received overtures from Esslinger, though it received them through the intermediary of Esslinger’s son-in-law, the Mannheim bookseller Christian Schwan. The arrangement that Schwan proposed was practically the same as the one that Varrentrap had proposed, except that Schwan went into far greater detail about how it would work. He explained that his fatherin-law would be swapping the STN’s books at the Leipzig fairs, and that since books were swapped at the fairs according to variable ratios, the STN would have to print new title pages without prices for the books that it expected Esslinger to sell. He also explained that he and his father-in-law would be dividing the labors, with Esslinger handling sales at the fairs, while he took charge of bookkeeping and remitting payment. And he added one further condition that Varrentrap had not mentioned: the arrangement would have to extend to Strasbourg, so that, if the STN received orders from the Alsatian capital, those orders too would be directed to either Esslinger or himself. Schwan spilled a good deal of ink explaining the details of the arrangement—in vain since the STN was no more interested in engaging the services of Esslinger and Schwan than it had been in engaging the services of Varrentrap. More than a year and a half went by after Schwan made his proposal on behalf of Esslinger and himself, and the STN showed no inclination to accept it. Then, in the autumn of 1773, it suddenly announced to Schwan that it was planning to transfer some books from one of its correspondents in Nancy, a bookseller named Duvez l’aîné, to Esslinger. And it made that announcement as if it were finally consenting to Schwan’s proposal: “It would appear, as you have observed, that the circumstances are favorable for us to try to establish, in Frankfurt, a small assortment of our books, which, by now, have grown quite numerous.” But the STN was not, in fact, adopting Schwan’s proposal; it was merely releasing old and hard-to-sell books “en commission.” And so began a thoroughly futile commercial relationship between the STN and Esslinger. To the cast-off merchandise from Duvez in Nancy the STN added cast-off merchandise from booksellers in Berlin, Dresden, and Cassel, who had also received books from the STN and were now refusing to keep them for one reason or another. All those unwanted books were trans-

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ferred to Esslinger, to be held by him “en commission”; and by the time they reached him in 1774, they were all at least two years old. They languished in Esslinger’s shop until he died in 1776. Then they passed into the hands of another Frankfurt bookseller, who kept them for an additional three years before imploring the STN to repossess them. Had the STN expected Esslinger to establish an outlet for the dissemination of its editions at the fairs, it would have had to send him hundreds of copies of its new publications. Instead, it treated his shop like a rubbish heap, a dumping ground for books that nobody wanted and that it saw no other alternative but to release “en commission.” Steered onto the wrong track through an error of translation, the STN’s correspondence with Esslinger went off the rails before it got under way. Eventually, after years of experience, the STN must have figured out what the Kommissionsbuchhandel was and how it differed from a trade “en commission.” But even so, the STN never engaged the ser vices of a German commissioner. How, then, were its books traded in Germany’s literary marketplace?

* * * Instead of passing directly from Neuchâtel to a commissioner, the STN’s editions traveled to Leipzig through a two-stage process: first, the STN would sell its books to book dealers in German-speaking Switzerland, who purchased them for their own account, either for money (compte d’argent) or by means of exchanges (compte de change); then the Swiss German book dealers would transport the STN’s books to Leipzig, where they sold them to German book dealers, usually by swapping them against other books. The STN’s first correspondent in German-speaking Switzerland was the firm that we mentioned at the outset of this chapter, the Société Typographique de Berne. A solid and well-established firm, the typographical society in Bern had already been transporting French books to Leipzig for several years before it started corresponding with the STN in late 1769. It traded with nearly all the principal booksellers in Germany; maintained a storeroom in Leipzig, probably under the direction of a Leipzig commissioner; and regularly sent a representative of the firm to the Leipzig Easter fairs. It was ideally placed, therefore, to transport the STN’s books to Leipzig, and, for several years in the early 1770s, it was the only Swiss German firm to do so. But its success encouraged imitators, like Emmanuel Haller, another book dealer in Bern, who wrote to the STN in May 1773: “I flatter myself that you will extend to

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me the same conditions as you grant to the Société Typographique of this city, which sends many of your books to Leipzig and does very well by it.” Shortly afterward, Haller, too, began selling the STN’s books at Leipzig, and, over the next several years, two other Swiss German book dealers did likewise: first the Basel book dealer Johann Jacob Flick and then Serini, who established a trade for his own account in 1776 after having worked for several years as an assistant in the shops of other booksellers. Four Swiss German book dealers plying the same wares in the same market made for a crowded market—too crowded in the view of a book dealer in Winterthur named Johann Heinrich Steiner. In 1784, when the STN offered Steiner its books for sale at the fairs, he declined the offer, explaining that “Messieurs Haller, Serini and several others sell your merchandise at Leipzig.” Happily for the STN, however, its principal Swiss German correspondents did not share Steiner’s view. Undeterred by the competition, they continued to sell the STN’s publications throughout the 1770s and 1780s. And they sold a great many of them, a total of sixty-six, according to the entries in the fair cata logues (see Table 1). Admittedly, figures derived from those catalogues have to be handled with some caution. Not every book sold in Leipzg was necessarily entered in the catalogues, nor was every book entered in the catalogues necessarily sold there. On a few occasions, the STN’s Swiss German correspondents may have used the catalogues to float ballons d’essai, announcing the STN’s books in order to test the winds of literary demand and deciding afterward that it was not worth their while to transport the books to Leipzig. The numbers in Table 1 do not therefore rest on a foundation of impeccably solid evidence. But the evidence is solid enough to support the conclusion that the Swiss German book dealers sold at least several dozen of the STN’s editions in Leipzig. Much more difficult to ascertain is how many copies of the STN’s editions were sold in Leipzig. Since the STN’s Swiss German correspondents usually ordered the STN’s books for their own account, they are likely to have ordered them conservatively, taking only as many copies as they felt confident of being able to sell; and, since all of them had an intimate knowledge of the Leipzig fairs, it seems reasonable to assume that most of the books they ordered for Leipzig did in fact find buyers there. Their estimates of the demand for the STN’s books, however, varied enormously—from as few as thirty copies if the STN’s was just one of several editions of the same book announced in the cata logue, to three hundred if the STN’s was the only edition available at the fair, to as many as a thousand for a book whose subject

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Table 1. Number of STN Editions Announced in the Leipzig Fair Cata logues, 1770–1789 STB 1770 1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780 1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789

4 1 3 5 4 2

Haller

1 3 1

Flick

Serini

Other Swiss Booksellers

German Booksellers 1 2 2

2 1 1

1

4 6 2 1

10 1 2 1

1 2 2 1

2 3

2 1 1

1 2 1 5 1

1 1 2

1 2

Note: The Swiss German booksellers rarely announced the STN’s editions as the STN’s. They announced them under their own names, as if they had been published in Bern or Basel. To identify the STN’s editions, I have used the bibliography compiled by Michael Schmidt (L’ édition neuchâteloise au siècle des Lumières, 236– 83). In the late 1770s and early 1780s, the STN published several joint editions with its sister societies in Bern and Lausanne. Those editions, which bear the imprint “En Suisse, chez les libraires associés,” have been counted as the STN’s editions for the purposes of this table. Finally, it should be noted that a few of the STN’s editions were announced more than once, either by several booksellers in the same year or by one bookseller in different years. The table includes duplicate and repeat announcements, so the numbers add up to slightly more than the total of the STN’s editions entered in the cata logues.

was of particular interest to the German public, like the STN’s edition of Journal et anecdotes intéressantes du voyage de Monsieur le comte de Falkenstein, a work about the Emperor Joseph II’s incognito journey through France to visit his sister Marie-Antoinette at Versailles. The Société Typographique de Berne, of all the STN’s Swiss German correspondents the one with the longest experience of trading at the fairs, did not expect the Leipzig market to

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absorb any more than two hundred copies of the pirated edition of a French work. But that calculation certainly did not apply to original editions. The volume of demand could rise into the thousands for the original edition of a scandalous blockbuster like Mirabeau’s Lettres de cachet. The variations were so great, in other words, that one cannot possibly calculate from the data contained in the fair catalogues how many copies of the STN’s books traveled to Leipzig. Unfortunately, one cannot do so from the data contained in the STN’s own account books either. Those account books, called Livres de commissions, reveal that hundreds of copies of the STN’s books, many of them books whose titles its Swiss German correspondents entered in the fair catalogues, traveled annually from Neuchâtel to Bern or Basel. But one cannot be certain, in every case, how many copies traveled on to Leipzig, how many went to destinations other than Leipzig, or how many stayed behind in Bern or Basel for use in a local retail trade. With so many unanswerable questions hanging in the air, it would be futile to try to pin down the exact number of the STN’s books sold in Leipzig. But one does not have to know the exact number in order to get the main point: through its trade with Bern and Basel, the STN was able to tap the lucrative Leipzig market for French books, and to do so, moreover, without trading in Leipzig directly. It thereby spared itself all the logistical headaches of transacting business at the fairs. For the STN, it was a good arrangement. Was it also a good arrangement for the STN’s trading partners in Bern and Basel? At first sight, it may seem surprising that the Swiss German book dealers were any more willing than the STN to make annual trips to Leipzig. After all, the distance to Leipzig was hardly any less from Bern or Basel than it was from Neuchâtel. Typically, the Swiss German book dealers or their shop assistants would set off for Leipzig in late March or early April and would not return until late May, several weeks ahead of the books they had purchased at the fairs, which took longer than individual travelers to complete the return journey from Leipzig to Switzerland. It was July or even August by the time the Swiss German book dealers had finally sorted through and orga nized all their transactions from the Easter fair. Had they had any choice in the matter, they would almost certainly have preferred to avoid so long, cumbersome, and costly a process. The Swiss German dealers, however, did not have any choice. All of them needed German books for their retail customers in Bern or Basel; and, with the possible exception of Serini, about whom the information is comparatively scant, they conducted their wholesale trade mainly if not exclu-

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sively in Germany. To conduct a wholesale trade in Germany, book dealers had to sell their books at the Leipzig fairs, either by traveling there themselves or by engaging the ser vices of a Leipzig commissioner. “Trade in Germany cannot be conducted otherwise than through the fairs,” the Société Typographique de Berne told the STN. Since the Swiss German dealers were going to trade at the fairs anyway, it made sense for them to purchase the STN’s books, which they could exchange against the German books they needed in order to diversify their stock. The STN, on the other hand, rarely had any need for German books. Had it traded directly with German booksellers at the fairs, it would have had considerable difficulty arranging swaps. And no doubt other Frenchlanguage publishers in western Switzerland would have faced that difficulty too. Instead of trading directly at the fairs, both Félice in Yverdon and the publisher Jean-Pierre Heubach in Lausanne did the same thing as the STN: they supplied their French publications to Swiss German book dealers, who in turn sold them in Leipzig. Bound to one another by complementary interests, the book dealers of French- and German-speaking Switzerland formed links in a vast chain of literary transmission, which stretched from the printing shops of Yverdon, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel to Bern and Basel and thence across the highways of Saxony to the bookstalls of Germany’s literary marketplace. So vast an operation, however, posed many daunting challenges of organization and timing: just how many and how daunting we can observe by following the STN’s books as they made their way from Neuchâtel to Leipzig. Consider the books the Société Typographique de Berne ordered from the STN for the spring fair of 1770, two hundred copies each of three different works: a collection of letters about the Russian empire, Les Lettres du comte Algarotti sur la Russie; a history of France by Rossel, Histoire du patriotisme français ou Nouvelle histoire de France; and a novel about the supposedly true story of a sea voyage and shipwreck in the Carribean, Naufrage et avantures [sic] de M. Pierre Viaud. The book dealers in Bern ordered those works in late December 1769, before any of them had actually left the presses in Neuchâtel; but they could scarcely have done otherwise, as they made clear in their letters to the STN: no book dealer could afford to wait until the last minute when making preparations for the fair. Trading at the fair demanded careful advance planning. First of all, it was important for booksellers to know which books they would be selling at Leipzig so they could convey the titles to the editor of the

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fair cata logue. The cata logue, which went to press weeks before the opening of the fair, circulated among booksellers in Leipzig, who used it as a source of information about new publications. Works that booksellers added to their stock at the last minute and that failed to make it into the cata logue could still be sold at the fair, but sales would almost certainly be diminished: it was preferable to have the titles inserted in the cata logue, and for that, foresight and planning were necessary. Second, commercial shipping in Germany was painstakingly slow: crates of books took roughly three weeks to make the journey from Switzerland to Frankfurt, then an additional two weeks to complete the last leg of the journey to Leipzig, traveling in horse-drawn wagons across roads made soggy by early spring rains. The sooner one sent them off the better, and the more so since the costs of commercial transportation increased by as much as twofold as the date of the fair approached. The book dealers in Bern were so eager to get off their shipments before the spike in transportation costs that they began sending books to Leipzig in late December. In a letter of 4 January 1770, they told the STN that it could have until late February to complete its editions and get them to Bern. After that date, however, they would have no further use for them: the costs of transportation would be too high to permit any additional shipments to Leipzig. The workers in the STN’s printing shop were engaged in a race against the calendar. Both Les Lettres du comte Algarotti and the first volume of Histoire du patriotisme français were ready in time, and the STN sent two hundred copies of each of them to Bern in mid-February. Naufrage de Viaud, however, was slow to leave the press. The book dealers in Bern extended their deadline to 15 March, but the STN missed that deadline too. And when, at the end of the month, it finally completed its edition and hastily dispatched two hundred copies to Bern, it was too late to send them on to Leipzig. The fair catalogue, which had in the meantime gone to press, carried entries for all three of the STN’s editions. Only the first two, however, made it to Leipzig in the spring of 1770. Naufrage de Viaud stayed behind in Bern— shipwrecked, so to speak, until the autumn fair at the very earliest, which was the next occasion when the Société Typographique de Berne thought that it might be making “some shipments to Germany.”  At the very earliest—actually, it seems doubtful whether the two hundred copies of Naufrage de Viaud traveled to Leipzig in the autumn. During the summer the book dealers in Bern informed the STN that they would be conducting little or no trade at the autumn fair, and the following spring they announced

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Naufrage de Viaud in the fair catalogue for a second time. In all likelihood they held back the two hundred copies of the STN’s edition until the spring of 1771 so that they could include them in the shipments they made to the Easter fair. It seems likely, in other words, that a delay of several weeks in the printing of the STN’s edition led to a delay of an entire year in its distribution. The fate of Naufrage de Viaud provides an excellent starting point for an investigation of the commercial traffic between Neuchâtel and Leipzig because it dramatizes a fundamental problem that all booksellers conducting trade at the fairs had to confront: the rhythms of production and exchange were out of step. The printing shop in Neuchâtel, like most printing shops in the era of the wooden hand press, worked erratically throughout the year. New publications, however, did not trickle onto the market little by little as they left the press. Germany’s literary market was like the Nile River valley of ancient Egypt: flooded all at once in the spring, it would absorb the flood during the course of the year, then it would be flooded again the following spring— a pattern of ebb and flow that repeated itself year in and year out, at least through the mid-1770s. Eventually, as the Kommissionsbuchhandel expanded, a new pattern began to take shape, or so it would appear from the STN’s correspondence with Haller. By the late 1770s, according to Haller’s letters, it had become possible to collect orders at the fairs and execute them afterward. Haller continued to send his shop assistant (commis) to attend the Easter fairs in person, but he appears to have sent books to his commissioner (commissionaire) at several points during the year. Even then, however, the Swiss German book dealers preferred to have at least some copies of the STN’s new publications on hand at the fairs. And for as long as the old pattern held, they had to have them on hand at the fairs; otherwise no one would have bought them—a lesson that the STN learned in the spring of 1774 when it gave copies of its catalogues to Serini and asked him to solicit orders at the fair: “I would be delighted to be able to tell you that I did a brisk business in your behalf,” Serini told the STN after his return from Leipzig. “Unfortunately, all of my pains and efforts came to nothing. I distributed your cata logues to the principal booksellers without obtaining any commissions. I could have sold three or four copies of several items if I had had them with me. Everyone wishes to take advantage of nouveauté and does not like to wait for merchandise, especially if it is a question of making purchases for money.”

Figure 1. The 1770 Leipzig Easter Fair Cata logue. Like all the Leipzig fair catalogues of the period, this one contains a separate section devoted to books in “foreign languages,” nearly all of which are in French. Note the entry for the

STN’s edition of Naufrage et avantures de M. P. Viaud, which the Société Typographique de Berne announced as its own edition but which was not completed in time to be sold at the Easter fair. (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Leipzig)

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And yet there was really nothing that the STN or any other publisher could do to ensure that all their new editions would be ready in time for shipment to the fair. Printing shops did not operate that way. Every year a great many new publications shared the fate of Naufrage de Viaud: they lay around for months in storerooms while their publishers waited for the next opportunity to send them on to Leipzig. Some of the STN’s editions therefore were bound to suffer delays in distribution. And that was a matter of no small consequence, since the delays opened the door to competition, either from German translations or from other French editions of the same works. During the last third of the eighteenth century, German publishers produced a staggering volume of translations, above all of French and English works. In some years translations made up roughly one-third of total German literary production, and many of those translations arrived at the fairs within a year or two of the French originals. According to Orell, Gessner & Fuessli, a publishing firm in Zurich, German publishers were bound to snap up any good French book and would produce a translation in the twinkling of an eye: “In Germany we translate everything, including the most trivial items,” the Zurich book dealers reported to the STN. Of course the public for translations was not identical to that for French originals. Some German readers who purchased translations knew so little French that they would have been unlikely to purchase French books in any case; others wanted to own French originals even when translations were available. Yet the two publics did overlap, and the overlap was sufficiently large that the mere announcement of a forthcoming translation was enough to undermine the demand for a work in French—hence the cool reaction of the Société Typographique de Berne to the STN’s plan to publish an edition of the Histoire de Charles V, the French translation of a work by the Scottish historian William Robertson: “The enterprise of Charles V is undoubtedly excellent, but, if you will allow us to say so, a little too late, especially in Germany; the German translation is well advanced, it is very good and will always be preferable to the French edition,” the book dealers in Bern reported to the STN. Sure enough, a German translation of Naufrage de Viaud was published in the same year as the STN’s edition. And so also were two other French editions: one by a publisher in Liège, which was announced in the Leipzig spring cata logue of 1770; another by a publisher in Bordeaux, which was announced in the autumn cata logue. It is quite possible that those two editions and the German translation had already satisfied the demand of German booksellers by the time the Société Typographique de Berne was finally able

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to transport its two hundred copies of the STN’s edition to Leipzig in the spring of 1771. What if anything could a French-language publisher do to protect himself against competition at the Leipzig fairs? Not much, in practice. In theory, legislation adopted by the government of electoral Saxony in 1773 made it possible for any publisher to obtain a Saxon book privilege (chursächsische Freiheit), a kind of copyright that provided legal protection against rival editions at the Leipzig fairs. Saxon book privileges, however, were available only for books printed in Saxony. In order to be eligible for those privileges, foreign publishers would on occasion farm out the printing of their editions to printers in Saxony, a move that had the additional benefit of eliminating the costs and the delays of transporting those editions to Leipzig. But the vast majority of the French books traded at Leipzig came from presses in Switzerland, France, the Low Countries, London, or the German Rhineland. For the publishers of those books, there was only one way to beat the competition, and that was to outrun it. Whoever got his editions to Leipzig first reaped the demand, while those whose editions arrived afterward had to content themselves with gleaning the stubble of an already-harvested market. And what a great difference there was between reaping and gleaning! Just how great became clear to Bosset de Luze, one of the STN’s directors, when he made a journey through the Rhineland in the summer of 1779 and talked with dozens of German booksellers about the market for French books: “I have come to recognize the immense difference that exists between a new work [un article dans sa nouveauté] and one that has already appeared in the cata logues of the Leipzig fair,” he told his associates. Bosset made his observation about the value of nouveauté as if it were a major discovery, and to him it may very well have been a discovery since he had had no previous experience as a book dealer until he joined the STN in 1777. But it was hardly news to his associates. From the very beginning, the Société Typographique de Berne, Haller, Flick, and Serini had driven home to the STN the importance of preempting the competition at the Leipzig fairs. In the spring of 1771, when the Société Typographique de Berne was laying in its stock for the upcoming fair, it turned down the STN’s edition of Londres by Pierre-Jean Grosely, a French traveler’s description of contemporary English life, claiming that two other editions of the same work had already been announced at the Leipzig fair of the previous autumn. “It is now too late to profit from its nouveauté,” the book dealers in Bern explained to the STN. Two years later, in September 1773, Haller declined to accept

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some copies of the STN’s edition of Droit des gens, a treatise on natural law by Emer de Vattel, on the grounds that the STN’s edition had already been announced at the previous Easter fair. Whether the work was a travelogue or a legal treatise did not matter. The STN’s Swiss German correspondents wanted new publications. And they wanted them so badly that sometimes they seemed to care more about obtaining new publications—any new publications—than they did about the subject matter, the genre, or the authors of the works. Thus the following request that Flick made to the STN in the autumn of 1777: “If by next February you have some little but good nouveauté that I could use in Germany, then I’ll take a large number of copies.” By the time spring rolled around, the STN appears not to have completed any “little but good nouveauté,” or at least none that satisfied Flick; for he lamented that the STN had been unable to provide him with a “truly good but not too large little work [Werklein] for the upcoming Leipzig fair.” Despite their repeated insistence on the importance of nouveauté, the STN’s Swiss German correspondents never bothered to define that term, as if its meaning were so obvious as to require no explanation. Actually, its meaning was a little murky. Sometimes nouveauté referred to the quality that belonged to a new publication (thus the comment of the Société Typographique de Berne that the STN’s edition had been preempted and that it was too late “to profit from its nouveauté”); and, in that case, it resembled a tautology, nouveauté being the property that distinguished an “article dans sa nouveauté.” On other occasions, it designated a work that had not yet reached the Leipzig fairs; and, in that case too, it was a little ambiguous since multiple editions of the same work could be sufficiently different that it was difficult to say whether they were really editions of the same work. Booksellers, after all, were past masters at the art of putting old wine in new bottles. To recycle old publications as new ones, they altered titles, added notes, prefaces, or “corrections,” or else they simply allowed the passage of time to efface the memory of earlier editions—Droit des gens by Vattel, which Haller declined because it had been announced at the Easter fair in 1773, had originally been published in 1758. For all of the obvious importance that they attached to nouveauté, it was not always clear what exactly the STN’s correspondents had in mind when they used that term. But the main point was clear enough: French books had to be marketed with the utmost haste. The pressure to move swiftly was transmitted backward along the literary supply chain—from retailers who purchased French books

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at the fairs and had to sell them to their local customers before German translations or other French editions began circulating, to wholesalers who needed to make their shipments to Leipzig before the costs of transportation began to rise, to producers who had to try to complete their publications by the late winter or early spring. The pressure resulted from the very structure of the French book trade in Germany, from the central role of the fairs on the one hand and from the absence of any effective copyright protections on the other. It weighed heavily, therefore, on all the STN’s publications. But it weighed all the more heavily on publications that belonged to the category of what contemporaries called a “pièce du jour” (roughly, a topical work with close ties to contemporary political events), as we can observe by examining the brief commercial life cycle of one such publication: Le Compte rendu au roi, the account of royal finances that the French finance minister Jacques Necker published in mid-February 1781. Most readers today would have a hard time seeing the attraction of a work like Le Compte rendu, with all of its detailed information about tax revenues and government expenditures. In its own day, however, Le Compte rendu seemed enormously significant, not only in France but also in Germany— hence the following comment of a German journalist: “To disclose to public view facts that until now have been counted among the most important state secrets; brazenly to lay bare the wellsprings of government; to reveal with impunity the very secret that has always seemed to be the most jealously guarded: this is indeed a new phenomenon in politics.” The German journalist had immediately put his finger on the main point: by publishing Le Compte rendu, Necker breached the wall of secrecy that had always surrounded the affairs of royal statecraft. In the political history of Old Regime France, that was a new phenomenon indeed. A new phenomenon—and also, from the standpoint of the German book trade, perfectly timed. Because Le Compte rendu was published in the late winter, it burst onto the market at the very same moment that booksellers throughout the German-speaking world were on the lookout for new publications to sell at the upcoming Easter fair: “This is to inquire of you whether you will be printing the work recently published in Paris, Le Compte rendu au roi, par Monsieur Necker,” Flick wrote to the STN on 3 March, barely a fortnight after Necker’s work had been published in Paris. “The demand for this book is astonishingly strong, and I have heard that an edition of it will be printed here [i.e., in Basel], but only at a pressrun of 1,000 copies, which is too

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small. Perhaps you have already gone to press with the work . . . if so, please send me 1 to 200 copies just as soon as it leaves the press. . . . But I must have my order within ten days.” Soon afterward, a similar inquiry reached the STN from Haller in Bern: “Are you not printing a little work that is very much in demand around here Compte rendu au roi by M. Necker?” To meet the demand of its correspondents, the STN collaborated with the Société Typographique de Berne, completing an edition of Necker’s work by late March. By then, however, numerous other editions of Necker’s work were already on their way to Leipzig. On 21 March, a French bookseller in Hamburg expressed surprise that the STN had delayed so long (it was now roughly five weeks since the appearance of the French edition) before issuing its edition “of the inestimable work of M. Necker,” for he had already begun shipping his own edition of Le Compte rendu to the fair. Rather than await the completion of the STN’s edition, Flick appears to have filled his order from Serini and another Basel bookseller, Johann Jacob Thurneysen, who had joined forces to publish two editions of the work in the month of March alone. Christian Voss in Berlin also published an edition, and to the various editions in French, all of which were listed in the Easter catalogue of 1781, were added at least four German translations, of which one made it into the cata logue, a translation published by Carl Ernst Bohn in Hamburg. By the time of the Easter fair, the German book trade seemed to be burning with a feverish demand for Necker’s work. But once all the shipments for Leipzig had departed, the Necker fever cooled perceptibly. In early May, the STN tried to foist some copies of Le Compte rendu on a bookseller in Schaff hausen, only to be rebuffed with the observation that its edition had been preempted “as much in French as in German.” And, in France meanwhile, Necker’s credibility was coming under increasing attack. Critics of the French minister published pamphlets condemning his program of reforms, castigating him as a financial charlatan, and denouncing Le Compte rendu as a fraud. The barrage of attacks inflicted enough damage on Necker’s reputation that the king lost confidence in him and removed him from office in early May. Even so, the STN and the Société Typographique de Berne did not give up on the market for Neckerana. In the late summer of 1781, they published, under the title Collection de tous les ouvrages pour et contre M. Necker, a work comprising the various pamphlets critical of Necker as well as Le Compte rendu and other pieces written by Necker himself. Despite— or perhaps because of—the attacks that Necker had sustained, the Swiss were wagering that

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the controversy surrounding the now former minister would continue to elicit considerable interest. That wager, however, does not seem to have paid off — at least not in Germany. In August 1781, only six months after Le Compte rendu had exploded onto the German literary market, a bookseller in Bad Homburg, a small princely court near Frankfurt, warned the STN against expecting a strong demand in Germany for any sort of Neckerana. “The public,” he explained, “has come to recognize his [i.e., Necker’s] folly, and his works have fallen so far that we beg of you not to send us any more than three copies [of Collection de tous les ouvrages pour et contre M. Necker].” By November, the same Hamburg bookseller who had published Le Compte rendu in the previous March and who had been so exuberant about the “inestimable work of M. Necker” was throwing up his hands in exasperation. “We are more than sated with pièces concerning M. Necker,” he told the STN. Because Necker’s work was so short (the original Parisian edition comprised just 111 pages in a duodecimo format), it could be pirated and translated more rapidly than most of the other works that the STN published: not all the STN’s nouveautés lost their nouveauté with the same breathtaking speed as did Le Compte rendu. But even so, it is remarkable just how quickly thousands of copies of that work reached the Leipzig fair and how quickly German publishers managed to produce translations, which arrived in Leipzig at virtually the same time as the editions in French. The vertiginous rise and fall of the demand for Neckerana in Germany provides an extreme example of a general phenomenon: the frenetic pace of the French book trade in Germany.

* * * Word of all the Sturm und Drang in Leipzig filtered back to the placid shores of Lake Neuchâtel through the letters of the STN’s Swiss German correspondents. The STN’s directors, however, never set foot in Leipzig, and so had no personal experience of the frenetic doings at the fairs. One might have expected, therefore, that they would defer to the judgment of their correspondents in Bern and Basel when it came to estimating the demand for French books in Germany’s literary marketplace. But the STN found it difficult to believe that the orders it received from Bern and Basel were large enough to satisfy the demand for its books from all the booksellers of Germany. Always eager to increase the volume of its sales, it tried for several years during the early 1770s to solicit orders directly from booksellers in Leipzig. And when those orders failed to materialize, it seemed

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genuinely perplexed. “We cannot but be surprised,” it wrote to a Leipzig merchant in 1773, “that your booksellers do not prefer to draw . . . [our books] directly from us who release them at a low price, rather than from the booksellers of our region who transport them to Leipzig in large numbers for each of the fairs and inevitably sell them at a higher price.” Looking back, however, it does not seem the least bit surprising that Leipzig booksellers were so reluctant to order books directly from Neuchâtel. For one thing, the STN was almost certainly wrong about the price of its books. No doubt the Swiss German book dealers did increase the STN’s wholesale price when selling the STN’s books at the fairs: otherwise they would not have been able to make a profit and cover the costs of transportation. Those costs, however, were comparatively low because the Swiss German book dealers made bulk shipments to the fairs. By contrast, Leipzig booksellers who ordered the STN’s books directly from Neuchâtel would have had to bear the costs of transportation for small crates of books—unless, of course, they ordered hundreds of copies of the STN’s publications. And it would have been foolish of them to order so many copies when the STN’s Swiss German correspondents were selling the same publications at the fairs. Basically, the STN was faced with a choice: either it supplied its new publications to its Swiss German correspondents or it sold them to booksellers in Leipzig. It could not have it both ways. From the very moment, then, that the STN took the decision in early 1770 to supply hundreds of copies of its new publications to the Société Typographique de Berne for sale at the fairs, the die was cast. From that time forward, Leipzig booksellers no longer had any incentive to purchase the STN’s books from Neuchâtel and neither, for the most part, did the other north German booksellers who attended the fairs. The best that the STN was able to manage was a short-lived correspondence with the bookseller Conrad Walther in Dresden, who did, in fact, purchase a considerable quantity of two of the STN’s editions during the early 1770s, one hundred copies of Système de la nature by the Baron d’Holbach and fifty of the novel Lettres d’Elisabeth Sophie de Vallière by Mme. Riccoboni. But that was before Walther knew of the STN’s trade with Bern. Once he became aware of it, he promptly severed his ties to Neuchâtel: “The sale of your books is prevented because the Société de Berne and M. Haller of the same city supply them to the majority of the booksellers in Germany,” Walther told the STN. “I must limit myself, therefore, to a small number of copies that I can sell by hand [i.e., to retail customers in and

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around Dresden], and my orders for so few copies would be reduced to mere parcels, which are much too insignificant and would absorb the profit by the costs of shipping.” There was no gainsaying the logic of Walther’s comments. He could not order the STN’s books in large quantities without running into competition from the STN’s Swiss German correspondents, but he could not afford to order them in small quantities either because of the high costs of shipping. If he needed a few of the STN’s books, the easiest and cheapest method of obtaining them was to purchase them at the fairs from the STN’s Swiss German correspondents. Other booksellers in northern Germany came to the same conclusion. In 1776, the STN sent its catalogue to the Hamburg bookseller Karl Ernst Bohn, who wrote back to say he had looked over the cata logue and found several items to his liking. But he also indicated that he had already received some of the STN’s publications “from the other Swiss booksellers who travel to the Leipzig fair” and that such books as he might be inclined to purchase directly from the STN were too few to be “worth the bother of a shipment.” He preferred therefore to buy the STN’s books in Leipzig. So too did Friedrich Nicolai in Berlin. The STN was so eager to obtain Nicolai’s business that it dispatched an emissary, a member of the Prussian academy named Nicolas de Béguelin, to meet with Nicolai in person. But it could have dispatched Frederick the Great, and it would not have done any good: Nicolai saw absolutely no point to a trade with the STN. “I had a meeting with M. Nicolai . . . to persuade him to enter into trade with your Société,” Béguelin told the STN afterward. “But he pointed out to me that there would be no advantage either for you or for himself [in such a trade]. French books are only an accessory to his commerce, and the little that he needs he finds in Leipzig among the shipments of your correspondents from Bern. Whatever you deliver to him directly, therefore, would be taken away from what your correspondents [in Bern] order from you; and given the small volume of his sales, it would entail more work and more expense [than if he purchased it in Leipzig].” If Nicolai was right, then the STN would have gained nothing at all by establishing direct trade relations with booksellers like himself. The total volume of its sales would have stayed the same anyway. And what difference did it make how the sales were distributed geographically? The STN wanted to maintain its trade with Bern and Basel and add to it a trade with booksellers in Germany. To substitute the latter for the former made no sense, as the

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STN explained to Wolfgang Gerle, a bookseller in Prague who had expressed his willingness to purchase a hundred copies of the STN’s new publications for sale at Leipzig on condition that he be the only bookseller there to own them: “We cannot promise that we will not sell to Swiss booksellers who frequent the Leipzig fair. . . . We are obliged to sell to them because their orders are frequent and by the end of the year their account with us is considerable,” it told Gerle. So what was the STN to do? One thing it could have done was simply to surrender the German market to its Swiss correspondents and leave it at that. But the STN remained convinced (rightly, as it turned out) that somewhere an untapped demand for French books existed in Germany. The question was where. While booksellers in Saxony and Prussia had little incentive to enter into direct commercial relations with Neuchâtel, the same was not true of booksellers in western and southern Germany, the regions of Germany nearest to Switzerland. Had booksellers in those regions purchased the STN’s books at the fairs, they would, in effect, have been bearing a double weight of shipping costs—from Switzerland to Leipzig and then from Leipzig to their own bookshops. If they purchased them from Neuchâtel, on the other hand, they had only to bear the costs of shipping from Switzerland to their own shops. For the booksellers of western and southern Germany who dealt in French books, it made good economic sense to trade directly with the STN. Gradually, therefore, the STN did succeed in forging direct commercial relations with booksellers in Germany, mainly though not exclusively in western and southern Germany. Those booksellers rarely sold the STN’s books at the Leipzig fairs; so unlike the STN’s Swiss German correspondents, they had little occasion to order hundreds of copies of the STN’s editions. Usually, they requested a small number of copies, from just one or two to fifty at the most, of many different titles; they placed orders throughout the year; and they drew their orders from the STN’s catalogue de fonds et d’assortiment, which included not only the STN’s own editions but also those that it had obtained from other publishers on the basis of swaps. Little by little, all of those small orders added up. They did not add up to nearly as much as the orders placed by the book dealers of Bern and Basel, who conducted a wholesale trade with the STN’s books in Leipzig. But even so, the volume of the STN’s direct trade with booksellers in Germany was considerable. During the period from 1770 to early 1785, the STN made 152 shipments to nineteen different booksellers

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Hamburg (29)

Berlin (6) Cleve (9) Cassel (10)

Leipzig (1)

Cologne (8) Neuwied (1)

Dresden (12)

Bad Homburg (6) Frankfurt (14)

Prague (14) Mannheim (36)

Nuremberg (2)

N

Ulm (4) 0

100 km

Figure 2. Geographic distribution of the STN’s trade in Germany, 1770–85. The numbers in parentheses next to the place names refer to the number of shipments that the STN made to those locations. For an explanation of how to interpret the data and how they were compiled, as well as a list of the STN’s correspondents in each location, see Appendix A.

in fourteen different locations in Germany; and its trade covered a fairly wide geographic area, as can be seen from the map shown in Figure 2. Only nineteen shipments, however, went to booksellers in Saxony or Prussia, the core regions of the German book trade, and just one lone shipment to Leipzig, the site of Germany’s literary marketplace. Most of the STN’s correspondents in Germany were marginal—literally inasmuch as they were distributed along the periphery of the German book trade. Unfortunately for the STN, some of its correspondents in Germany were also marginal in the figurative sense: insolvent booksellers who dodged the

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payment of their bills until they fell into bankruptcy or simply went missing. By the mid-1780s, after fifteen years of trying to track down fugitive booksellers and pursue delinquent debtors in the courts, the STN may very well have come to regret that it did not simply abandon the German market to its Swiss German correspondents.

chapter 2

Whom to Trust? Insolvent Booksellers and the Problem of Credit

Je vous assure, Messieurs, que je ne suis pas en état de pouvoir passée [sic] cette attaque; je suis trop faible pour résister à la violence et au cas d’une sérieuse force, je mettrai les armes bas sans aucune défense. Est-ce que vous serez plus riche de ma ruine? J’en doute fort; ou voulez-vous partager vos sommes avec les avocats, tant pis! pour nous deux. Notre intérêt souff ra [sic] réciproquement. (I assure you, Messieurs, that I am in no condition to be able to withstand an attack. I am far too weak to resist violence, and in the face of serious force, I shall lay down my arms without defense. But will you be any happier and any richer on account of my ruin? I doubt it strongly. Or do you wish to share your money with lawyers? [If so], too bad for both of us! Our mutual interest will suffer.) — J. G. Baerstecher, bookseller in Cleve, to the STN, 23 December 1772

The booksellers who traveled to Germany’s literary marketplace had the opportunity to forge personal as well as commercial relations with one another. The STN’s directors, however, seldom had the benefit of knowing their correspondents in Germany personally. Having elected not to trade directly at the Leipzig fairs, they had to assess the creditworthiness of booksellers whom they had never met, in far-off German cities where none of them had ever been. When they entered into trade with those booksellers, they were making a leap in the dark. It is no wonder they often landed in the wrong company,

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dealing with insolvent booksellers who ran up large debts only to default on their payments.

* * * The STN had its own label for booksellers who defaulted on their payments: it called them “bad debtors” (mauvais débiteurs)— debtors, in other words, whose credit was bad. But what exactly did credit mean in the eighteenth century? The short answer is that it meant the same thing then as it does today: someone had bad credit if other people were unwilling to lend him money, and good credit if they were willing to lend him money—thus the better his credit, the more money they were willing to lend him. The short answer, however, does not take us far enough, because it presupposes that we know what money is. And the monetary system of the eighteenth century was definitely not the same as that of today. In the eighteenth century, if firm A owed money to another firm B, it would write out a bill: either a promissory note, a kind of IOU payable at a specified date, or a letter of exchange drawn against a third party that owed money to A and that was thereby instructed to make payment to B. The bills were written out in such standard monies of account as livres tournois, florins, or reichstaler. Those monies, however, were a kind of monetary fiction, for there was no such thing as a government-issued livre, florin, or taler note. In fact, there was no such thing as a government-issued paper currency at all, just metal coins whose value was computed in the standard monies of account and which were in such short supply that the aggregate value of the coins was far less than the face value of the commercial paper in circulation. In the words of a Basel banker, “It is unbelievable how abundant is paper and how rare is money.” What supported the system was simply the credit of the firms that either wrote out the bills or that the bills were drawn against. If their credit was good, then the system ran smoothly. Endorsed over from one person to another, the bills lubricated the wheels of exchange, circulating through multiple hands before being presented for payment. If the credit of the firms was bad, then the whole system could collapse like a house of cards. Once word leaked out that a firm was in financial distress, all those with claims against it would scramble to make good those claims before bankruptcy wiped out their value, and the scramble for payment would then compound the financial distress of the firm, and so on, in an accelerating downward spiral, until the firm really did fall into bankruptcy. Whether the original report of

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financial trouble was accurate hardly mattered: even unsubstantiated rumors were enough to set off a panic, and so became self-fulfilling—hence the enormous importance that booksellers attached to maintaining their reputation for creditworthiness. In default of adequate specie, a good reputation was worth its weight in gold, and booksellers cultivated it with all the assiduousness of a Machiavellian prince, as if the appearance of creditworthiness were the same thing as actually being creditworthy. To see past the façade of appearance to the financial reality behind it was not easy, even for booksellers in Germany who were intimately familiar with the German book trade: all the less so, therefore, for a foreign firm like the STN. Consider the case of Albrecht Friedrich Bartholomai, a bookseller in Ulm to whom the STN made four shipments of books worth roughly 800 livres in the period from 1771 to 1773. In his letters to the STN, Bartholomai claimed to conduct a large trade in French books, a claim that must have seemed credible to the STN, for Bartholomai showed through his astute comments that he kept abreast of the latest news in the French publishing industry. Thus, when the STN offered him its edition of Voltaire’s Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, which it described as “corrected and augmented by the author,” Bartholomai was puzzled. How could the STN’s edition contain corrections and additions from the pen of the author, he asked, when the original edition, published by Cramer in Geneva, had only just left the press? It was an excellent question. The truth was that the STN’s edition contained very few additions and corrections from the pen of Voltaire. The STN had been under the impression that Voltaire would be willing to participate in a scheme to produce a prompt and improved pirated edition of his work by first touching up the printed sheets that he received from Cramer and then relaying them to Neuchâtel for pirating. When Cramer found out about that scheme, however, he complained to Voltaire, who retracted his commitment to the STN. It was to Bartholomai’s credit that he was able to spot the STN’s dubious claim. To all appearances, the STN had found a knowledgeable French bookseller to disseminate its editions through the region of the upper Danube. Problems began, however, just as soon as the STN tried to collect payment on its debt. Between November 1773 and January 1774, Johann Paul Kindervatter, the STN’s banker in Ulm, presented three bills of exchange drawn by the STN against Bartholomai, each of which the latter refused to accept: first, a bill, payable immediately, for 782 livres, 8 sous; then two further bills, which would have allowed Bartholomai to stagger his payments— one, due in January 1774, for 408 livres, 7 sous, another, due six months later,

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for 414 livres, 7 sous. When the STN sent the final two bills to Kindervatter, it intimated to Bartholomai that it might seek legal redress against him in the event of nonpayment. But that threat does not seem to have made any impression. He simply replied that he would not be able to meet his obligations until the following year and that the STN had no alternative but to grant him that delay: “Your threats do not frighten me, for even if you were to go and complain to the magistrate here, which would do great damage to my reputation, you will not make any progress, you would have considerable expenses, and in the end I would be granted the delay [in payment] that I have requested of you amicably. . . . I cannot be forced to do the impossible,” Bartholomai wrote defiantly. What was the STN to do? There was no gainsaying the cogency of Bartholomai’s argument. Every one of his points was persuasive: the impossibility of extracting payment from a debtor who had no money, the expense of legal proceedings against him, and, above all, the damage of those proceedings to his financial reputation. And the STN had nothing to gain from damaging Bartholomai’s reputation, which would merely provoke a crisis of confidence and so precipitate his bankruptcy. It had little choice, therefore, but to back down. In its reply to Bartholomai, it indicated that it resented the hectoring tone of his letter but that it would grant him a delay of one year provided only that he send a promissory note for the full amount of his debt signed by his own hand and payable to Kindervatter in January 1775. Conciliation seemed the most sensible policy. The policy of conciliation, however, came too late to save Bartholomai’s reputation. Word of his financial difficulties had already leaked out, so that in the late spring of 1774, while Bartholomai was away from Ulm attending a regional book fair, the crisis of confidence gathered pace. The end came with brutal suddenness, according to the STN’s banker in Ulm: “Ever since that time [i.e, since Bartholomai’s departure for the fair] his financial situation has changed so terribly, bills of exchange against him having arrived in such large numbers that he ceased to pay them. And so his trade has been terminated, and [he has suffered] a bankruptcy, in which he has spared neither his mother nor his closest relatives, who will lose a great deal,” Kindervatter reported. Once the reputation of a bookseller had been compromised, bankruptcy could strike in an instant. Bankruptcy proceedings, by contrast, dragged on with excruciating slowness. Bartholomai’s lasted two years, after which time the STN owed more to its lawyer in Ulm than it was awarded by the magistrate. For the Neuchâtelois, it must have seemed the height of injustice, the more so as the magistrate

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allowed Bartholomai to resume his trade. By 1779, Bartholomai was back on his feet, attending regional book fairs up and down the Danube, in Passau, Vienna, and Hungary, while the STN had only a legal bill for all of its headaches. “I desire with all my heart that the Lord will preserve you from similar and other bad accidents,” Kindervatter wrote consolingly. At the same time that it was being fleeced in Ulm, the STN got tangled up with another mauvais débiteur, the bookseller J. G. Baerstecher, who conducted his trade from Cleve, a Prussian enclave in the lower Rhine. At first, Baerstecher gave every appearance of being a very good trading partner, better even than Bartholomai; for unlike the latter, he did not limit his orders to a handful of copies for his retail customers. He ordered hundreds of copies of the STN’s editions, some of which he instructed the STN to ship directly to his storeroom in Leipzig. And he purchased roughly three hundred copies of the STN’s edition of Système de la nature. To the directors of the STN, he came across as “active, enterprising and well-versed in his trade.” So they did not pay much heed to the advice of a correspondent in Mannheim named Motta, who told them, in a letter of December 1771, that Baerstecher was known to be “orderly and hard working” but that Cleve was not a “city with a great deal of commerce,” that it possessed “few resources,” and that they should not therefore allow Baerstecher’s debts to accumulate or grant him credit of more than a hundred Louis d’or (i.e., 2,400 livres) at the very most. After receiving that advice, the STN assured its correspondent in Mannheim that it would proceed “bridle in hand.” And it did, in fact, exercise some restraint—not enough, however, to prevent Baerstecher from accumulating a considerable debt. Before long, his debt to the STN had climbed to nearly 1,800 livres. The first sign of serious trouble came in the autumn of 1772 when Baerstecher defaulted on a note for 400 livres. He had made out that note to the STN, which had endorsed it over to a third party in Neuchâtel, a merchant named Penserot, who, in turn, had sent it to a fourth party in Amsterdam, and so on, until, after passing through the hands of two additional merchants, it finally returned to Cleve, where Baerstecher refused to honor it. For reasons that were somewhat murky, the final holder of the note, a man named Cornelius van Beughem, waited roughly six weeks before filing an official protest of Baerstecher’s nonpayment and then returned the note to the person from whom he had got it. Afterward the whole cycle went into reverse. The protested note made its way backwards from Cleve to Amsterdam and from Amsterdam to Neuchâtel, until it reached Penserot, who promptly brought a suit against the STN before the magistrate in Neuchâtel. Citing the commercial law code

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Figure 3a. The front of Baerstecher’s promissory note to the STN. (Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel)

of Neuchâtel, Penserot argued that anyone who ceded a note to a third party was obligated to guarantee its value for a year and a day after ceding it. In the legal briefs that it filed with the court in Neuchâtel, the STN retorted that the relevant commercial code was not that of Neuchâtel but rather the Prussian code in force in Cleve. According to the Prussian code, anyone presenting a “bill of exchange” (Wechsel) for payment had to file a formal protest before sundown on the same day that the bill was refused. Van Beughem had failed to comply with that regulation; therefore, the note was his responsibility, and Penserot should never have agreed to take it back in the first place, the STN argued. The competing arguments turned on fine points of legal interpretation— and also of translation, for the Prussian code had originally been written in German. Eventually, however, after about six months of litigation, the magistrate in Neuchâtel returned a verdict in Penserot’s favor, ordering the STN to pay Penserot the 400 livres and to reimburse him for all of his legal expenses. As soon as the STN learned of that verdict, it fired off a letter to Baerstecher warning him not to expect any more “gentleness” (douceur). But what was the alternative to “gentleness”? Even before the conclusion of its case with Penserot, the STN had threatened to take Baerstecher to court over his outstanding debts. In reply, Baerstecher had delivered a lesson in morality: “You know very well that with violence one can draw blood, but can

Figure 3b. The back of Baerstecher’s promissory note to the STN. (Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel)

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one make money?” Then he had made a mocking appeal to the STN’s own self-interest: “I assure you, Messieurs, that I am in no condition to be able to withstand an attack. I am far too weak to resist violence, and in the face of serious force, I shall lay down my arms without defense. But will you be any happier and any richer on account of my ruin? I doubt it strongly. Or do you wish to share your money with lawyers? [If so], too bad for both of us! Our mutual interest will suffer.” To get an objective, third-party perspective on Baerstecher’s condition, the STN consulted a magistrate in Cleve named Johann Wilhelm Fischer, who made repeated visits to Baerstecher on its behalf between February and July 1773. Fischer’s reports to the STN could scarcely have been more discouraging. While he assured the STN that the system of justice in Cleve was fair and that it would therefore win its case, he saw no point in bringing legal action: “If a debtor has nothing to pay, the court cannot assist,” Fischer told the STN. To judge from Fischer’s reports, Baerstecher’s situation was desperate— so desperate that the STN had no choice but to relent. Instead of taking legal action against Baerstecher, as it had threatened to do, it agreed to accept a shipment of books from his stock as partial payment of his debt. On 20 August 1773, Baerstecher announced that a crate of books worth 1,363 livres was on its way to Neuchâtel. Three months later the crate still had not arrived. Commercial navigation along the Rhine was notoriously slow; so a delay of three months was not in itself evidence of foul play, especially in the autumn of 1773 when a tariff war was raging between the archbishop-electorates of Mainz and Cologne and the cost of shipping had reached astronomical heights. It was quite possible that the shipping agent in Cologne had simply decided to hold on to the crate until the governments of Mainz and Cologne had settled their dispute—possible, but the STN needed confirmation. And so it addressed a letter directly to the shipping agent in Cologne, a man named Maximilian Henri Deprée. Its letter went unanswered. “So long a delay and such silence cannot but cause us some suspicions,” it wrote to Baerstecher in November 1773. Where were the STN’s books? Still in Cologne, as it turned out, though not because of the tariff dispute, which had in the meantime been resolved. The books were in Cologne because Deprée had kept them in order to recoup a debt that Baerstecher owed to him. In his reply to the STN, Baerstecher insisted that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. Until receiving the STN’s letter of November 1773,

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he had assumed that the books were already in its possession. Afterward, he wrote to Deprée and learned the truth. What he owed to Deprée, however, was a mere “trifle”; so he could not possibly have predicted that Deprée would use that debt as a pretext for seizing the crate of books. Had he been able to predict it, he would not have sent the crate through Cologne in the first place: “So you see, Messieurs, there hasn’t been any deceit on my part, just misfortune upon misfortune, which will finally end, I hope, with God’s help. . . . Do not ruin me, I beg of you, and rest assured that in a few days, I shall put myself in a position to have forwarded to you the crate which has been held back for so long.” The Neuchâtelois were dubious. “The whole story seems very strange to us,” they wrote to Fischer in late December. Three weeks later, they no longer had any doubts; they were convinced that Baerstecher’s strange story was nothing but an artfully contrived lie: “Clearly, Baerstecher and he [i.e., Deprée] are two dishonest men who are conspiring against our interests.” Rather than being duped by Deprée, the STN believed, Baerstecher had planned to settle his debt to two creditors with the same crate of books. And if he thought he could get away with so devious a plan, then he had another thing coming: “When you imagined, because we treated you for a long time with indulgence and generosity, that we were simpletons whom one could lead around as one wished, you were badly mistaken,” the STN warned its debtor in Cleve. “Such behavior is so odious that it destroys any kind of accommodation between us.” To judge from the harsh tone of its letter to Baerstecher, the STN was finally resolved to abandon “gentleness” in favor of force. Baerstecher, however, continued to protest his innocence and to plead for leniency, first in a letter to Fischer, which the latter forwarded to Neuchâtel, then in a letter to the STN; and he made his plea in almost exactly the same terms as Bartholomai, by arguing that the publicity of a legal proceeding would damage his reputation and so provoke a run on payment: “If I am sued for such a large sum at the present moment, then others will certainly pile on [so fallen andere gewiss zu], and I shall be absolutely ruined since I cannot pay everyone at the same time.” As it did with Bartholomai, the STN decided to back down. In mid-February, it told Baerstecher that it still found his story hard to believe but that it would give him until the end of March to reach a settlement with Deprée and to transmit its books from Cologne to Neuchâtel, failing which he would have to answer for his conduct: it had already retained the ser vices of a lawyer in Cleve named Sack and had only to give the signal in

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order to set the wheels of justice in motion. It expected the books in Neuchâtel by late March, or else . . . Or else what? At the end of March, when it had not received its books, the STN wrote to Fischer instructing him to take whatever measures were necessary to ensure the immediate shipment of the books to Neuchâtel. And two months after that, still without the books, it sent Fischer the principal documents that Sack would require in order to prosecute its case in the courts: its notarized power of attorney and an account of its claims against Baerstecher. By then, it had not the slightest doubt about Baerstecher’s guilt, as it made clear in a bitterly ironic letter to Fischer: “This honest man had the secret design of paying two creditors with the same merchandise . . . , which is the most eminent bad faith.” Everything seemed ready for legal action—but the wheels of justice did not turn. Something was gumming up the works. It certainly was not a lack of evidence. In June 1774, the most damning evidence of all came to light in the form of a letter from one of the STN’s correspondents in Cologne, a man named Louis Delaroque who had gone to see Deprée on the STN’s behalf. When asked about the STN’s books, Deprée told Delaroque that Baerstecher had not given him any indication that the books belonged to the STN. On the contrary, Baerstecher had said that the books were his own and that he was sending them to Deprée in order to settle his debt to him. Since Deprée was not a bookseller, he had no use for books; he only wanted money, and, to make money from the books, he had sold a portion of them at a public auction in Cologne— a step he claimed to have taken only after having received a “formal authorization” (plein pouvoir) from Baerstecher. “This seems to prove that the Messieurs [i.e., Deprée and Baerstecher] are in cahoots and that there is nothing but bad faith on his [i.e., Baerstecher’s] part,” Delaroque concluded. Had Sack, the STN’s lawyer, presented Delaroque’s testimony before the court in Cleve, it is hard to imagine how Baerstecher could have rebutted it. The problem was that Sack did not see any point in taking legal action. He saw the STN’s case in the same way as Fischer: Baerstecher had no money, and so it was senseless to prosecute him. If the STN insisted that he go forward anyway, he was prepared to do so, but only on condition that it pay him for his legal costs in advance. And, apparently, the STN did not honor that request. Sack, therefore, did nothing. Eventually, in late July 1774, some of the books from Cologne, minus those that Deprée had sold at auction, did arrive in Neuchâtel. Those books, however, can scarcely have been worth much more than 400 livres, less than

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a quarter of what Baerstecher owed to the STN; and unless Baerstecher suddenly came into an inheritance or won the lottery, it was hard to imagine how he would find the money to settle the remainder of his debt. By December 1774, his pleas for mercy were sounding even more maudlin and melodramatic than they had before: “I am so unhappy, having neither credit nor money, so that I must live in the most wretched fashion. . . . I beg of you . . . not to plunge me into a misery still more cruel than that in which I now find myself,” Baerstecher implored the STN. Stymied by its lawyer, the STN relied on Fischer to put pressure on its delinquent debtor. And in early 1775, Fischer did manage to cobble together an arrangement by which Baerstecher would send books worth roughly 862 livres from his depleted stock in Cleve to the STN. Those books, which finally reached the STN in April, did not eliminate Baerstecher’s debt entirely (he still owed the STN several hundred livres), but Fischer considered the arrangement to be a good one nonetheless— certainly the best that could be hoped for under the circumstances. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing further to be done. At that very moment, however, just when the Cleve affair seemed to be drawing to a close, new revelations of Baerstecher’s double-dealing came to light—this time involving not Deprée in Cologne but a bookseller in Cleve named Hoffmann, to whom the STN had made three shipments worth about 300 livres in 1772. The STN had assumed that Hoffmann was ordering books for his own account, only to discover later that he was associated with Baerstecher. By placing orders under Hoffmann’s name, Baerstecher had contrived to squeeze more books out of the STN than the STN would otherwise have been willing to send. And Hoffmann did not have any money either. Despite the arrangement Fischer had cobbled together, therefore, the STN continued to insist that Sack initiate legal proceedings. Sack, however, continued to ignore the STN’s requests. On several occasions in 1776, the STN wrote angry letters to government officials in Cleve, complaining of Sack’s inaction. And when even those letters did not have any effect, it warned the officials in Cleve that it planned to lodge complaints with ministers in Berlin—indeed, if all else failed, with Frederick the Great himself, “that great monarch, who deigned to accept the dedication of our Dictionnaire des Arts [i.e., Description des arts et métiers] and with whom one of the directors of our société typographique [i.e., Osterwald] has the honor of corresponding directly on that subject.” About its intention of writing to Frederick the Great the STN was probably bluffing, but it did write to the Baron von Schulenburg,

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a Prussian minister in Berlin, who contacted Sack. Finally, on 12 February 1778, after years of simply ignoring the STN, Sack sent a letter to Neuchâtel explaining why he had not initiated legal action. The explanation could hardly have been more straightforward: “Since the circumstances of both men [i.e., Baerstecher and Hoffmann] have been bad for many years and nothing is to be hoped from them at the end, I cannot advise that costs [i.e., of legal action] should be borne on their account.” It is not entirely clear what Baerstecher was up to while the STN was shooting off angry letters to officials in Cleve—whether he filed for bankruptcy or simply decamped for greener pastures. In any case, he was no longer in Cleve by the summer of 1779; he was in Düsseldorf, where he had joined a troupe of actors— a profession for which he was probably well suited given his penchant for melodramatic rhetoric but which he did not stick to for very long. By the early 1780s, he was back to selling books, this time in Kehl in the duchy of Baden, where he launched an ambitious, and unsuccessful, project to publish a German translation of Diderot’s Encyclopédie. And, eventually, he moved into revolutionary politics, joining the German Jacobins of the Upper Rhine during the period of the French occupation. In the end, the STN never did get the satisfaction of confronting its delinquent debtors in court— and it was probably just as well. Had Sack heeded the STN’s request to initiate legal action, the STN would almost certainly have ended up owing more in legal costs than it obtained from Baerstecher and Hoffmann. From the perspective of the STN, therefore, the complicated story of Baerstecher’s duplicity pointed a simple moral: beware of allowing shady characters to run up large debts. The STN imprudently allowed Baerstecher to accumulate a debt of 1,800 livres. Once it had done so, all of its dire threats against him were just bluster; for not even Frederick the Great could have forced a penniless bookseller to disgorge what he did not have. There was only way to avoid suffering losses at the hands of mauvais débiteurs and that was to steer clear of them in the first place.

* * * Throughout the 1770s, the list of the STN’s mauvais débiteurs in Germanspeaking Europe continued to lengthen: to Bartholomai in Ulm and Baerstecher and Hoffmann in Cleve were added Joseph Ehrenreich Ammermüller in Nuremberg, Samuel Pitra in Berlin, and Serini in Basel. Ammermüller simply went missing and was never heard from again; Pitra managed to dodge the

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payment of his bills for more than four years, despite the STN’s repeated appeals to the Prussian ministry in Berlin; and Serini followed the same course as Bartholomai—he filed for bankruptcy and then, after a hiatus of several years, he simply restarted his business as if the bankruptcy had been little more than a minor road accident. From the standpoint of the STN, however, such accidents were hardly minor; and, as the wreckage mounted, the perils of dealing with marginal booksellers became all the more apparent. If the STN was to realize any profit at all, it needed some method for distinguishing between a solid, creditworthy firm on the one hand and a mauvais débiteur on the other. The method that the STN employed most frequently was to solicit a credit report from a third party, someone like Henry Ackermann, a shipping agent in Mainz who warned the STN to steer clear of a newly established local firm: “They [the directors of the firm] have very little money and they wish to begin a trade in books, which cannot succeed without money,” Ackermann told the STN. Such reports came from a variety of sources, from government officials or bankers as well as shipping agents—practically anyone, in fact, who was in a position to shed light on the financial resources and the moral character of a local bookseller. That the STN should have cared about the moral character of booksellers may strike the modern reader as odd. In the eighteenth century, however, the language of credit carried strong moral overtones. Could one believe—give “credit”—to the promises of a trading partner? That, in effect, was the crucial question; and to answer that question, it seemed important to know whether a prospective correspondent was a faithful husband and a responsible provider, whether he was sober, industrious, punctual, and so on. The main problem with soliciting reports from local informants was that it presupposed the reliability of the informants. Officials, bankers, and shipping agents were in a better position than the STN to evaluate the creditworthiness of a local bookseller. Nothing guaranteed, however, that their reports were disinterested. Officials may have wished to promote the trade of a local bookseller for reasons of mercantilist policy; bankers may have wished to do so because they had invested some of their own capital. And even if the local informants were making no deliberate effort to conceal the truth, who could say whether their reports were based on a careful and thorough investigation? Carried to an extreme, such suspicions would have had a paralyzing effect. To conduct trade in a foreign land, the STN had to place trust in people it did not know personally. But whom could it trust?

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Other things being equal, the directors of the STN would probably have preferred to place their trust in their own coreligionists. Members of the Reformed Protestant church often sought out coreligionists as business associates or trading partners because they expected them to share the same austere Calvinist work ethic. Thus, when the Frankfurt bookseller Johann Conrad Deinet, a member of the Calvinist minority in Frankfurt, needed to find an associate to help him run his business, he turned to the STN for a recommendation: “It is desirable that he [the associate] be of the Reformed Church, of a conduct consistent with his religion, and that he love work,” Deinet wrote. But it was not possible for the STN to confine its relations in Germany to coreligionists. Most German Protestants were Lutherans rather than Calvinists, and in southern and western Germany, the areas closest to Neuchâtel, where the STN stood the best chance of establishing commercial relations, Catholics outnumbered Protestants. In the end, the STN decided that the best method for evaluating the creditworthiness of prospective correspondents was to do the job itself. And so, in the summer of 1779, it dispatched Bosset de Luze, one of its directors, on a reconnaissance journey through the German Rhineland. Bosset, who had joined the firm three years earlier, was quite different from Samuel Ostervald, the only one of the STN’s original founders still associated with the firm in 1779. Whereas Ostervald was a highly educated homme de lettres, Bosset was strictly an homme d’affaires, and a rather hard-bitten and cynical one at that. In the letters he sent back to the home office from Germany, he let it be known that he mistrusted most book dealers, that he attached little value to mere “words” unless they were backed up by “deeds,” and that few aspects of his job tried his patience so sorely as the hours of idle chitchat he was compelled to endure in the company of loquacious booksellers like Johann Conrad Deinet in Frankfurt, who loosed upon him a veritable “flood of words.” When Bosset wrote to Ostervald that for the sake of “winning a commission,” he had had “a great deal of pleasure” conversing with the aging and dotardly Varrentrap, “doyen of the book trade,” the irony was so thick that it seemed to be dripping from his pen. As if to underscore just how much he abhorred idle verbiage, Bosset shunned epistolary flourishes, writing his letters from Germany in the style of a business report: simple, clipped, and to the point. But the STN had no need of a flowery récit de voyage. What it needed was information about prospective correspondents, and Bosset proved quite adept at ferreting out that information, which he conveyed to the home office in a series of reports that he dashed off as he descended the Rhine. Setting out

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from Basel on 12 July, Bosset worked his way down the Rhine at breakneck speed, reaching Westphalia by the end of the month. And at each stop on his journey, he investigated conditions in the local book trade, collecting information about prospective correspondents, inspecting their shops, and assessing their credit. His first stop in the Reich was Rastadt. There the only bookseller was somebody named Johann Friedrich Molitor, who was said to be an “honest fellow.” But Bosset was warned not to grant him more than 300 or 400 livres of credit; after paying Molitor a visit, he understood why: “Both he and his shop have the saddest appearance.” In Karlsruhe, he visited “Monsieur Macklot, bookseller of the Court.” Macklot’s shop made a favorable impression on him (it was “large” and had a “lovely appearance”), but Bosset was adamant that the STN should extend no credit whatsoever (to emphasize the point, he underlined the words “no credit”), since Macklot was “deep in debt and severely weighed down.” Macklot seemed a poor risk compared to Christian Gottlob Schmieder, another bookseller in Karlsruhe, who was “far better and more solid.” Christian Schwan in Mannheim was “very good.” In Darmstadt, there were no booksellers at all. Frankfurt, however, had booksellers aplenty: Deinet, who was said to be “well off in his affairs” and to have “three or four presses mounted”; the Brothers Van Düren, “the second most solid firm”; and Heinrich Ludwig Brönner, “the first bookseller in Frankfurt for his solidity and the one who does the largest trade in French books.” According to Bosset’s information, Brönner sent an employee to the fairs in Leipzig, as did another Frankfurt bookseller named Johann Joachim Kessler, who received books from the Société Typographique de Berne and who had placed a dozen copies of the Bern edition of the Encyclopédie. On the other hand, Friedrich Varrentrap was so old that “he thinks only of selling off his stock so as not to leave behind any burdens for his children.” And the other “solid” booksellers in Frankfurt—Johann Benjamin Andreae, Johann Ludwig Garbe, and Johann Georg Fleischer—traded in German books only. In Mainz, Bosset had to endure an excruciatingly long visit with a bookseller named Le Roux: “I conferred for two hours, and that’s a lot for me, with Monsieur Le Roux, the only bookseller in Mainz, who goes to the Frankfurt fairs, has a very tidy book shop, purchases everything for cash,” Bosset wrote. Le Roux indicated that he would send the STN an order, and Bosset implored his colleagues to execute it correctly: “To obtain it, I had to listen to his story to the very end.” From Mainz Bosset sailed down the Rhine to Coblenz, where the only “good” bookseller was someone named Hubert; thence to Bonn, where Bosset

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was quite taken with Johann Friedrich Abshoven, “bookseller and printer of the Electoral Court,” whom he described as “very good”; and from Bonn to the city of Cologne, which he described as “a large city, one league long by half a league wide, where there is a great deal of trade.” While in Cologne, Bosset visited with a number of booksellers who traded in French books and whom he described as being of the “highest solidity”: the widow Metternich (“the first house” in Cologne for French books), Simonin (“very clever”), Johann Godschalk Langen (“very good”), and Hermann Joseph Haas (“also good”). “If only there was a way to persuade them to enter into a trade,” he wrote. From Cologne it was on to Düsseldorf, where the only bookseller was a “Pole named Witzeky, a rotten adventurer who is not worth anything at all,” and thence to Duisburg, “a university town with a hundred or so students in the principality of Cleve.” There Bosset was quick to write off one bookseller “who does very little,” but he had favorable things to say about three others: the booksellers Lemgo and Meyenberg, “who frequent the fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig,” and a certain Bilcher, who was working as a commissioner running “a large shop” on behalf of the Brothers Helwing, “a good firm from Hanover.” And so it went, from Duisburg to Wesel and from Wesel to Cleve, until, finally, in early August, Bosset paused to catch his breath, spending two joyous weeks with his brother who was summering with his family in a ”large and magnificent chateau” in the countryside of Westphalia. The setting as Bosset described it seemed delightfully quaint. The chateau, which his brother rented fully furnished for 500 Dutch florins, was equipped with a real drawbridge. It also conferred all of the seigniorial rights of hunting and fishing, so that it was the perfect place for a Swiss homme d’aff aires to indulge his fantasy of living like a Westphalian baron. In his letters to the home office, Bosset sounded slightly apologetic about taking so long a holiday. After visiting dozens of bookshops, however, he had earned the right to withdraw for a brief moment into the best of all possible worlds. In a little more than a fortnight, the STN’s director had managed to map the terrain of the western German book trade.

* * * With Bosset as its guide, the STN was able to steer clear of booksellers whose finances were shaky. After his visit to Mannheim, for example, Bosset had warned Ostervald about a bookseller there named Heinrich Bender, who was “not worth the devil” and who, in Bosset’s estimation, merited no credit what-

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soever. The STN was on its guard, therefore, when Bender wrote to it placing an order for books worth more than 300 livres. Rather than sending the books directly to Bender, it took the precaution of addressing them to another person in Mannheim, a wealthy textile and tobacco manufacturer named Hans Dan Bingner, with whom Bosset had also met, and it asked Bingner not to release the books to Bender until the latter had paid for them in hard currency. It proved to be a wise precaution: “I advise you to have the books sent elsewhere and to be happy that I did not release them [before receiving] cash,” Bingner told the STN, after it had emerged that Bender did not, in fact, have enough money to pay for the books. Eventually, the STN arranged to transfer Bender’s books to another Mannheim firm, La Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour, whose directors Bosset had also visited during his passage through Mannheim. Had it not been for Bosset’s original warning, Bender could easily have become another Baerstecher. Bosset probably saved the STN from taking a number of wrong turns, but he was not an infallible guide, even after he had mapped the terrain of the western German book trade, precisely because his map was limited to western Germany. In the late eighteenth century, as we saw in the previous chapter, the literary commerce of Germany revolved around Leipzig. No one, therefore, whose experience was confined to the Rhineland could really know how the German book trade worked—and Bosset had only the vaguest notion of how it worked, to judge from the ill-conceived plan that he recommended to Ostervald in a letter from Wesel, a small town in the lower Rhine. While in Wesel, Bosset met with a bookseller named Friedrich Jacob Röder, who offered to establish an entrepôt of the STN’s books. Tucked away in a remote corner of northwestern Germany, Wesel was a terrible location for such an establishment. Actually, there was only one really good location for it, and that was Leipzig. Even there, however, it would have been necessary to replenish the entrepôt at regular intervals with new publications. Bosset had no intention of filling it with new publications. It was the summer of 1779, nearly a decade since the printing shop in Neuchâtel had begun turning out editions of French books. In the intervening years, the STN had accumulated a large stock of books, some of them from the earliest years of its existence; and, to Bosset, the older books seemed in imminent danger of becoming permanent shelf-warmers. “To prevent them aging any further,” he reasoned, it made sense to deliver them to Röder, “a very good and extremely honest man” who would attempt to market them “not only in his environs but also in Holland” and who would then pay the STN for such books as he managed to

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sell. What Bosset envisaged, in other words, was not an outlet for the diffusion of new publications; it was more like a dumping ground for old merchandise. Why it was better to dump old merchandise in Wesel than to have it lying around in Neuchâtel Bosset did not bother to explain; but he was convinced of it, and so too, apparently, was Ostervald, who followed Bosset’s advice exactly. In early 1780, after a brief exchange of letters with Röder, the STN sent off more than 2,000 livres worth of mainly old publications to Wesel in the lower Rhine, to be sold there for its own account. And so the STN blundered its way into another misadventure, which it made all the worse by committing a second tactical error: Shortly after having established its entrepôt in Wesel, it established another one in Hesse-Homburg, a tiny princely court near Frankfurt. It filled the Homburg entrepôt with almost exactly the same books it had sent to Röder. Unlike Röder, however, the man in charge of the Homburg entrepôt was not a professional bookseller. He was a patrician amateur of French letters, a self-styled friend of humanity named Jean-Gérard Bruère, who volunteered his ser vices to the STN in order to promote the spread of French literature in Germany. So many professional booksellers had turned out to be mauvais débiteurs that Osterwald welcomed the opportunity to deal with an amateur instead. And as Bosset had already convinced him that western Germany was a suitable dumping ground for old books, it seemed to follow that it would be twice as good to have two entrepôts there as to have one. Actually, it was twice as bad. To entrust a large stock of books to a nonprofessional bookseller in a diminutive princely court like Hesse-Homburg was an invitation to disaster. Compared with the disaster of the STN’s entrepôts, the Baerstecher affair really did seem like a minor road accident. Hardly any of the books that the STN sent to Wesel and Homburg were ever sold, and, within roughly a year of receiving the books, both Röder and Bruère decided that they wanted to be relieved of their duties as the STN’s commissioners. Thereafter, the books pursued a vagabond existence, shuttling from one location to another as they passed through the hands of an odd assortment of characters: a fugitive bookseller named Karl de Grandmesnil, who tried to pass himself off as the director of a “typographical school for orphans” before fleeing to Vienna and establishing a French literary cabinet on the banks of the Danube; Johann Merck, a close friend of Goethe and leading figure in the literary life of contemporary Germany; a poor Huguenot refugee named Haugard; and an expatriate noble French adventurer, Le Chevalier Verdi Duvernois, who courted the STN assiduously before swindling it and decamping for Berlin, where he

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won election to the Prussian Academy. By the late 1780s, the persons responsible for the books the STN had originally sent to Röder and Bruère were scattered across Germany from the Rhineland to the Prussian and Austrian capitals; and the STN found itself caught in a web of intrigue so tangled that it never managed to get straight who was in league with whom. The problem of how to evaluate the creditworthiness and moral probity of persons in far-off German cities proved to be no less intractable in the case of amateur booksellers than in the case of professionals. Ultimately, then, all of the STN’s many mishaps with rogues and swindlers in Germany led to a sobering conclusion: there simply was no foolproof method by which a foreign publishing firm selling its books in the German literary market could distinguish in advance between creditworthy trading partners and mauvais débiteurs. Uncertain whom it could trust, the STN conducted its trade in Germany at great financial peril. And yet it managed nevertheless to establish long-term commercial relations with a number of financially solvent booksellers. Who were those booksellers? And what did their trade reveal about the circulation of French books in late eighteenth-century Germany?

chapter 3

French Booksellers in the Reich

La lecture française est toujours goûtée des grands seigneurs. (Great lords always relish reading French books.) —Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour in Mannheim to the STN, 23 October 1788

Most of the STN’s principal correspondents in Germany plied their trade in the territories closest to Switzerland, areas that contemporaries described, a little ambiguously, as the “Reich.” Strictly speaking, the Reich (Heiliges römisches Reich deutscher Nation) extended deep into central Europe and encompassed most of the Prussian monarchy and all of Saxony. In the eighteenth century, however, the term was commonly used in a more restricted sense: as a synecdoche to designate the areas of southern and western Germany. Those were the most politically fragmented areas of the Reich, the ones in which the imperial constitution retained its significance as a bulwark against central authority. They harbored a bewildering assortment of sovereign, semi-sovereign, and quasi-sovereign political entities— ecclesiastical states and free imperial cities alongside landgraviates, electorates, duodecimo principalities, and territorial enclaves. And they were home to a multitude of small princely courts, miniature replicas of Versailles whose cultural aspirations stood in inverse relation to the power of their princes. In the absence of any central political authority or cultural capital, the book trade in the Reich had its own peculiar characteristics. There was no single large city whose reading public set the cultural tone and dominated the retail trade. Nor was there a booksellers’ guild or uniform body of legislation regulating access to masterships. Nor, most important, was there any single

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institution with the authority to ban books and to police the book trade: the same book could be simultaneously prohibited in one locality of the Reich and perfectly legal in a neighboring one. Subject to different political authorities, drawn from a variety of professional backgrounds, and catering to widely scattered customers, the STN’s correspondents in the Reich were a diverse group. They cannot therefore be studied in the same way as the wholesale trade at the Leipzig fairs, which we were able to survey at a single glance, from a bird’s-eye perspective, as it were. The only way to do justice to the diversity of the retail trade in the Reich is to adopt a worm’s-eye perspective, to proceed piecemeal through a series of case studies devoted to the STN’s most important correspondents in that region of Germany: the booksellers Louis-François Mettra near Cologne, Charles and Matthias Fontaine in Mannheim, Jean-Frédéric Hemmerde in Cassel, and Johann Conrad Deinet in Frankfurt. Purveyors of a cosmopolitan literary culture, all of those booksellers were nonetheless local businessmen. Their dossiers in the Neuchâtel archive thus reveal a process of crucial importance to the diff usion of ideas in Enlightenment Europe: the process by which the transnational French book trade became embedded in distinct local settings.

* * * Of all the STN’s correspondents in the Reich, none was more cosmopolitan, or more strangely out of place in a provincial German setting, than LouisFrançois Mettra. A native Parisian and Freemason, Mettra had worked in the late 1760s as a kind of unofficial diplomat, shuttling between Paris and Berlin on missions for the Prussian and French governments. After that, he had worked in Paris as a commercial agent of Frederick II, arranging purchases of artworks; and he had been a shareholder in a Parisian bank. In the 1770s, however, his affairs in Paris collapsed. First, he fell out with Frederick, then he fell into bankruptcy, and, by the late 1770s, he had fallen on such hard times that he was ready to get out of Paris. So he moved to the electorate of Cologne and exchanged the shadowy, cloak-and-dagger world of high-stakes international diplomacy for the daily grind of tallying credits and debits behind the comptoir of a bookshop. As if to compensate for the lack of drama in his new career, he developed a sideline as a radical journalist, publishing a scandal-mongering manuscript news gazette that he cobbled together from anecdotes sent to him by secret informants in Versailles and London. And he made some of the most incendiary books of contemporary French literature

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into his stock-in-trade—irreligious, obscene, and seditious books of the kind that were prohibited in France, that booksellers there referred to as “philosophic books” (livres philosophiques), and that the STN relegated to a separate handwritten cata logue. By late 1782, after having adopted the company name, Société Typographique de Münz, the erstwhile diplomat and banker from Paris was hounding the STN for shipments of livres philosophiques. Münz, the site of Mettra’s shop, was on the left bank of the Rhine directly adjacent to the walls of the city of Cologne and at just a hundred paces from the port of Cologne. In political terms, however, those hundred paces were like a hundred miles. Münz was subject to the archbishop elector of Cologne, whose court was in Bonn and who allowed the book trade a relatively wide margin of liberty—relative, that is, to the city (Freistadt) of Cologne, the “German Rome” as it was known in the eighteenth century. Out of a total population of 40,000, there were 2,000 clergymen in the city of Cologne, including a resident papal nuncio who led efforts to police the book trade and to halt the circulation of livres philosophiques. Mettra did not say explicitly that he had established his shop in Münz in order to escape the authorities in the clerical-dominated city of Cologne, but he would never have been able to mount a trade in livres philosophiques if his shop had been on the Cologne side of the wall. Any bookseller who dared sell such works in Cologne was courting disaster. Consider, for example, the case of a Cologne bookseller named Simonin who, in 1776, ordered a large shipment of livres philosophiques from Samuel Fauche, the STN’s former associate. At the time, Fauche had established an entrepôt of livres philosophiques in Hanau, a territorial enclave on the outskirts of Frankfurt belonging to the landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel. From there he was disseminating his stock to customers throughout the Rhineland. The shipment of books that he sent to Simonin, however, was intercepted by the Cologne authorities, who promptly consigned the books to the flames. So much precious merchandise went up in smoke in that vast auto-da-fé that Simonin was still fuming about it three years later in the summer of 1779, when Bosset de Luze paid him a visit during his trip through the Rhineland. “M. Simonin complained bitterly to me about Fauche, who prevailed upon him to purchase those honest books [underlined in the manuscript],” Bosset informed his associates. Those books “brought him a great deal of unpleasantness and are responsible for the severity that [the authorities] are exercising today against the book trade in Cologne.”

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Unlike Simonin in Cologne, Mettra never had any occasion to complain of “severity” on the part of the authorities. He ordered the same kind of “honest books” from the STN as Simonin did from Fauche. It’s just that he did so from the safe side of the wall. Mettra’s first request for livres philosophiques came suddenly and without warning in a letter of August 1782. He had already submitted one order in January, which did not include any livres philosophiques, just a small assortment of books from the STN’s normal printed catalogue (books on viticulture and pedagogy, a French grammar, a collection of contes by Marmontel, works of history by the French historian the abbé Millot). And his letter of August began innocently enough, with another order similar to, though somewhat larger than, the first. Then, in the following paragraph, Mettra wrote, as if en passant: “It is said that M. Fauche supplies prohibited books that he has reprinted at a price of one sou, or just a little more, per sheet. We suppose that . . . you [are] in a position to supply the publications of your colleagues at the same price as that of your own publications, and so we beseech you to send to us the most complete collection of those works in every genre that it is possible for you to provide.” It was quite a request. With an air of beguiling casualness, Mettra was asking for nothing less than the complete corpus of livres philosophiques. When the STN’s directors received that request, they must have had a moment’s hesitation. After more than a decade of experience with underground dealers in France, they knew that booksellers who specialized in livres philosophiques were often the most marginal and the least creditworthy. And besides, Mettra was mistaken about the price of such publications. One sou per sheet was the usual wholesale price that the STN charged for the books in its printed cata logue; livres philosophiques fetched a higher price precisely because they entailed risks. Either the mistake was innocent, in which case Mettra was ignorant of the trade that he was proposing to conduct, or it was disingenuous, in which case he was trying to play the STN for a fool. Either way, it was not very reassuring. So the STN proceeded cautiously. It did not immediately send off a large shipment of livres philosophiques to Münz. Nor did it send its handwritten cata logue of such books, which Mettra asked for in a subsequent letter. It merely added one lone copy of Espion dévalisé, a work belonging to the genre of the chronique scandaleuse, to a crate that it sent to Münz in September 1782. That was enough, however, to encourage Mettra’s hopes. When he received

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the STN’s letter announcing the contents of the crate, he reacted with the sudden eagerness of a hound catching the scent of its quarry. Even before the crate with the copy of Espion dévalisé had arrived in Münz, Mettra sent in a new order for an additional sixty-four copies; then he doubled the size of that order when the crate finally reached him in late November. At last he was closing in on the kind of books he had been after: “We beseech you to send us fifty copies of works in this genre at their very freshest [dans la plus grande fraîcheur] whenever you print them,” Mettra wrote, referring to Espion dévalisé. The STN responded to that order by sending Mettra sixty-four copies of Espion devalisé in November 1782, then an additional thirty-two the following month, along with twenty-six of the political libel Fastes de Louis XV and fifty of Mirabeau’s exposé of royal despotism, Lettres de cachet; and, in August 1783, it sent him twenty-six of Errotika [sic] Biblion, Mirabeau’s blasphemous, mock-learned, libertine essays on sexual mores. Eureka! Mettra seemed to exclaim: “Whenever you have works in the genre of ‘espion de,’ ‘contes théol.’ we beg of you to send us fifty copies as soon as they leave the press. . . . We are being asked . . . for clandestine books with good engravings, and we know that one of your colleagues [presumably, Fauche] has produced many such books,” he wrote in January 1784. One month later, he was back to the same subject, requesting regular shipments of thirteen copies of new publications “at their freshest” and “a larger number if they belong to the clandestine genre.” And the STN honored that request by sending twenty-six copies of Mirabeau’s pornographic memoirs, Libertin de qualité. The engravings in the edition of Mirabeau’s memoirs Mettra found to be of poor quality. But he had nothing against Mirabeau. On the contrary, he wanted just about anything by Mirabeau he could get his hands on—Les Elégies de Tibulle, for example, a collection of erotic poems by a Roman author of the Augustan period that Mirabeau had translated into French. Mettra asked for twenty-six copies of that collection and an equal number of “any other new publications in the same genre and emanating from such good pens.” He also asked for an unspecified number of copies of another edition of Mirabeau’s memoirs, one that had been published under the title Ma conversion, apparently by Georg Jacob Decker in Berlin. And the STN sent him twenty-six copies of that work. By late 1784, he had received 303 copies of eighteen different livres philosophiques—hardly “the most complete collection” but a considerable quantity of some very incendiary and irreligious books. While Mettra tended to order livres philosophiques in quantities of several dozen, he usually limited his orders for the STN’s other books to just a hand-

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ful of copies. Apart from that, however, he made no distinction whatsoever between the two categories of books. Not once did he indicate that livres philosophiques required any special handling or that they had to be shipped by a different route from that of other books. Altogether, in the period from January 1782 to November 1784, the STN appears to have sent Mettra eight crates of books containing approximately 665 copies of 163 works, and most of those crates contained a mixture of works from the two categories: several dozen copies of one or two livres philosophiques packed together with one or two copies of several dozen works from the STN’s normal printed catalogue—works of history, travel, pedagogy, novels, popular medical tracts. All the crates arrived safely at their destination, without passing through the hands of smugglers or falling into the hands of government inspectors. They simply sailed down the Rhine from Basel to Mettra’s shop outside the walls of Cologne. Or maybe “sail down the Rhine” is not the right expression: “inch down the Rhine” would be more like it. The shipments that the STN made to Mettra took an unbelievably long time to reach their destination, anywhere from two to four months. One could have gone on foot from Basel to Cologne in far less time than it took a crate of books traveling down the Rhine. What accounts for such slowness? The first explanation that comes to mind concerns the Rhine itself. In the eighteenth century, it was nothing like what it is today: an evenly flowing body of water that is uniformly navigable from Basel to Rotterdam. The Rhine of today is the product of human interventions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: engineers dredged the river’s bottom where the river was shallow, widened its banks where it was narrow, and straightened its course where it was twisting. In the eighteenth century, the depth, width, and current of the river were so uneven that no single ship could navigate its entire length, and, at two locations, in Mainz and in Cologne, merchandise descending the Rhine had to be offloaded and transferred from one ship to another. Besides that, the Rhine today is more polluted and the climate warmer than was the case more than two centuries ago. Sometimes, therefore, the river would freeze during the winter months and bring shipping to a brief halt. Such factors were bound to have an impact on the speed of commercial navigation. Not enough of an impact, however, to account for the glacial-like slowness of the shipments that the STN made to Mettra. In all likelihood, the letters that Mettra sent to Neuchâtel traveled the same route in reverse as the shipments that the STN made to Cologne, up the Rhine to Basel and thence to

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Neuchâtel, but they got from Cologne to Neuchâtel in just a week. Mail, therefore, moved swiftly, despite the condition of the Rhine. So too did individual travelers. When Bosset de Luze made his journey through the Rhineland in the summer of 1779, he made at least a dozen stops to meet with booksellers along the way, and even so, he got from Basel to Westphalia in a little over a fortnight. If letters and travelers could go up or down the Rhine in a matter of weeks, then why not crates of books? The answer has to do with the political geography of the Reich and the fiscal policies of the states in the Rhineland. In the early 1780s, roughly a halfcentury before the establishment of the Prussian Zollverein, a crate of merchandise traveling downstream from Basel to the Low Countries passed through no fewer than thirty-eight customs posts belonging to nineteen different political authorities. It also passed through the hands of numerous shipping agents, in Basel, Strasbourg, Mainz, and Cologne, who would expedite the crate from one leg of its journey to the next. The first shipping agent would pay for the tolls, tariffs, and transportation costs that had accumulated on the first leg of the journey; then he would forward a bill for his expenses, plus the amount of his “commission,” to the next shipping agent, who would reimburse him, and who would pay for the tolls, tariffs, and transportation costs that had accumulated on the second leg of the journey; then the second shipping agent would do the same thing, receiving reimbursement from the third shipping agent, and so on down the line, until the crate finally arrived at its destination, laden with a heavy weight of what booksellers called “incidental costs” (faux frais). Even for a very large crate of books weighing more than five hundred pounds, the faux frais exceeded 10 percent of the value of the merchandise; for smaller crates, they were proportionately greater. Sometimes, therefore, shipping agents thought it best to avoid the Rhine altogether and to send crates overland instead. In the late 1770s, for example, JeanGuillaume Virchaux, the STN’s correspondent in Hamburg, indicated that he wanted his shipments to be sent down the Rhine to Amsterdam and from there across the North Sea and up the Elbe to Hamburg. The shipping firm of Franck frères in Strasbourg told the STN that Virchaux was making a mistake: “It is worth noting that with all the different commissions one is obligated to pay for small shipments those shipments will end up costing just as much as [would be the case if they were sent] overland and they remain a long time en route.” In his letters to the STN, Mettra complained frequently about the slowness and the expense of the STN’s shipments, as if the STN were to blame.

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And, on two occasions, the STN did, in fact, deserve some blame: the first two shipments that it made to Mettra, in January and September 1782, it mistakenly addressed not to Münz but to the port of Cologne, so that the shipments had to go through the same procedure as any crate of merchandise transiting through the city. It was a long and expensive procedure. When a crate of merchandise arrived at the port of Cologne, dock workers would unload it, usually by means of a crane, and transport it to the city scales; then scale operators would weigh it, customs officials would tax it, and, finally, a shipping agent would send it on to its destination— or, in the case of Mettra’s shipment, back to its destination. By the time Mettra’s shipment had completed its detour through the port of Cologne, it was burdened with the additional expense of the commission that the shipping agent had allocated to himself, the fiscal charges that the customs officials had levied, as well as the cost of unloading and weighing the merchandise. No wonder Mettra was upset: “It is difficult for us to pay a commission, transit costs, etc. in that city,” he told the STN. The STN, however, did not repeat the mistake of addressing crates to Cologne after September 1782, and yet Mettra’s complaining continued unabated. The underlying problem, therefore, had nothing to do with the STN. To the question of why shipping was so slow and expensive, the answer was simple: the main commercial artery in western Germany was seriously clogged. So seriously clogged, in fact, that sclerosis could strike at any moment. All that was needed to bring it on was a tariff war among states in the Rhineland. When such wars erupted, as they did periodically, it sent faux frais to such prohibitively high levels that shipping agents would hold back crates of merchandise until the governments had settled their differences—and that could take several months. In the meantime, the flow of goods along the Rhine would come to a complete halt. For merchants of all kinds and not just booksellers, it was an unhealthy situation. The whole economy of the Rhineland suffered from poor circulation and occasional interruptions in the supply of goods to trade. And yet the parlous state of commercial shipping along the Rhine did have at least one benefit for booksellers: it worked against any effective system of policing. The states along the Rhine tried to extract as much revenue as they could from the crates of merchandise that transited through their ports; they had no incentive to confiscate books bound for other locations. Customs officials, therefore, did not bother about inspecting the contents of books. They treated books like any other merchandise, as commodities to be taxed

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rather than as literature to be policed. Even works of the most uncompromising atheism could sail through the very heart of the Catholic Rhineland without encountering any difficulties. Take, for example, Système de la nature by the Baron d’Holbach, a notorious work of materialist philosophy that the STN published in 1771 and of which it sent two hundred copies to Baerstecher, the bookseller in Cleve whose relations with the STN we discussed in the previous chapter. A Prussian enclave in the lower Rhine, Cleve benefited from the liberal policies of Frederick the Great. Nothing therefore prevented Baerstecher from ordering Système de la nature and keeping it in his shop; it turned out that nothing prevented the STN from shipping that work to him either. The STN sent the two hundred copies in two separate crates, the first of which took nearly three months to complete its journey. But both of the crates reached the safe haven of Prussian Cleve without any difficulty, after traveling down the Rhine, through Mainz, seat of an archbishopric, and Cologne, “the German Rome.” Not even a work as deeply offensive to Christianity as Système de la nature was worth bothering about if it were merely transiting through Cologne. The authorities there sprang into action only when such works were being sold in Cologne. In 1774, some copies of one of Baerstecher’s own publications, a satirical work about the Jesuits entitled Histoire des diables modernes, were sold at a public auction in Cologne. The authorities seized the copies, and the magistrate ordered them to be burned by the public hangman. Ten years and an indeterminate number of autos-da-fé later, Mettra must have known that he would have to renounce the Cologne market if he wished to conduct a trade in livres philosophiques. But it was no great loss: “If you know Cologne, then you will not be unaware that the city presents a very small market for the French book trade,” Mettra told the STN. In all likelihood, he sold few books to retail customers in Cologne, and so had little to worry about from the authorities there. While the papal nuncio was organizing bonfires of livres philosophiques in Cologne, Mettra was able to stockpile them in Münz. Stockpile them for whom? Certainly not for the reading public in Münz, which seems to have been little more than a village. Mettra’s retail customers must have been located at some distance from his shop, probably throughout the region of the middle and lower Rhine, even as far afield as Hesse, according to one source. Unfortunately, however, Mettra never identified his retail customers in his letters to the STN. When he spoke of his customers, he men-

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tioned publisher-wholesalers (libraires) and retail booksellers (détailleurs), and he claimed to conduct more trade with them than with individual members of the public. It seems likely, therefore, that some of the books the STN sent to Mettra ended up in other bookshops far from Cologne— especially the livres philosophiques, which Mettra ordered in quantities of several dozen. But which bookshops? Unfortunately, Mettra did not say anything about that either. We can infer that he sold books to the French bookseller Samuel Pitra in Berlin, for, on one occasion, he paid the STN with a bill for 300 livres drawn against Pitra, who must therefore have owed money to Mettra, presumably for books Mettra had supplied to him. Whether those books were ones that Mettra had acquired from the STN, however, we have no way of saying. And nothing that Mettra said on the subject of his correspondents is of any help in pinpointing where the STN’s books went. On one occasion, he remarked that his correspondents were “in distant lands,” and on another, that they were “in areas newly opened to the French book trade.” He was decidedly vague, even a little cryptic, about where the books that passed through his shop ended up. About where they came from, on the other hand, Mettra was quite clear. He never let the STN forget that he drew supplies of books not only from Switzerland but also from the Low Countries (the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic). He referred to the Low Countries as “our cantons,” and he referred to them often because he wanted the STN to realize that it faced stiff competition: “Even re-editions that are a little bit old become a burden to us, since good works . . . are promptly pirated in our cantons and from there we can obtain them by means of swapping and at less cost [than is possible from Neuchâtel],” he warned the STN. Anytime the STN sent Mettra a book that had already begun circulating in his “cantons,” he would complain that the book was no longer “fresh” (a key word in Mettra’s lexicon). And when he declined to order one or another of the STN’s publications, he would explain his refusal by alluding to the competition from publishers in his “cantons.” Mettra used the threat of competition from the Low Countries like a riding crop to drive the STN to ever greater exertions of speed and diligence. Either the STN was quick to fill his orders, or it needn’t bother, Mettra explained when ordering copies of Mariage de Figaro by Beaumarchais: “I would take 54/50 of the genuine Figaro with the preface [underlined in the manuscript] if you were printing it, but right away or not at all; for we have already received some re-prints from the Low Countries. . . . What is more, Messieurs,

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your new publications can only be useful to us at their very freshest [dans leur plus grande fraîcheur].” Above all, however, Mettra used the threat of competition from the Low Countries like a club to beat the STN into making concessions on prices and trade terms. It cost him less to obtain books from his cantons than from Switzerland, he argued; therefore, the STN would have to compensate him with reduced prices (he demanded a discount of at least 20 percent on books from the STN’s printed cata logue and a price of one sou per sheet for livres philosophiques) and more favorable trade terms (he wanted to receive the STN’s books either “en commission” or on the basis of swapping). But the STN would not budge, either on prices or on trade terms. By 1784, in fact, it was not even filling all of Mettra’s orders, let alone granting concessions, since his financial situation was looking more and more precarious. As payment for the STN’s books, Mettra had written two bills for 200 livres each and one for 585 livres, all three of which were drawn against correspondents in Paris: they turned out to be worthless—the first two because Mettra’s Parisian correspondent refused to honor them, the third because Mettra withdrew it before it fell due. Mettra dismissed the STN’s concerns and protested his solvency. But there could be little doubt that he was struggling to keep his head above water. Then, all of a sudden, Mettra’s business was under water—truly: on 27 February 1784, “that fatal day” as Mettra later described it, the Rhine overflowed its banks and flooded Mettra’s shop in Münz. Forced to abandon Münz, he took temporary refuge in Deutz, a village on the right bank of the Rhine opposite the city of Cologne, where he continued his business while searching for a new permanent home. By March 1785, he had found what turned out to be the perfect home: Neuwied, a tiny Rhineland principality roughly fifty miles upstream from Cologne. It is hard to think of any place in the Reich more different from the Catholic city of Cologne than Neuwied. In direct contravention of the Peace of Augsburg, the ruling prince of Neuwied, Friedrich Alexander von Wied, had forsworn all confessional affiliation. His residence thus attracted a hybrid population of various faiths, and it became one of the European centers of radical publishing as well as Freemasonry and Illuminati. It is true that in Münz, Mettra had been able to sell livres philosophiques, but he seems to have relied primarily on other publishers for his supplies of those books. In Neuwied, he was free to publish and print them himself. He turned out his own editions of what he described coyly as “spicy works” (articles piquants): such

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pornographic, anticlerical works as Diners de M. Guillaume by the abbé Duvernet and the ironically titled Exercises de dévotion de M. Henri Roche, “delightful banter from the abbé Voisenon,” as Mettra described it to the STN. He published a twenty-eight-volume edition of the Oeuvres of Voltaire, which occupied thirty-six presses in his shop in Neuwied. He announced a new edition in two volumes of La Chronique scandaleuse, the work that derived its title from the genre. And he edited, published, and printed the notorious Correspondance littéraire secrète, a journal composed of some of the most scandalous of the “chroniques scandaleuses,” which appeared openly under the imprint of the “Société Typographique de Neuwied.”  Once established in Neuwied, in other words, Mettra’s publishing operation expanded enormously. Besides livres philosophiques, he turned out topical works on the political crisis in France—Portrait de M. de Vergennes and Essai politique et historique sur la Maréchausée, both of which he claimed to have printed on commission for the authors. In late 1788, as the crisis in France deepened, he began printing pamphlets on the forthcoming meeting of the Estates General—Réflexions d’un citoyen, Lettres ou mémoire sur les troubles populaires, and Lettre à un membre du corps helvétique sur la prochaine tenue des Etats- Généraux, all of which he assured the STN had been printed from original manuscripts. Surprisingly for a bookseller whose stock-in-trade had consisted of works like Espion dévalisé, Mettra sounded just a little apologetic about printing ephemeral political pamphlets, which he admitted were not of any great intrinsic “merit”: their appeal was simply that they belonged to “a genre universally sought after in this moment.” On the other hand, he sounded quite proud of his large folio edition of Monument du costume physique et moral de la fin du dix-huitième siècle: it was “a major work,” he told the STN, and would include no fewer than twenty-six plates engraved by an artist in Paris. Whatever doubts the STN may have had about Mettra’s solvency vanished sometime after he had established himself in Neuwied. So too did its reservations about conducting trade on the basis of swapping (compte de change). At some point in the summer of 1786, the STN finally agreed to Mettra’s oft-repeated request to establish a compte de change. And with that, the volume of the literary traffic between Neuchâtel and Neuwied exploded. In just two and half years, from August 1786 to December 1788, Mettra dispatched so many books to Neuchâtel— eleven shipments worth at least 6,000 livres—that the STN did not have enough books of its own to balance the account. In order to pay for one particularly large shipment that Mettra

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made to it in December 1788, it had to use two different methods of payment: it received 1,027 copies of the pornographic, anticlerical Exercises de dévotion de M. Henri Roche on the basis of a compte de change, but also a large number of other works worth more than 800 livres that it purchased for money—119 copies of La Chronique scandaleuse, 54 of Pucelle d’Orléans by Voltaire, 216 of Lettres à M. N***, 24 of L’Année galante, 13 of La Belle captive, the plates of Monument du costume, and one copy of a German work. By the eve of the French Revolution, Mettra was producing so many valuable publications that the STN had come to rely on him for its supplies of livres philosophiques. By then, he had also acquired a certain local notoriety, enough to capture the attention of a contemporary travel writer who provided a brief description of Mettra’s establishment in a work about a journey through the German Rhineland: It is permissible for me to offer a very simple account of the typographical establishment that M. Mettra, a member of several literary societies, has formed in Neuwied. This establishment, known under the name of the Société Typographique de Neuwied, consists of: 1) a well-stocked bookshop in which one finds, in addition to the known riches of French literature, all the new publications that come out from month to month; 2) a workshop for making prints (imprimerie en taille douce); 3) a large French printing shop, which has produced, and continues to produce, all of the most interesting works. It is from those presses that have come Monument du costume, large in-folio adorned by 26 engravings of Moreau le jeune, the beautiful edition of Cyane, novel by the Baron de Bilderbeck, & &; 4) It is at the offices of the Société Typographique that several periodicals are edited, including the spiciest of all the printed periodicals, the one known under the title, Correspondance littéraire secrète. In retrospect, the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the French Revolution appear to have marked the apogee of Mettra’s career as a book dealer. After 1789, his fortunes took a downward turn. With the freeing of the presses in France, Mettra and the other foreign publishers of livres philosophiques lost their competitive advantage at the same time that censorship in the Reich was growing more and more repressive. Mettra did the best he could under the altered circumstances by branching out into new areas of

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trade: paper manufacture and money forgery. He purchased two paper mills in Neuwied and used his presses to print counterfeit assignats. And in September 1792, five months after the start of the revolutionary wars, he re-launched his career as a diplomat, this time on behalf of revolutionary France. The goal of his diplomatic mission was to pry Prussia loose from its Austrian ally; so he shuttled back and forth between Prussian and French authorities. He met with Prussian envoys in Cologne and Coblenz; traveled to Paris to confer with the French foreign minister Lebrun; returned to the Rhineland, where he visited the French general Custine in occupied Mainz; and then, in January 1793, met with a Prussian envoy in Wiesbaden. It was an intense burst of diplomatic activity, and all for naught. At a later stage of the war, Mettra’s diplomatic overtures might have found a more favorable reception, for eventually the Prussian government did agree to a separate peace with revolutionary France—but not until 1795, the same year, ironically, that the revolutionary armies arrived in Neuwied and briefly captured the city after an artillery barrage that laid waste Mettra’s shop and so delivered the coup de grâce to his once-flourishing business. The following year Mettra turned up as a bookseller in Leipzig, where he stayed for two years before moving on to Berlin. He died in the Prussian capital in 1804, after having resumed his career as an art dealer.

* * * Like Mettra, Charles Fontaine, the STN’s main correspondent in Mannheim, was a native Frenchman; but that was about as far as the similarities between them went. Whereas Mettra was a man of the world, the kind of person who would refer to a work of anticlerical pornography as “delightful banter,” an educated Parisian who rubbed shoulders with statesmen, Fontaine was the son of a fisherman, born in 1724 in a village in Normandy. He was also a lifelong professional bookseller. Apprenticed in his youth to a cousin in Colmar, he went on to establish his own shop in Mannheim at the age of just twenty-three, two years before he married a native Mannheimer. There would have been little opportunity in a career such as Fontaine’s for any secondary schooling, and the limitations of his education showed in his letters to the STN, which frequently lapsed into phonetic spelling. It is not likely that a bookseller like Fontaine would have read many of the books in his own bookshop—the printed books, that is. Account books were another matter. Those he must have

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read very carefully, for he was irreproachably regular and prompt in the payment of his bills, and he enjoyed an outstanding reputation for financial solidity. Everyone whom the STN consulted about Fontaine sang his praises. Jean-Jacques Meuron-Tribolet, a Neuchâtel merchant who visited Fontaine on the STN’s behalf in December 1770, declared, “Monsieur Fontaine passes here for very good, his shop gives off an air of wellbeing, I believe from all that I’ve heard said that you can work with him safely.” Another Neuchâtel merchant, Jean-Henri Chaillet d’Arnex, who met Fontaine at the Frankfurt fair in the autumn of 1770, noted that Fontaine had suffered through some unpleasant experiences with the Société Typographique de Berne and a bookseller in Lausanne (probably Jean-Pierre Heubach) and that he had therefore grown “disgusted with ordering anything from the typographical societies of Switzerland.” But Chaillet strongly urged the STN to write to Fontaine anyway: “He is a person worth conciliating. His trade is the largest in Germany,” Chaillet said of Fontaine. And Johann Jacob Flick, the STN’s correspondent in Basel, chimed in on a more personal note: “Happily I inform you that you can depend entirely on Herr Fontaine and easily extend to him credit of up to 12,000 livres, as he is a good payer and my best friend.” In 1777, Charles Fontaine retired and left his business to his son Matthias; the business continued to thrive. Even Bosset de Luze, a hard-bitten homme d’aff aires with a sharp eye for spotting financial weakness, had only good things to report about the younger Fontaine when he visited Mannheim during his journey through the Rhineland in the summer of 1779: “I saw Monsieur Fontaine [i.e., Matthias Fontaine], who is . . . very good, good manner, beautiful shop,” Bosset informed his associates at the home office. There was never a single jarring note in the chorus of praise for the firm of Fontaine père et fils. The STN had not the slightest hesitation, therefore, about filling the orders that arrived from Mannheim. While it held back a few shipments for Mettra out of concern over his solvency, it was always quick to send off shipments to Charles and Matthias Fontaine. And it made a total of twenty-seven shipments to them in the period from December 1770 to July 1783. It was the longest period of unbroken commercial relations that the STN maintained with any firm in Germany. In the early 1770s, the STN also received a few orders from Christian Schwan, the Mannheim bookseller whom we mentioned briefly in Chapter 1. (Schwan was the son-in-law of Johann Esslinger, the Frankfurt bookseller with whom he collaborated, and whom he tried unsuccessfully to install as the

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STN’s commissioner in Germany.) Schwan, however, dealt mainly, and, after 1774, exclusively in German books; so the orders that he placed with the STN were small—too small, in some cases, to meet the minimum weight requirement of fifty pounds for a crate of books. When the STN filled Schwan’s orders, it would usually join his books to those it was sending to Charles Fontaine, who seemed perfectly happy to lend Schwan his assistance. “The competition between them is peaceful,” one of the STN’s correspondents said of the two Mannheim booksellers. “Peaceful” would also be a good way to describe the correspondence of Charles Fontaine with the STN. In his very first letter, Fontaine said that he abhorred “haggling” (marchanderie, as he called it). Afterward, he showed that he had meant it, for his letters contained remarkably little of the angry complaining and hard-edged negotiating that filled the letters of the STN’s other correspondents. Unlike Mettra, Fontaine did not make a fuss over trade terms or try to bargain down the STN’s prices: he agreed without any protest to purchasing the STN’s books for his own account at a price of one sou per sheet. Nor did he complain about the slowness and expense of the STN’s shipments. The distance from Neuchâtel to Mannheim was shorter than the distance to Cologne, and crates bound for Mannheim did not have to travel down the Rhine. When the STN made shipments to Fontaine, either it would send them overland from Basel to Mannheim, avoiding the toll-clogged stretch of the upper Rhine and the added expense of a commission for a shipping agent in Strasbourg, or it would send them overland from Basel to Frankfurt, where Fontaine or his son or an employee of the firm would collect them when they arrived at the Frankfurt fairs, which at least one member of the firm always attended in both the spring and autumn. Though Leipzig had eclipsed Frankfurt as the site of Germany’s literary marketplace, the Frankfurt fairs retained their importance as a regional market for booksellers in the Reich. They also retained their importance for merchants other than booksellers, including textile merchants from Neuchâtel, who sold their wares at the Frankfurt fairs. On at least one occasion, therefore, in the autumn of 1779, the STN was able to reduce the costs of shipping by joining the books of Matthias Fontaine to a shipment of printed calicoes that a Neuchâtel textile merchant named Berthoud was making to Frankfurt. It was a cost-reducing measure that saved money for Matthias Fontaine and did not cost the STN anything at all. And the STN was eager to oblige the Fontaines in whatever way it could—they were such good customers.

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Since the Fontaines received some of the STN’s books at the Frankfurt fairs, it stands to reason they also sold a few of them there—but only a few. Had they been ordering the STN’s books for sale to other booksellers at the Frankfurt fairs, they would have ordered them in quantities of several dozen. Unlike Mettra, however, they almost never ordered more than a dozen copies of any single book at one time. Usually, they would order from one to six, at the very most twelve, copies of an assortment of books; and to increase the weight of their shipments and so reduce the relative weight of faux frais, they would allow the STN to add a few books that they had not explicitly ordered. Then, if demand outstripped supply, they would reorder the books that their customers had requested, on some occasions three or four times in succession over a period of several years. Of the twenty-seven shipments that the STN made to them, twenty-five can be reconstructed from the STN’s Livres de commissions and its Brouillard (a daily journal of business transactions): they contained an average of only six copies per title, 1,203 copies of 198 works. By ordering books in small quantities, and then reordering them if necessary, Fontaine and his son reduced their risk and stuck close to the demand of the public. What kind of public? It seems unlikely that Fontaine and his son would have sold many books to professional scholars—in any case, in their normal retail trade. On one occasion, in the summer of 1779, Matthias Fontaine indicated to the STN that he was organizing a “public sale” of a large collection of German and Latin books— a collection that included “a lovely assortment of old Latin editions [livres anciens latins],” according to Bosset, who inspected the books when he visited Fontaine that same summer. To maintain good relations with a good customer, Bosset instructed his associates at the home office to write to Fontaine and to give him the address of an antiquarian bookshop in Lisbon that might have some interest in purchasing the Latin books from Fontaine’s collection. Those books, however, were not indicative of the normal trade that the Fontaines conducted. Their normal trade seldom involved Latin books, as Charles Fontaine explained to the STN in December 1773 after the STN had sent him six unsolicited copies of Epistolae ab eruditis viris ad Alb. Hallerum, a collection of letters from scholars to the renowned Bern physician Albrecht von Haller: “Since you never sent me any Latin books, I am surprised that on this occasion you added this one. I would gladly have kept it, but I do not know what exactly to do with it, seeing as no one has asked me for any Latin works during the course of this entire year.” The Fontaines’ customers were the kind of people who preferred contemporary French works to Latinate erudition. But who were they? And where did they reside?

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During the early years of Charles Fontaine’s correspondence with the STN, some of his customers almost certainly resided in Mannheim, the capital of the Electoral Palatinate and residence of the Palatine elector Karl Theodor. During his reign in Mannheim, which spanned more than three decades, from 1743 to 1777, Karl Theodor dedicated himself to enhancing the cultural prestige of his court. A generous patron, he spent lavish sums of money to build up his library and his picture gallery, to expand his elegant chateau, to lay out new parks and gardens, and above all to support a lively musical and theatrical culture, which featured an internationally renowned orchestra and a permanent troupe of French actors. With French actors staging regular performances of French plays, the court in Mannheim acquired a reputation as an outpost of L’Europe française— so strong a reputation that Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, the controversial and outspoken Württemberg journalist, described Mannheim as a “colony of the French.” It was the kind of place where someone like Voltaire would have felt right at home. And, in 1753, after his escape from the court of Frederick the Great in Prussia and his brief arrest by Prussian agents in Frankfurt, Voltaire did, in fact, spend several weeks as a guest of Karl Theodor in Mannheim. When he left, he left behind his personal secretary, an Italian homme de lettres named Cosimo Alessandro Collini, who took up positions in the employ of the electoral court, as private secretary to Karl Theodor and as electoral Palatine historiographer. He also left behind a devoted admirer in the elector himself, who honored his illustrious former guest by placing a bust of the philosophe on his writing table and by corresponding with Voltaire regularly. There can be little doubt that under the influence of Karl Theodor, the electoral court was a source of demand for French books— above all books by Voltaire, which Charles Fontaine ordered in unusually large quantities. Whereas Fontaine seldom ordered more than six copies of any single book straightaway, he was prepared to risk an immediate order of twelve copies on works by Voltaire— especially the kind of short works (plays, contes, or philosophic pamphlets) that the manufacture de Ferney turned out in such profusion during the last decade of Voltaire’s life. He ordered twelve copies sight unseen of Voltaire’s Eloge historique de la raison, prononcé dans une académie de province; twelve of Histoire de Jenni, ou le sage et l’athée; and twelve of Don Pedre, roi de Castille, tragédie et autres pièces. And on one occasion, in a letter of March 1773, he asked the STN to send him “4 nouveautés de Voltaire.” It did not matter to Fontaine what those nouveautés were about or which genres they belonged to, so long as they came from the pen of the illustrious patriarche

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Figure 4. View of the chateau in Mannheim from the town side. Pen and ink drawing by Philippe Le Clerc, ca. 1800. Note that the chateau and its grounds look somewhat forlorn in Le Clerc’s picture. The reason is that by 1800, Karl Theodor and his court had not resided in Mannheim for more than two decades. Also, in November 1795, Mannheim had been the scene of a fierce battle between French and Austrian troops, an event that severely damaged several rooms of the chateau, including the salle d’opéra. Karl Theodor’s library and his picture gallery occupied rooms in the east wing of the chateau, which was built between 1754 and 1777 under the direction of the architect Nicolas de Pigage. The east wing appears on the left side of the picture. (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich)

de Ferney. The conclusion, therefore, seems inescapable: Mannheim was Voltaire country. But that does not mean Fontaine and his son catered exclusively to the public in Mannheim. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how they could have survived as French booksellers if they had depended entirely on the local demand, since all the evidence indicates that the demand for French books in Mannheim was declining quite sharply during the 1770s. By the 1770s, Karl Theodor was not any longer the same Francophile cultural patron as he had been at the time of Voltaire’s visit in 1753. In 1770, he had sacked his French comédiens—a move that led the way to the establish-

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ment, in 1777, of a Nationaltheater in Mannheim, the first such institution in the history of the German stage. The tone at the electoral court was becoming less French and more German, and, as that happened, the market for French books began to contract. In 1775, Christian Schwan wrote to the STN to explain why his orders had fallen off in recent years: “For the past three or four years, the reading of French books [la lecture française] has declined so generally in this country that there is no longer any way to sell a book written in that language.” Two years later, in 1777, Schwan announced that he was severing his commercial ties to Neuchâtel altogether: the demand for French books had so greatly diminished in recent years, he explained, that it was not worth his while to order them from the STN. By that time, Collini no longer recognized his adopted home: “our court has become entirely German,” he complained in a letter to Voltaire. The electoral court, which Schubart had once described as a “colony of the French,” had entered a period of cultural decolonization. And then the court itself disappeared: in 1777, the same year that Matthias Fontaine succeeded his father at the head of the family business, Karl Theodor fell heir to the Wittelsbach possessions in Bavaria and shifted his permanent residence to Munich. For the French book market in Mannheim, it was the final blow: “It is hard to believe how the reading of French has given way to the reading of German ever since the departure of the court, so that at the Leipzig fair we no longer take any French books,” a Mannheim firm inaptly called La Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour reported to the STN a decade later in 1787. When the court went, so too did the market for French books. For a brief moment in 1788, it seemed that the electoral court might be returning to Mannheim. Immediately, the directors of La Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour fired off a letter to the STN: An unexpected event but all the happier for our city seems to augur for us a considerable trade in the future, and we believe that we can count on French books to be a part of it provided that the books are sufficiently important and inviting to warrant the attention of the public. To all appearances, our Most Serene Highness [i.e., Karl Theodor] will reside here in the future. His Highness, who is already in Mannheim, will be followed by the entire court, by all the ambassadors, lords, etc. And as great lords always relish reading French books, we shall perhaps have occasion to place many more works.

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Unfortunately for La Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour, Karl Theodor kept his court in Munich until his death in 1799. For the French book trade in Mannheim, there could scarcely have been a worse time than that of the STN’s correspondence with Charles and Matthias Fontaine. Not surprisingly, therefore, the volume of the commerce between Neuchâtel and Mannheim went down during that period, as can be seen in Figure 5. The decline, however, was nothing like as abrupt as one might have expected from the comments of the STN’s other correspondents in Mannheim. Charles Fontaine was still receiving four shipments per year in the mid-1770s, at the very moment that Schwan had despaired of selling any French books at all; and Matthias Fontaine even received a few shipments after the departure of the electoral court, when La Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour had given up on the French book market in Mannheim altogether. The Fontaines were able to maintain their trade in French books, despite the crisis of the French book trade in Mannheim, because they had a wide circle of customers. In addition to whatever they sold in Mannheim, they supplied the court library of the princely house of Thurn and Taxis in Regensburg; they made large sales to the Badenese court in Karlsruhe; and, following Karl Theodor’s move to Munich, Matthias Fontaine built up a circle of customers at the Bavarian court, too—hence the uncharacteristically large order that he placed in 1783 of a short work about the War of the Bavarian Succession, Histoire de la guerre et des négociations qui ont précédé le traité de Teschen. That work, which described the rapid sequence of events following the extinction of the Wittelsbach line—Joseph II’s project to swap Habsburg lands in the Low Countries for the Wittelsbach lands in Bavaria, Frederick’s II’s efforts to forestall that project, and the short Austro-Prussian war that resulted—was bound to be of particular interest to government officials in Munich. It seems all but certain, therefore, that Matthias Fontaine ordered the work for his customers in the Bavarian capital. And he ordered fifty-four copies, the largest single order that he or his father placed for any work during their correspondence with the STN. Even after the removal of the electoral court to Munich, Matthias Fontaine maintained his father’s shop in Mannheim, but he was frequently on the move. In 1779, a privy councilor of the Elector Karl Theodor, Karl von Neorberg, reported that Matthias Fontaine and the Mainz bookseller Le Roux were serving as sales’ agents for the octavo edition of Diderot’s Encyclopédie and were going “from court to court as well as to the fairs” in order

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5 4 3 2 1 0 1770

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Figure 5. STN Shipments to Charles and Matthias Fontaine in Mannheim, 1770–1783

to solicit subscriptions. Two years after that, the Berlin bookseller Friedrich Nicolai encountered Matthias Fontaine in Regensburg: “Herr Fontaine from Mannheim, who also journeys to Munich, supplies French books to the upper crust [die Vornehmen], who, as befits their station, are fond of French literature,” Nicolai noted in his travel journal. And four years after that, Matthias Fontaine wrote to the STN from Munich, requesting the plates of the Yverdon edition of the Encyclopédie on behalf of a Bavarian government official, “Monsieur de Stamm, Secrétaire intime de S. A. S. Electeur de Bavière.” The Fontaine book shop in Mannheim was a distribution center from which a wide range of French books radiated outward to a far-flung clientele of princes and aristocrats at courts across southern Germany. How wide a range of French books? Wider certainly than would have been allowed in a city like Cologne. As a Catholic prince ruling over a majority Protestant population, Karl Theodor was committed to a policy of religious tolerance; and, although quite sensitive to personal attacks and criticisms, he did not bother to establish any formal censorship procedures until 1766. After that, the government did make some tentative efforts to control the import of books into the Palatinate. It created a censorship commission and required, at least in theory, that all booksellers swear an oath not to sell any “new” or “unknown” books they had received from publishers in other lands unless they had obtained the approval of the censors. The commission, however, included such liberal and enlightened officials as the Protestant Andreas Lamey, a secretary of the Palatine Academy of Sciences, who, as it happened, was well known to the STN’s directors. The son of Bosset de Luze was a boarder at

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Lamey’s house in Mannheim, and, when Bosset visited Mannheim in the summer of 1779, he met with Lamey, who volunteered to collect subscriptions for the STN’s edition of the Encyclopédie. With officials like Lamey in charge of censorship, most of the works of the French Enlightenment circulated freely in Mannheim, and Charles and Matthias Fontaine received 204 copies of twenty-five livres philosophiques, all of which the STN sent to Mannheim without taking any special precautions. Compared to Cologne, Mannheim shone like a beacon of Enlightenment. And yet the French book trade was hardly as free in Mannheim as it was in Neuwied or Cleve. While the Fontaines showed no hesitation about ordering certain kinds of livres philosophiques—works on Freemasonry, political tracts about the American Revolution or despotism in France, and most works by Voltaire—both Charles Fontaine and Schwan drew the line at atheism, as the STN discovered in 1771 when it made the mistake of sending them some unsolicited copies of Système de la nature by d’Holbach. The copies of the treatise were simply too hot to handle, Schwan explained regretfully: “It angers me that I cannot sell them. I could very well do so, but all such books are absolutely prohibited here.” To satisfy his own curiosity, Schwan decided to keep one copy for his personal library. Fontaine, on the other hand, did not want to own even one copy of so wicked a book. “You will tell M. Fauche that such books are not for me,” he instructed the STN. “I have never sold them and will never do so. So he will not take offense if I send them back to remove them from my shop. . . . I shall hasten to make known and to sell all the good books that you print, but I will never get mixed up with prohibited works.” How did a poorly educated bookseller like Charles Fontaine distinguish “good” books from “prohibited” ones? Apparently, by their titles, for at the same time that he sent back the copies of Système de la nature by d’Holbach, he returned eighteen copies of Dieu, Réponse au Système de la nature, a short work by Voltaire that the STN had also sent to him unsolicited. He needn’t have done so. A deist response to d’Holbach’s atheistic treatise, Dieu was excerpted from Voltaire’s large multivolume Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, of which the STN published a pirated edition and of which Fontaine ordered and received thirty complete sets without encountering any difficulty. The mere reference to Système de la nature in the title of a work, however, was enough to give Fontaine pause—hence his cautious reaction to the STN’s offer of another work critical of d’Holbach’s treatise, Observations sur le Système de la

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nature by an expatriate Italian author in Berlin named Salvemini da Castiglione: “I think . . . that this [i.e., Observations] is not in the same genre of bad books but rather is a refutation,” Fontaine wrote hesitantly. “In that case I would be obliged to you if you sent me twelve copies.” (“Je pense . . . que ce nes poien dans le meme genre de moves livre, mes bien une réfutation, dan ce derni cas je vous seres bien obligé demen envoye 12 exemplere.”) Despite the egregiously bad spelling, the message could hardly have been clearer: atheism was beyond the pale. So too was pornography— at least, in the view of Fontaine, who reacted with horror when he discovered twelve copies of a pornographic work entitled La Belle allemande ou les galanteries de Thérèse in a shipment that the STN made to him in 1775. “You may always add to my shipment a few new publications,” Fontaine told the STN, “but I beg of you that they not be dirty works [saloperies] like La Belle allemande . . . which I cannot use because it does not belong to the genre of works with which I conduct my trade.” The STN would have to take back the twelve copies it had sent him, Fontaine insisted, though, in the future, he would be happy to receive one copy of such works as La Belle allemande or others dealing with “contemporary affairs” (sur les aff aires du tems). That one copy would go to a “person whom I am eager to oblige,” he explained. Apart from that, he wanted nothing to do with saloperies. Matthias Fontaine may have been just a bit more daring than his father. He did not say anything when, in 1781, the STN sent him an unsolicited copy of the pornographic Lauriers ecclésiastiques, ou campagnes de l’abbé de T***. And, in September 1788, the Viennese bookseller Josef Stahel informed the STN that Matthias Fontaine had sold “ouvrages philosophiques” at the previous Leipzig Easter fair. Booksellers, however, could sell just about any French book they pleased at the Leipzig fairs without fear of reprisal. Matthias Fontaine would not have been running any risk, therefore, unless he was also selling atheistic or pornographic works in Munich or Mannheim. And he never ordered works of that kind from the STN. From the documents in Neuchâtel, one gets the impression that both Charles Fontaine and his son tried to avoid risk: the risk of selling prohibited books, as well as the risk of placing large orders in advance of demand. It was a commercial strategy that seems to have worked quite well for them, since they maintained a large, stable, and prosperous business through some difficult

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times—in stark contrast to Jean-Frédéric Hemmerde, the STN’s correspondent in Cassel.

* * * Jean-Frédéric Hemmerde was a small-time retailer who catered primarily to the local market in Hesse-Cassel. As such, he was much more vulnerable than the STN’s correspondents in Mannheim to downturns in the local economy. As the Hessian economy went, so went Hemmerde’s trade. And, in the 1770s, the Hessian economy was traversing a very rough patch indeed. At the beginning of the decade, it was still reeling from the effects of the Seven Years’ War— during which Hessian mercenaries had fought for England against France—when a serious agricultural crisis struck. Hemmerde reacted by suspending his orders from the STN: “In these sad times, when the trade in books is languishing totally— at least in our region—I am unable to place orders large enough to form parcels that would be worth the trouble of sending to me,” he wrote in the autumn of 1772. Then, a few years later, just when the economy seemed to be reviving, Hessian troops departed for America, draining off population. The 1770s were a hard decade for a Hessian bookseller dependent on the local market. Not surprisingly, therefore, Hemmerde’s trade with the STN was intermittent. He received three small shipments of books in 1772, but he was slow to pay for them. And eventually, in 1774, the STN had to arrange to have some of those books transferred to Esslinger’s shop in Frankfurt, its dumping ground for unwanted merchandise. For the next seven years it heard nothing further from its correspondent in Cassel. In April 1781, however, Hemmerde suddenly wrote to the STN again, requesting a copy of its catalogue. In July, he explained, he would be accompanying the Landgrave Friedrich II of HesseCassel to the baths at Hofgeismar, a spa about fifteen miles north of Cassel, which served as the Landgrave’s summer residence: “That’s why I’d like to obtain a wider assortment of French books than I have at present.” One month later, after having received the STN’s catalogue, he submitted an order, which he asked the STN to send off “without delay [underlined in the manuscript] so that it reaches me in time to use at the baths.” Hemmerde was hoping that he and the STN could simply pick up where they had left off almost a decade earlier, as if he had never broken off the correspondence in the first place. The STN reacted cautiously. It made inquiries about Hemmerde with a Huguenot pastor in Cassel named Maurice Lagisse. (Hesse-Cassel was home

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to a large community of Huguenot refugees to which, in all probability, Hemmerde belonged.) Lagisse’s reply was not damning but neither was it encouraging. He told the STN that Hemmerde was “a very honest fellow” who had suffered “many a misfortune” and that he was now making “renewed efforts to restore his credit.” To the STN, that must have sounded like a rather weak endorsement, and all the more so as Lagisse ended his letter with a disclaimer: “Do not believe, Messieurs, that I wish to encourage you to send to him all that he might ask of you, nor that I will answer for him in any way whatsoever. . . . You will act as you consider it most suitable for your interests.” Meanwhile, the STN also made inquiries about Hemmerde with a banker and shipping agent in Frankfurt named Laue, whose reply was even more discouraging than Lagisse’s: “We are told that his faculties do not merit any credit,” Laue warned. After receiving that warning from Laue and the tepid endorsement from Lagisse, the STN decided to withhold Hemmerde’s order. Hemmerde, however, was persistent. In mid-July 1781, he wrote to the STN from Hofgeismar, imploring the STN to fill his order, and this time he gave the STN an inducement to do so: an advance payment of 300 livres. Th at did the trick. On 28 July, the STN sent Hemmerde a crate containing from one to ten copies of forty-six works. And the following summer, it sent him another crate, which he had also asked to receive “during the season of the baths” (underlined in the manuscript). Then, in 1783, came the good news from across the Atlantic: the American war had ended. Suddenly, the prospects for Hemmerde’s trade appeared to be brightening: “I am expecting that in the future, we shall be conducting a larger volume of business because . . . the Hessian troops will soon be returning from America and will repopulate the country and revive its commerce, which this unfortunate war had totally ruined,” he wrote in March 1783. After suffering through the hard times of the 1770s, Hemmerde’s trade seemed finally to be rebounding. And as long as he kept up with his payments, the STN filled his orders, a total of seven in the three years from the summer of 1781 to the summer of 1784. As one would expect of a local retailer, Hemmerde kept his orders small. Altogether, the STN sent him ten crates of books (seven from 1781 to 1784, plus the three in 1772); and they contained 509 copies of 178 works— an average of less than three copies per work, just enough, it would appear, to satisfy the demand of the Landgrave and his courtiers at the baths of Hofgeismar, which Hemmerde mentioned repeatedly as the destination for the STN’s books.

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The annual summer retreat of the Landgrave to Hofgeismar was an important event in the court calendar. That it was also an occasion for Hemmerde to sell French books is hardly surprising. The Landgrave Friedrich II spoke fluent French, which he had learned as a child in Geneva and Lausanne; and his court, like Karl Theodor’s in Mannheim, was known as an outpost of L’Europe française. Three times a week, at the court in Cassel, a troupe of French actors performed plays by classical seventeenth-century as well as contemporary playwrights— above all, plays by Voltaire, of whom Friedrich II, like Karl Theodor, was a great admirer. In 1753, just before moving on to Mannheim, Voltaire had spent a short time as a guest of the Landgrave in Cassel. After that, the Landgrave seized every opportunity to demonstrate his enduring devotion to the prince of the philosophes. He corresponded with Voltaire; he received regular reports about his health from a correspondent in Geneva; he contributed to the fund that Voltaire established to benefit the Calas family; and, in 1766, he traveled to Ferney to pay Voltaire a personal visit. The result of the Landgrave’s devotion seems to have been a boom in the Hessian market for Voltaire’s works, which may very well have been the reason why Hemmerde established a correspondence with the STN in the first place. In a letter of July 1772, one of the earliest in his dossier, Hemmerde asked the STN whether it would be able to supply at a low price the new edition of the oeuvres of Voltaire that was being published in Lausanne. He also mentioned that he had heard “talk of several new brochures by the same author.” And since new works by Voltaire came from the presses of Cramer in Geneva, he seems to have figured that the STN would be well placed to procure them: “If you have them [i.e, the “several new brochures”], you would do me a great favor by adding six copies of each,” he wrote hopefully. Like Mannheim, Cassel was Voltaire country. It was also home to two of Voltaire’s protégés—the Genevan Jacques Mallet du Pan, who went to Cassel in 1772 to teach French literature at the local college (Collegium Carolinum), and the Marquis de Luchet, who went there four years later to direct the Landgrave’s library. Housed along with the Landgrave’s art collection in the Museum Fridericianum, a grand, temple-like Palladian building designed by the Huguenot architect Simon-Louis du Ry, the library contained a large collection of books. It was also growing at a rapid clip, from roughly 13,350 volumes in 1752 to nearly 34,000 in 1785. And, in 1780, it was purchasing from 8,000 to 10,000 livres worth of books annually, according to a correspondent of the STN’s at the nearby court of Hesse-

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Homburg who was in correspondence with Luchet. Mallet, however, was not impressed. In a letter to Voltaire, he confided that he found Cassel to be a dismal place, “a military court with little curiosity for literary masterpieces”; and he complained bitterly of the “vast” library where “one finds a great many books and little knowledge”—“above all the French books have been selected there with the most distressing Teutonic barbarism.” Earlier he had expressed similar sentiments in a letter to Ostervald, the STN’s director, in Neuchâtel: “People have . . . complained to the Prince that I was a wolf set loose from Ferney to prey upon the sheepfolds of Germany. . . . Send me some of your philosophie in this country of the Cattes, where the Romans and the French have left behind brave soldiers [des crânes] but no taste and no genius.” Seen from the perspective of an expatriate philosophe, Cassel looked like a military garrison festooned with a few cultural ornaments. Seen from the perspective of native-born German authors, on the other hand, the expatriate philosophes in Cassel looked like Voltairean epigones: “A small German prince . . . who cannot have Voltaire contents himself with Luchet,” quipped the journalist August Ludwig von Schlözer, editor of the influential Briefwechsel meist historischen Inhalts. Whatever the perspective, the picture was not very flattering for the Landgrave. For Hemmerde, however, it would not have mattered how the Landgrave’s court appeared to French and German authors. While the expatriate philosophes complained of Teutonic barbarism and the Aufklärer of their Francophile prince, Hemmerde was busy selling books—probably not to the Landgrave’s library (had Hemmerde supplied the library, the volume of his orders from Neuchâtel would have been much higher than it was) but certainly to courtiers in the Landgrave’s entourage. And he was free to sell whatever books his customers ordered, for the Landgrave does not seem to have subjected the French book trade in his territories to any censorship at all. It was one of the few aspects of Hesse-Cassel that Mallet appreciated: “There is no sacerdotal pedant [cuistre sacerdotal] who dares to interfere with the freedom of the press,” he reported to Voltaire. “Système de la nature is sold alongside its refutation [i.e., Voltaire’s Dieu].” Hemmerde did not receive nearly as many livres philosophiques from the STN as did Mettra, only eighty-one copies of twenty-one different works; but they included seven complete sets of a twenty-five-volume edition of Rousseau’s Oeuvres, which the STN sent to Cassel in installments between 1781 and 1784. And in addition to the livres philosophiques that Hemmerde received,

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Figure 6. Exterior view of the front of the Museum Fridericianum in Cassel facing the Friedrichsplatz. Copperplate engraving by J. C. Müller and G. W. Weise after S. L. du Ry, 1784. (Museumslandschaft Hessen-Kassel, Graphische Sammlung)

he ordered a few others that the STN failed to send to him: two pornographic works, Félicia ou mes fredaines and Mirabeau’s Ma conversion; two radical anti-Christian tracts, Histoire critique de Jésus- Christ and Philosophie de la nature; and two chroniques scandaleuses, Gazetier cuirassé and Espion dévalisé. Those books he is likely to have received from Fauche, with whom he was also corresponding in the early 1780s. So his trade in livres philosophiques may have been more extensive than the shipments from the STN would indicate. In any case, he never had to worry that those books would be confiscated. What Hemmerde did have to worry about was securing payment from his customers. It was a serious problem, and one that inhered in the very nature of Hemmerde’s trade: a bookseller who sold French books to aristocrats at a princely court was likely to get tangled up with debtors who took an aristocratic attitude toward the payment of their debts. And Hemmerde had got tangled up with several such debtors, according to Lagisse, the Huguenot pastor in Cassel: “Having extended credit to several gentilhommes from this area, he [i.e., Hemmerde] is unable to obtain anything from them despite his pressing solicitations and their promises to pay him,” Lagisse informed the STN. The resulting losses were all the more difficult for Hemmerde to absorb because he had neither a wide circle of customers nor extensive financial resources to fall back on.

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By the summer of 1784, therefore, Hemmerde’s situation was deteriorating yet again. He defaulted on some payments that he owed to two creditors in Cassel, who obtained a temporary restraining order to close down his shop: “It is unknown whether he will be able to meet his obligations,” Laue, the banker and shipping agent in Frankfurt, informed the STN in early August. As it turned out, Hemmerde was able to meet his obligations to his creditors in Cassel, so that by the end of the month, the restraining order against him had been lifted and he had resumed his trade. In October, however, he failed to honor a note for 379 livres that he had made out to the STN. Short of funds and facing the prospect of bankruptcy, he decided that he would have to sell off a portion of his stock at a public auction. That was a measure of last resort because books sold at auction were bound to fetch less than their retail value. Hemmerde’s situation, therefore, must have been quite desperate. But at least he was making a good-faith effort to satisfy his creditors, according to a man named Bohle, a correspondent of Laue in Cassel. Bohle was convinced that if the auction went well, Hemmerde would pay his debts: “for all those who know him know him to be a very honest man but who, for lack of sales, cannot honor his obligations at the present moment.” Unfortunately for Hemmerde, the auction does not appear to have gone well—in any case, not well enough to allow him to satisfy his debt to the STN. By the summer of 1785, nothing much had changed: the STN was still without payment and its informants in Frankfurt and Cassel were still telling the STN not to worry: “Our friend from Cassel writes to us . . . that he did not believe you risked anything with him [i.e., Hemmerde],” Laue assured the STN, after receiving a letter from Bohle. “He [i.e., Hemmerde] is a perfectly honest man who asks nothing more than to fulfill his obligations. If he has not fulfilled them as punctually as one would have wished, that has to be attributed to the nature of his trade, which is limited to the sales that he makes to retail customers.” Everyone, in short, agreed about Hemmerde’s moral character—that he was not a swindler, just a decent fellow who was down on his luck. Whether he would ever have enough money to pay the STN was another question. In the end, Hemmerde managed to hang on as a bookseller in Cassel until 1793, and so he probably satisfied his debt to the STN. But the STN did not make any additional shipments to him after the summer of 1784. With the possible exception of a few years in the early 1780s, Hemmerde seems to

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have passed most of his career as a small-scale retailer teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

* * * While Hemmerde was selling French books to courtiers at the baths of Hofgeismar, Johann Conrad Deinet, the STN’s main correspondent in Frankfurt, was conducting his trade in a very different environment. Frankfurt was a free imperial city and a bustling bourgeois commercial center, not the kind of place where one would have been likely to meet Francophile German princes or expatriate French philosophes. It was not the kind of place where one would have expected to meet a book dealer with Deinet’s background either. Born in 1735 in St. Goar, a town on the Rhine belonging to the landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel, Deinet had studied Protestant theology at the University of Marburg and traveled widely, in England, France, Spain, and Holland, before finding employment as a private tutor in Cassel sometime in the mid-1760s. At that point, he did not have any experience in trade or any connections to Frankfurt; and someone from outside of Frankfurt could not simply have moved there and then set himself up in trade for his own account. Nothing in Deinet’s background gave any hint that he was heading for a career as a book dealer in the free imperial city on the Main. In 1769, however, he arrived in Frankfurt to take up a position as tutor to the children of the recently deceased Frankfurt printer J. L. Eichenberg. From that position, he was able to ascend into the ranks of the Frankfurt book trade, by climbing through Eichenberg’s bedroom. In 1770, just one year after his arrival in Frankfurt, Deinet married Eichenberg’s widow. He thereby acquired a “right of bourgeoisie” (Bürgerrecht) in Frankfurt, at the same time that he became a guardian to his former pupils and director of Eichenberg’s printing shop, which he ran under the company name “Heirs of Eichenberg.” Meanwhile, in order to give himself a more patrician air, he also acquired a title, that of “aulic councilor” (Hofrat), which he purchased from the prince of Waldeck. It was not long before “Hofrat Deinet” had established himself as an important figure in the Frankfurt book trade— above all as the publisher and printer of the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, a review journal that served as the mouthpiece for the nascent Sturm und Drang literary movement and that, in 1772, drew contributions from such famous German authors as Goethe and Herder.

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Deinet’s dossier in Neuchâtel (thirty-two letters written in both French and German) makes it possible to sketch the portrait of a successful and enterprising German publisher and to examine how French books fitted into his trade. Most important, however, his dossier contains a great deal of precious information about conditions in the Frankfurt book trade, the regional center of the book trade in the Reich. It therefore merits a more detailed and more extensive discussion than we have given to the dossier of any other of the STN’s correspondents in the Reich. The first thing to say about Deinet’s dossier is that it is unusual—unusual, that is, for a commercial bookseller. Most commercial booksellers confined their letters to matters related to commerce: ordering books, bargaining down prices, negotiating for better trade terms, and complaining about defective sheets or high shipping costs. Deinet’s letters certainly did not ignore those matters, but they were not limited to them either. As a gelehrter (learned) rather than gelernter (trained) bookseller, Deinet was a reader as well as a producer and seller of books, and he had his own opinions about contemporary authors, opinions that he did not hesitate to share with the STN. One author about whom Deinet had particularly strong opinions was the eccentric and tempestuous Reformed Protestant pastor from Zurich, Johann Caspar Lavater, author of a best-selling work on physiognomy and the scourge of Aufklärer and orthodox theologians alike. Deinet, who belonged to the Reformed Protestant minority in Lutheran Frankfurt, adored Lavater, as the STN was quick to discover. In April 1774, just six months after the beginning of their correspondence, Deinet took the STN to task for having published an article critical of the Zurich pastor in its literary review, Le Journal helvétique: “I wish to break a lance with you, meine Herren, over the rough treatment that you gave to my friend Lavater. His person remains always venerable to those who know him intimately, and one should not have made such snide comments about his amiable character. . . . That said, I can well understand that the editors of the journal may be innocent, but articles that have been submitted should be examined in advance [of publication],” Deinet wrote scoldingly. Several months later, Deinet’s hero arrived in Frankfurt and paid Deinet a visit. Even Lavater, hardly a mild-mannered type, was a little overwhelmed by the exuberance of his admirer: “He nearly smothered me in his embrace” (er zerküsste mich fast), Lavater noted in his diary. Afterward, Lavater went back to Zurich, and Deinet continued to promote his hero from Frankfurt, urging the STN to undertake a French translation of Lavater’s

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work on physiognomy: “Opinions about Lavater’s Physiognomik are as wide ranging here as they are in Switzerland. Nevertheless, he has many admirers who praise him to the heavens. One of his friends and great partisans is Dr. Goethe, author of Souff rances de Werther, who resides here,” Deinet wrote. It was not the kind of comment the STN was accustomed to finding in the letters of its commercial correspondents. In his letters to the STN, Deinet sounded as if he were the leader of the Johann Caspar Lavater fan club. He also sounded like a devoted fan of Friedrich Nicolai, the Berlin Aufklärer, author, bookseller, and journal editor. It made for an incongruous pair of heroes—the Berlin Aufklärer and the Zurich pastor, who detested one another and feuded constantly. Deinet, however, does not seem to have noticed any incongruity. In his letters to the STN, he extolled Nicolai as “that learned bookseller” and praised Nicolai’s best-selling novel Leben und Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker, which he called “a wonderful book.” He also paid tribute to the influence of the printed word in a manner reminiscent of Nicolai, who more than any of his German contemporaries symbolized the connection between Enlightenment and the power of print. In 1773, after learning of the papal bull suppressing the Jesuit order, Deinet took the opportunity to credit the power of print with having disarmed the fury of religious conflict: “The princes in Germany are not in agreement about the suppression of the Jesuit order, and we shall see some quite remarkable scenes, but not bloody scenes, thanks be to God and to the literature of our day,” he commented to the STN. While the STN’s other correspondents seemed concerned only with reducing faux frais and increasing profits, Deinet spoke of books as vehicles for spreading the light of reason. Unfortunately for Deinet, the light of reason was not making much headway in Lutheran Frankfurt— or so it seemed to him. Several of the articles contained in the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen from the year 1772 offended the guardians of Lutheran orthodoxy in Frankfurt. The City Council punished that offense by levying heavy fines on Deinet as the publisher of the journal. Undeterred, Deinet appealed the verdict against him to the law faculty of the University of Leipzig; and when his appeal was rejected, he brought his case before the court of public opinion by publishing the documents connected to his trial. For that brazen act of insubordination, the City Council prosecuted him yet again; and, as his legal headaches increased, so too did his exasperation with the Frankfurt authorities. By September 1773, he felt nothing but scorn for his narrow-minded and bigoted persecutors, as he indicated in a letter that he sent to the STN along with a copy of the trial

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documents: “You will see, Messieurs, by the documents that I am enclosing . . . that I was once again persecuted last year by the dominant Lutheran clergy of our city, for ‘the love of God,’ as those people say. The trial is still going on and is costing me a great deal of money. The magistrate went so far as to seize by force all the copies that he was able to find in my house. I am speaking of documents that will make you laugh at the same time.” By confronting the authorities in the way that he did, Deinet was all but certain to increase their hostility toward him, but he behaved as if it didn’t matter. It was very odd behavior for a commercial bookseller. And even Deinet’s friends had to admit that he was an odd fellow. “I now see what I did not want to believe,” Lavater said of Deinet in a letter to Goethe in October 1774. “He is a dear scatterbrain without comparison [ein lieber étourdi sans pareille].” Deinet’s enemies, by contrast, did not see anything endearing in his idiosyncrasies. And he had a lot of enemies. In fact, nearly everyone who had any business dealings with him seems to have hated him: Johann Heinrich Merck, the editor of the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen in 1772, who denounced Deinet as a “scoundrel”; Deinet’s shop assistants, who signaled their dislike of him by robbing and deserting him; and above all Deinet’s colleagues in Frankfurt, whose hatred of him was so intense that Bosset remarked on it when he visited Frankfurt in the summer of 1779: “We will have a great deal of difficulty conducting trade in Frankfurt . . . [in part] because people see that we are doing business with Deinet, who is detested,” Bosset warned his associates. Deinet was so widely disliked and such a bizarre fellow, one cannot but wonder why the STN chose to make him its principal correspondent in Frankfurt. It was certainly not because there were no other booksellers in Frankfurt to correspond with. There were more booksellers in Frankfurt than in any other city of the Reich, and at least two of them—Johann Joachim Kessler and Heinrich Ludwig Brönner— showed some interest in purchasing the STN’s books. To understand why the STN ended up trading with Deinet, a pariah among Frankfurt booksellers, we will need to say just a few words about how the Frankfurt booksellers conducted their trade—a topic that leads beyond the Reich into the wider world of the German book trade. By the time Deinet launched his business in the early 1770s, the German book trade was in the throes of a major conflict. The leading publishers in Saxony and in Prussia had established a near monopoly on the publication of original editions by the most popular German authors. They had also obtained from the Saxon government the passage of legislation protecting works printed in Saxony so that pirated editions of those works were banned from

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sale at the Leipzig fairs. And they had renounced the traditional practice of swapping their editions against those of other publishers. For their original editions, whose costs of production reflected the purchase price of manuscripts, the north German publishers insisted on being paid in cash, at high prices and with no provision for the return of unsold copies. Booksellers in the Reich, therefore, saw their money reserves dwindling: “I’m up to my neck with the wares that the Leipzigers and the Berliners are sending to me, but the scarcity of money gets worse by the day,” Deinet complained to the STN in 1775. Faced with the refusal of the north Germans to engage in swapping, publishers in the Reich, as well as in Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, turned to piracy, with the inevitable result that the German book trade began to split into two warring camps: the original publishers versus the pirates. The only thing needed to consummate the split was the establishment of an independent pirate book fair, which seemed on the verge of happening in 1775 when the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel announced plans to create a new book fair in Hanau (the so-called Congress of Hanau) free of any legal restrictions on what books could be sold. Deinet welcomed that announcement and explained the need for the Hanau fair in a letter to the STN: “Little by little, the Congress of Hauau will become important, one can predict that with certainty. The Saxons continue to force the rest of us to pay them for their papers with good money at exorbitant prices and take little or nothing in exchange. Their articles thus become so dear, if one wants to make some profit from them, that the public would sooner do without them than purchase them [at so high a price]. We pirate them [i.e., the Saxons] as much as we can, but we need a place where those pirated editions can be traded without any trouble, and that place is Hanau.” Deinet’s prediction turned out to be wrong. In June 1775, Emperor Joseph II issued an order prohibiting any meetings of the Congress of Hanau and threatening stiff fines against booksellers who ignored that order. Very few of them, therefore, dared to attend. By the summer of 1776, the Hanau experiment was dead. But Deinet’s comments about it show unmistakably where he stood in the great battle that was rocking the German book trade: on the side of the pirates. While the north German publishers demanded cash payments for their books, the pirate publishers in the Reich developed their own method of trading: they sent one another their books en commission and balanced their accounts by means of exchanges. It was not a method, however, that Deinet found very congenial: “Booksellers are quite willing to buy but on credit

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[auf Borg] or in exchange for their publications [gegen Tausch], and that is not my thing,” he told the STN in June 1775. It was not the STN’s thing either. While the STN conducted frequent exchanges, it usually swapped with other French-language publishers in western Switzerland, whose proximity to Neuchâtel reduced the level of faux frais. It was reluctant to swap with German booksellers in the Reich, as it explained to Kessler, one of the Frankfurt booksellers whom Bosset visited in 1779 and who wanted to order some of the STN’s books in exchange for his own: “He [i.e., Bosset] could not accept your proposition, and neither can we, for we only conduct exchanges with our colleagues in Switzerland. The greater the distance from us, the higher the costs of transport.” In its letter to Kessler, the STN made it seem as if it would never, under any circumstances, agree to swap with booksellers in Germany. Actually, that was not true. The STN did, as we saw earlier, agree to swap with Mettra in Neuwied. Mettra, however, published French books, and he published a lot of them, including livres philosophiques, which the STN was eager to obtain. By contrast, many of the German booksellers in the Reich who wished to obtain an assortment of French books for their retail trade published few French books themselves; they sought to obtain French books in exchange for German or Latin books, which the STN seldom needed. With those booksellers, swapping would not have been practicable, even if the STN had been willing to bear the relatively high cost of commercial shipping between Switzerland and the Reich. To Deinet, it seemed the height of folly—the steadfast refusal of his colleagues in the Reich to pay money for books: “We have adopted the confounded habit of doing everything by swapping, no cash. Even if one of our booksellers were to find a good article to purchase for cash at 15 to 20 percent less than it would cost him by means of swapping, he prefers the latter method—it’s true villainy [une véritable gueuserie],” Deinet told the STN. Whether villainy or not, however, the widespread insistence of the Frankfurt booksellers on purchasing French books by means of swapping was a serious obstacle to trade with the STN. It was also the chief reason why the STN established a correspondence with Deinet. Bizarre, opinionated, cantankerous, and universally loathed by his colleagues, Deinet was nevertheless a suitable trading partner for the STN because he rejected the practice of swapping and seemed willing to purchase the STN’s books for money—in any case, at the beginning of his correspondence.

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But it was not long before Deinet’s trade with the STN ran into an obstacle of another kind: the oversupply of French books in the Frankfurt market. Even though the Frankfurt fairs had dwindled in significance, they continued to attract booksellers from the Reich, including, as we saw earlier, Charles Fontaine, who received regular shipments of the STN’s books from 1771 onward. Fontaine sold the STN’s books at the Frankfurt fairs, according to Deinet. And so too did another Palatine bookseller, Heinrich Bender from Worms, who was not, in fact, corresponding with the STN but who must have obtained the STN’s books from one of its Swiss correspondents. Deinet was outraged since the books that Bender sold were identical to those that Deinet had received from the STN: “All of that cannot but make the sale of your articles extremely difficult,” Deinet wrote in May 1776. That Fontaine and Bender sold the STN’s books at the Frankfurt fairs was bad enough. Even worse, as Deinet informed the STN, was that Samuel Fauche had enlisted Jewish peddlers from the Frankfurt ghetto to sell French books that he was stocking at his entrepôt in nearby Hanau—not just livres philosophiques, which Deinet referred to as “infamous books” (livres infâmes), but a whole range of the STN’s own publications. It was a disastrous situation, Deinet warned: Our region has been flooded for some time now with your books by the Sieur Fauche of your city, who established himself in Hanau, and who not only sells them at the prices that you have set for me but also has them peddled by Jews to everyone at much lower prices, so that if I had wished to pay cash, I could have had here Questions sur l’Encyclopédie in-octavo for 7 livres, Descriptions des arts et métiers 2 volumes with plates in-quarto for 10 livres, and many others at proportional discounts. Please consider, Messieurs, whether your commissioners here can do something about it. If the Sieur Fauche is associated with you and is acting in the name of your Society, there is nothing for it but to give an order to your commissioners to return to you all that they have in their hands, because, if affairs continue in this way, I cannot hope to sell the slightest thing in the future. However, I cannot believe that you misjudge your own interest so badly as to wish to ruin the market for your articles by offering them to retail customers and to booksellers at the same, really cheap prices. Rather, I believe that the Sieur Fauche is a scoundrel, who unjustly

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appropriated a portion of your stock, and who, for that reason and also to cause you harm, sells it at such a low price. And that idea seems to me all the more justified as he still has a number of infamous books and is trying, without the least reserve, to place them. . . . It seems to me that your interest demands that you work to destroy him. . . . As the market for French books in our city is not so large, it would be enough for you to give them to one person, and then he would set honest prices because his own interest would demand it. The STN, however, had no control over Fauche, nor did it have any way of “destroying” him. He continued, therefore, to flood the Frankfurt market with “infamous books” and the STN’s publications for roughly a year, from the autumn of 1775 to the autumn of 1776, until the Frankfurt authorities finally took action to close down his distribution ring. By then, according to Deinet, the damage had already been done: “He [i.e., Fauche] is the reason why our city is inundated with Rousseau, Millot, Des Arts et métiers, Voltaire, etc., at outrageously low prices,” Deinet complained in September 1776. One year later, prices had still not returned to normal levels: “Ever since the period when Monsieur Fauche flooded our region with most of your articles, people have grown so unaccustomed to paying for books at normal prices, they’re still hoping that another Fauche will come along and do the same thing. That man has caused irreparable damage for several years. The day before yesterday I still bought the Bible d’Ostervald in-octavo from a Jew at a price of 1 Florin, approximately the equivalent of 2 livres 2 sous de France,” Deinet reported to the STN in August 1777. Throughout the mid-1770s, Deinet complained repeatedly of the many copies of the STN’s books flowing into the Frankfurt market, from Fontaine in Mannheim, Bender in Worms, Fauche in Hanau— and, on one occasion, from a source he could not even identify. He also complained of the competition from German translations, which depressed the demand for French books: “Our public that reads French is not as large as you would like to believe. Furthermore, every new publication is immediately translated. So how do you expect the market to be large?” Above all, however, Deinet complained of the multiple editions of the STN’s books— a problem he illustrated with the example of Les Incas, a novel by Marmontel that the STN published in 1777. At any moment, Deinet told

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the STN in March 1777, he was expecting the arrival of twenty-five copies of Marmontel’s novel from Rotterdam; Brönner in Frankfurt had both a French edition and a German translation in press; and Himbourg in Berlin had announced a French edition adorned with vignettes and engravings like those of the original Paris edition. “What to do with so many editions?” Deinet asked rhetorically, before proceeding to answer his own question: “The one who arrives first will beat out those who follow, and to avenge themselves, and so as not to lose everything, the latter are obligated to lower the price. If your edition of Histoire des Incas were completed, if you could get it here eight days before the fair, I could still place several dozen copies. But as soon as Brönner’s edition is done, that’s it. He will lower the price, and so as not to lose out, or at least to salvage whatever one can, it will be necessary to do likewise.” French books were pouring into Frankfurt from so many different quarters, the market was swamped. Prices, therefore, were bound to fall. And while the prices tumbled, Deinet found that the costs of marketing French books to his retail customers stayed high. He mentioned only one of his retail customers by name, the princess dowager of Waldeck, but it seems clear that many of them resided outside of Frankfurt. Those customers could not have strolled into Deinet’s shop, examined his stock, and then decided which books they wished to purchase. To inform them of which books he had in his shop, Deinet had to place advertisements in newspapers and journals. It was an expensive method of advertising: “Announcing books in newspapers is extremely costly; so far I have not taken in as much cash as I have paid out for faux frais,” Deinet wrote in June 1775. When he tallied up all the many problems associated with selling the STN’s books—the oversupply of French books in the Frankfurt market, the competition from translations, the tumbling prices, the expense of advertising—trade with the STN began to look like a no-win proposition. Eventually, therefore, Deinet requested that the STN send him its books en commission. At first he put the request in the form of a question: “Would you not like to send me what I am ordering . . . en commission?” he asked in a letter of 5 January 1776, which included a small order for twenty-seven copies of ten different works. Several months later, however, he declared categorically that the STN would have to send him all its books en commission. And the STN consented, at least for a shipment that it made to him on 26 June 1776—whether that same arrangement would also apply to all future shipments the STN left somewhat unclear. In any event, it was a very signifi-

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cant, and for the STN highly unusual, concession, one that it would not have made unless it considered it absolutely necessary. Agreeing to send books en commission was the price the STN had to pay in order to keep Deinet’s business. The shift to a commission trade had an immediate impact on the volume of the STN’s trade with Deinet. Before that shift, Deinet had been reluctant to purchase any more than one copy of the STN’s new publications sight unseen. Rather than speculate on books that were unknown to him, he had asked the STN to send him one copy of each of its new publications so that he could determine whether he would be able “to find friends and customers [Freunde und Liebhaber] for it” and whether it was “merchandise for this region”; only then would he risk an order. Such caution, however, was no longer necessary after the STN had consented to a commission trade. In 1776, Deinet ordered fifty copies of a collection of edifying tales for children entitled Lecture pour les enfants, which the STN sent to him for its own account. He also ordered twelve copies each of three other works: a critical history of monasticism by Henri Linguet, Essai philosophique sur le monachisme; a political libel about the mistress of Louis XV, Anecdotes sur Mme. la comtesse du Barry; and an apocryphal collection of Pope Clement XIV’s correspondence, Lettres intéressantes du pape Clément XIV. And he did not voice any objections when the STN sent him more copies of those three works than he had ordered: sixty-two each of Essai philosophique and Anecdotes sur Mme. du Barry, fifty of Lettres intéressantes. Altogether, the STN appears to have made twelve shipments to Deinet from the autumn of 1773 to the summer of 1780, ten of which can be reconstructed from the Livres de commissions. Those ten shipments comprised 776 copies of 91 works, and a disproportionate number of those books the STN sent for its own account: 518 copies of 25 works. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the STN increased the volume of its trade with Deinet by consenting to release books for its own account. Unfortunately for the STN, it also increased the difficulties of keeping straight who owed what to whom. The difficulties arose immediately, just as soon as the STN agreed to send books en commission, since Deinet took the liberty of backdating the agreement: he claimed to have received for the STN’s account not only the shipments from June 1776 onward, but also two of the STN’s shipments from earlier in 1776 and two from the previous year. By November 1777, according

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to Deinet’s reckoning, the value of the books that the STN had sent to him for its own account came to 1,343 livres, 3 sous. It came to 2,161 livres, 11 sous, 6 deniers when Deinet added books that the STN had had transferred to him from two of its correspondents: from the bookseller in Nancy, Duvez l’aîné, and from Esslinger in Frankfurt, who had died in 1776. When Deinet inspected the books from Esslinger, he dismissed them summarily as “old merchandise.” And he seems to have felt the same way about the books from Duvez. All the books from Esslinger and Duvez, therefore, he insisted on holding for the STN’s account. By November 1777, Deinet had managed to place a few of the books that he claimed to have received en commission—but only a few. According to an account he submitted to the STN the following month, the value of the unsold books in his shop still stood at 1,825 livres, 16 sous. That was no trifling sum. For its part, therefore, the STN demanded that Deinet submit regular reports of which books he had sold. It was a perfectly reasonable demand and one that Deinet would very likely have satisfied under normal circumstances. Beginning in the summer of 1777, however, he had to deal with a spectacular series of defections and robberies by the employees in his bookshop, a minor mutiny that threw his affairs into turmoil and his bookkeeping into disorder. In August 1777, Deinet’s assistant deserted while carrying out a stock inventory and ran off with Deinet’s servant girl. Thereupon Deinet took on a new assistant, a native of Ulm named Rader who was supposed to complete the inventory and then go to Leipzig to establish Deinet’s storeroom there: Rader made off with a sum of money after returning from the Leipzig fair in the spring of 1778. Finally, to replace Rader, Deinet employed a native of Heilbronn named Hoffmann: the latter waited until Deinet was away attending to some family business in Cassel in the autumn of 1778 and promptly robbed him. It was quite a tale of woe, which Deinet recounted to the STN at great length in a letter of February 1779. But it made little impression on the STN. In June 1779, still without any word about which of its books Deinet had sold and which remained in his shop, the STN threatened to transfer books worth 1,319 livres, 19 sous, 6 deniers from its own account to his. That threat, however, was just a bluff. The following month when Bosset met with Deinet in Frankfurt, the two of them went over their respective accounts and reached a compromise settlement. According to the terms of that settlement, the STN agreed to take back a considerable number of the books Deinet had received en commission, includ-

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ing 52 copies of Anecdotes sur Mme. du Barry and 58 of Linguet’s Essai philosophique, which were returned to Neuchâtel on 19 August 1779. The other books were transferred to his account; and, as payment for them, the STN agreed to accept two of Deinet’s French publications: 75 copies of a two-volume political tract entitled Bigarrures d’un citoyen de Genève, and 173 of Catéchisme de l’ homme social by the abbé Duval-Pyrau. When the first volume of Bigarrures had appeared in 1776, Deinet had sent the STN 300 copies (unsolicited, it would appear). Therefore, 225 copies of that volume remained in Neuchâtel for Deinet’s account. Both Deinet and Bosset must have viewed the settlement with some misgivings. It entailed precisely that method of trading—balancing accounts by means of exchanges—which Deinet had said was not his “thing.” And it came at a moment when, after nearly ten years of publishing, the STN had amassed a large assortment of books—too large in the view of Bosset, who feared that the STN was accumulating a vast stock of shelf warmers. Had it been up to him, the STN would have followed the example of the booksellers in Leipzig: “[Swapping] . . . is not worth the devil, and from all sides I hear booksellers say the same thing and that those in Leipzig have given it up,” Bosset wrote to his associates at the home office. “A lot of trouble, a lot of writing, and no money. So if we continue with that métier, we’ll end up like others, rich in old paper [des riches partis en maculatures] for having had the glory of producing an extensive catalogue.” But it was not up to Bosset any more than it was up to Deinet. Like all booksellers, Deinet was enmeshed in a network of commercial relations. If his trading partners in the Reich refused to pay money for his books, then he could not afford to pay money for the STN’s, and the STN had little choice but to accept what he offered: books in lieu of money. In the end, both Deinet and the STN had to accommodate themselves to the commercial practices in the Reich. Deinet, however, also had to accommodate himself to one further constraint on the nature of his trade: the censorship in Frankfurt. When he sent the STN the copies of Bigarrures d’un citoyen de Genève in partial payment of his debt, it was not only because he had found it necessary to move from money payments to barter. It was also because that work was dangerous. An anonymous political tract that was attributed (falsely) to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bigarrures defended the revolt of the American colonies against the British crown by comparing it to the struggles of the Genevan bourgeoisie against the patrician-dominated Petit Conseil. Such a work was all but certain to offend the authorities in Frankfurt, a patrician-dominated city-state just like

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Geneva. It could not therefore be sold openly in Frankfurt: “We are so tightly squeezed [tellement reserrés] in our cantons that we dare not sell works like Bigarrures, which are only sold secretly [sous main],” Deinet had told the STN when he published the first volume in 1776. Two years later, when the second volume was about to leave the press, he informed the STN that the Frankfurt authorities were trying to track down the publisher, and he implored the STN not to disclose the identity of its supplier. Bigarrures was clearly a book that Deinet did not wish to have lying around in his shop; so he foisted it on the STN. Deinet’s comments made it seem as if the authorities in Frankfurt were so intolerant as to leave booksellers only the narrowest room to maneuver. But just how “tightly squeezed,” to use Deinet’s expression, were the booksellers in Frankfurt? It is not a question with a simple answer, for one of the unique features of the book trade in Frankfurt was precisely that the system of censorship in that city was so much more complex and cumbersome than it was anywhere else in the Reich. To do justice to that question, we will need to examine how the system worked and how Deinet and the other Frankfurt booksellers responded to it. As an imperial city, Frankfurt was home to an imperial institution with the responsibility for maintaining surveillance over the book trade. The Imperial Book Commission, as that institution was called, consisted of two principal officials: the imperial prosecuting attorney (Reichsfiskal), who went to Frankfurt for the fairs but otherwise resided at the Cameral Tribunal (Reichskammergericht) in Wetzlar, and the commissioner, who resided permanently in Frankfurt. Religiously neutral in theory, the Commission was an overtly partisan institution in practice, for until 1780 the commissioners were always Catholics. In fact, nearly all of them were Catholic clergymen, and, as such, performed a dual function, serving simultaneously as both the Imperial and the Apostolic Book Commissioner. Originally created in the late sixteenth century at a time when the Frankfurt fairs dominated the German book trade, the Commission was designed to ensure compliance with the imperial regulations governing prepublication censorship. Those regulations, however, assigned the responsibility for censorship not to imperial institutions but to the territorial states of the Reich (in the broad sense of the term). The task of the Commission was to identify such books as had not gone through the appropriate territorial censorship—a task it fulfilled by collecting “deposit copies” (Pflichtexemplare) of all the books offered for sale in Frankfurt. It was still fulfilling that task in the mid-1770s.

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Indeed, it was doing so with renewed vigor, much to the displeasure of Deinet, who believed (wrongly) that the activities of the Commission would lead the booksellers in the Reich to abandon the Frankfurt fair in favor of Hanau: “You’ll no longer be surprised at the growing importance of the Congress of Hanau when I tell you that the Imperial Commission has once again eroded the freedom of trade in our city by enacting an ordinance that requires [booksellers to deliver] three copies of every newly printed work and one copy of every book that is being sold here en commission or of which a bookseller owns a certain quantity, along with other, much too rigid regulations concerning imperial privileges, etc.,” Deinet told the STN. Even in the 1770s, nearly two centuries after its establishment, the Imperial Book Commission continued to make life difficult for Frankfurt booksellers. And yet the Commission had little if any policing authority and could not therefore carry out raids on bookshops or confiscate prohibited books on its own. The most it could do, once it had identified prohibited books, was to alert the City Council in Frankfurt. It was up to the Council to take action. And, in many instances, the Lutheran magistrates of Frankfurt did not see eye to eye with the imperial Catholic officials. The jurisdictional conflict between the Frankfurt and imperial authorities created a good deal of murkiness about which books were actually prohibited. It also created an opening for booksellers who specialized in livres philosophiques— an opening that Johann Esslinger, the STN’s first correspondent in Frankfurt, had exploited with noteworthy success during the 1750s and early 1760s. Esslinger conducted a large trade in livres philosophiques, but he was not an underground or clandestine bookseller; quite the contrary. He had been established as a bookseller in Frankfurt since 1745 and at various times had served as the Frankfurt commissioner of French-language publishers in the Low Countries, while also supplying books to quite an illustrious circle of retail customers: the grand countess Caroline von Hessen at the court in Darmstadt, the countess Elise von Solms-Laubach in Büdingen, the Grosshofmeister Friedrich Karl Willibald von Groschlag in Mainz, and the suffragan bishop Nicolaus von Hontheim in Trier. A well-established and well-connected bookseller, he made almost no effort to conceal his trade in livres philosophiques, which he announced in both his own cata logues and those of the Leipzig fairs, as well as in the Frankfurt gazettes. Many people, therefore, knew what kinds of books Esslinger sold, including a French author named François-Antoine Chevrier, who cast the Frankfurt bookseller in the role of smut peddler to dissolute youth in a satirical novel of the early 1760s. In the

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following conversation from that novel, a renegade monk named Maubert de Gouvest tries to interest Esslinger in a manuscript entitled Traité de morale: “Esslinger recoiled at the mere sight of the word ‘moral.’ ‘Read, Monsieur, read,’ the author said to him, ‘and if the style does not please you, I’ll not ask anything of you.’ ‘You don’t know me,’ replied the bookseller. ‘I never read the books that I sell—I buy them only on the basis of the titles. My customers are young people sunk in debauchery and it’s my duty to keep them there, for that makes me laugh, and besides, if I offered them morality, they’d take me for a man who either had lost his wits or wished to insult them. My stock consists of Portier des chartreux and other pieces of that kind.’ ” For his trade in livres philosophiques, Esslinger was notorious. So notorious that eventually the Frankfurt magistrates and the Imperial Book Commission put aside their confessional differences and took concerted action. In January 1766, following a denunciation of Esslinger by the Imperial Prosecuting Attorney, Esslinger was placed under arrest, and Frankfurt officials raided his shop, where they seized copies of two blasphemous and licentious works: La Chandelle d’Arras and Imirce ou la fille de la nature. Then, in order to reconstruct the provenance and diff usion of those two works, they also seized his account books and interrogated his shop clerk. And, finally, in August 1766, the two works were burned on the Römerberg, the central square of Frankfurt in front of the town hall. During his trial, Esslinger managed to save his own skin through an act of betrayal: he revealed the identity of the author of the works, a renegade French monk named Henri-Joseph Laurens who was employed as a proofreader in Esslinger’s shop. For Laurens, who had seduced and abducted a French nun and been a fugitive from the ecclesiastical authorities in France for several years, Esslinger’s act of betrayal had disastrous consequences. The unfortunate Laurens was promptly arrested, and the following year, an ecclesiastical court in Mainz condemned him to a term of lifelong imprisonment—a far harsher sentence than the one meted out to Esslinger, who was ordered to pay a stiff fine and to bear the costs of his trial but who was released and allowed to resume his trade. If the authorities believed that they had taught Esslinger a lesson, however, they were grievously mistaken: Esslinger proved incorrigible. Two years after the affair involving Laurens, he was in trouble again, this time for having sold copies of a prohibited German work, Spanische Jesuitische-Anecdoten, which led to his arrest and the closure of his shop for a week in early 1768. In the end, the cumulative impact of the arrests, shop closures, and punitive fines dealt a heavy blow to

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Figure 7. View of the Römerberg, Frankfurt on Main. Oil painting by Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern, 1773. The picture shows the town hall of Frankfurt (the three buildings on the left with the stepped gable façades) and the central square of the city known as the Römerberg, where prohibited books were burned in the eighteenth century. (Historisches Museum Frankfurt. Photo: Horst Ziegenfusz)

Esslinger’s finances, as Christian Schwan, Esslinger’s son-in-law, described in a letter to the STN in 1772: “Three years ago [sic] a little too much carelessness in regard to prohibited books landed him [i.e., Esslinger] in a very disagreeable aff air. He was arrested by order of the emperor, and afterward his business began to deteriorate visibly.” Poor Esslinger had no idea what could have inspired such an outburst of persecutory zeal— or so he pretended during his trial in 1766. First his interrogators asked him why he had sold the two works by Laurens. He made it clear to them that it was a silly question: “The little French writings sell incomparably faster than other, more solid works.” And had he known what the works by Laurens were about? Another silly question: “That I should have read them beforehand no one can demand of me, especially as I didn’t publish

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them. And even in the case of works that a bookseller publishes, it’s not reasonable to expect that he will read them through before [publishing them].” But was it not true, his interrogators continued, that he had “for a considerable length of time conducted a trade with all manner of blasphemous and indecent books”? In his response, Esslinger acted as if he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about: “There is not a bookseller in the world who has not sold forbidden books,” he declared, while adding somewhat disingenuously that he “would never knowingly have dared to sell blasphemous works in Frankfurt.” And, finally, when the Book Commissioner put it to him that he had sold four prohibited works by Voltaire—Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, Saoul, Pucelle d’Orléans, and Arétin—he sounded positively exasperated: “Yes, just like any other bookseller would have sold them and just as books of that kind would have been printed in thirty or more locations.” It was a remarkable display of defiance. While Esslinger was defying the authorities, however, other booksellers in Frankfurt were taking the opposite tack. In 1770, for example, when the Neuchâtel merchant Chaillet d’Arnex visited Frankfurt on the STN’s behalf, he offered the STN’s edition of Questions sur l’Encyclopédie by Voltaire to the brothers J. G. and Philipp Van Düren. They turned out to be a very conservative band of brothers, so conservative that Chaillet could scarcely believe it: “Messieurs les frères Van Duren won’t buy any works by Voltaire without being acquainted with them first,” Chaillet informed the STN. “You would do well therefore to write to them and to indicate, in broad strokes, what these questions on the Encyclopédie contain. They fear that [underlined in the manuscript] there may be something against religion.” What a thing to fear! Chaillet indicated by his underlining. After receiving Chaillet’s note, the STN wrote to Van Düren frères and did its best to allay their fears: “The works of this author [i.e., Voltaire] are often very irreverent [libres] on the most serious of subjects. In the one that we are now printing, he affects to speak only en philosophe while preserving throughout the respect due to religion. He often recalls that idea before embarking on any discussion,” the STN assured its ner vous colleagues in Frankfurt. But it was no use. Van Düren frères had made up their minds to err on the side of caution, and they wanted no part of Voltaire’s Questions sur l’Encyclopédie. Was such extreme caution really necessary in order to avoid problems in Frankfurt? Probably not. But then again it was very hard to say with certainty which books were prohibited in Frankfurt and whether the Frankfurt and

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imperial officials would join forces to confiscate them. A great deal, therefore, depended on the temperament of individual booksellers and how willing they were to take risks. Esslinger took a great many risks; Van Düren frères took none at all. Deinet occupied a middle ground between those two extremes. Deinet received two works from the STN that appeared on lists of prohibited books the Imperial Book Commission transmitted to the Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat) in Vienna: one copy of Voltaire’s Oeuvres and sixty-two of Linguet’s anonymously published Essai philosophique sur le monachisme. From the standpoint of the Commission, both of those works deserved to be suppressed, but the Frankfurt authorities do not seem to have objected to either of them. And why should they have done? An expensive, multivolume edition of Voltaire’s Oeuvres could not have done much harm, while Linguet’s work, as already noted, was a critical historical essay on the subject of monasticism, and so contained nothing to offend Protestant sensibilities: all Protestants, whatever they may have thought of the French Enlightenment, took a critical view of monasticism. That the Catholic Commission had placed Linguet’s work on its list of prohibited books mattered little unless the Frankfurt authorities enforced the prohibition. So Linguet’s work dramatized the contradictions at the heart of Frankfurt censorship: it was prohibited and tolerated simultaneously. In his letters to the STN, Deinet did not give the slightest indication that the work by Linguet required any special precautions. Nor did he indicate the need for any special precautions when the STN sent him the sixty-two copies of Anecdotes sur Mme. du Barry. That work was one of the leading best-sellers in the underground trade in France, and it was a sensational work: a behind-the-scenes account of intrigue, influence peddling, and sexual politics at the royal court in Versailles during the last years of the reign of Louis XV. But it had no direct relevance to the politics of a city republic like Frankfurt (in contrast to Les Bigarrures d’un citoyen de Genève); so the Frankfurt authorities had no reason to ban it any more than they did Linguet’s Essai philosophique sur le monachisme. Works that undermined the ideological foundations of a divine-right Catholic monarchy could be tolerated in Frankfurt for the simple reason that the politico-ecclesiastical establishment of Frankfurt rested on different foundations: to each regime, its own conception of dangerous literature. Notwithstanding his complaint about being “tightly squeezed,” therefore, Deinet was able to receive a considerable number of livres philosophiques, a total of 200 copies of 22 different titles, which the STN sent to Frankfurt

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without taking any precautions. And yet Deinet was not prepared to order every type of livre philosophique without distinction. Generally speaking, he seems to have drawn the line where Fontaine did, at atheism and pornography. Thus, he turned down the STN’s offer of La Mettrie’s materialist philosophic treatise L’Homme machine, which he described as a “forbidden commodity.” And in 1775, when he discovered some copies of the pornographic Mémoires d’une fille de joie (the French translation of Cleland’s Fanny Hill) in the crate that the STN had had transferred to him from Duvez in Nancy, he sounded positively indignant: “I was astonished, meine Herren, to find among the articles [that you sent to me] some of which the mere sight filled me with shame. For example, Fille de joie with the most abominable engravings. These . . . lie sealed and will never be sold by me.” Deinet sounded equally indignant four years later on discovering that some of the copies of Fille de joie had disappeared from his shop. It was the moment, following the desertions of his shop assistants, when the STN was threatening to transfer a portion of its books from its account to his; so Deinet took the opportunity to make a counterthreat: “I indicated to you when I received the shipment from Metz [sic— i.e., Nancy] that I would not tolerate such articles as Fille de joie in my shop. I also indicated to you my disgust for such pieces and my astonishment that you have them in your storerooms. Immediately I put them under my seal, someone opened it, and I see with regret that the number of these infernal pieces has diminished. Messieurs, if I wished to act according to your threatening manner, I would have only to get rid of your books and surrender them to a tribunal of justice, a foe like me of indecencies. What would become of them then?” Deinet, a foe of indecencies? That a bookseller would describe himself in that way may seem a little peculiar; for combating pornography is a role that one would normally associate with censors, not booksellers. But it would be a mistake to assume that in the eighteenth century, censors and booksellers were always on opposite sides of the ideological barricades and that if booksellers obeyed the law, it was only because they feared the consequences of transgressing it. Deinet, after all, was a former theology student and an admirer of Lavater. It seems quite likely that someone like him would have found pornography morally repugnant and so identified with the authorities in their battle against it. Just think of how Deinet designated the prohibited books from Fauche’s entrepôt in Hanau: instead of using the booksellers’ shorthand, “philosophic books,” or Bosset’s ironic term, “honest books,” or

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even the neutral, “prohibited books,” he adopted the language of officialdom and spoke of “infamous books” (livres infâmes), which was almost certainly his translation of the German “berüchtigte Bücher,” a phrase that the Imperial Book Commission used in its correspondence with the Aulic Council in Vienna. Likewise, Deinet adopted the tone of outraged officialdom when he evoked the sheer brazenness of Fauche’s smuggling operation, how Fauche was not only disseminating “infamous books” but was doing so “without the least reserve” and by means of Jewish peddlers from the Frankfurt ghetto. His description made Fauche’s operation seem scandalous. And to many of the upright, law-abiding burghers in Frankfurt, it probably was scandalous: a proscribed people hawking prohibited books in a profane place. The very idea of it was audacious. Most Frankfurt citizens never even entered the ghetto. “The narrowness, the dirt, the tumult, and the accents of a disagreeable language,” to quote Goethe’s memorable description, were enough to keep them out. To imagine them darting furtively through the cramped and crowded alleyways of the Judengasse in pursuit of prohibited books was to contemplate the transgression of two boundaries simultaneously: one separating decent from indecent books, another separating Christian society from its perennial “other.” Given the audacity of what Fauche was doing, Deinet never had any doubt that the Frankfurt authorities would take action to halt it: “That scoundrel [i.e., Fauche] . . . will not last long if he stays around here,” he had prophesied in a letter to the STN. And, eventually, when the Frankfurt authorities did break up Fauche’s smuggling ring, Deinet reported the event with barely concealed Schadenfreude: “Poor Fauche was caught . . . and he had to leave without salvaging a farthing.” Considering Deinet’s own run-ins with the censors over the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, it may strike the modern reader as a trifle hypocritical that Deinet would have rejoiced at Fauche’s undoing; but that’s only because we tend to think of freedom of the press in unconditional terms. In the eighteenth century, hardly anyone supported unconditional freedom of the press, not even Voltaire, who was widely regarded as the great scourge of censors. It was perfectly consistent for Deinet to be both for and against censorship— for it when it was being used to curtail the circulation of pornography, against it when it functioned as an instrument of religious zealotry. Still, hardly anyone expected what happened in the summer of 1780 when the Imperial Book Commissioner Franz Xaver von Scheben, suffragan bishop of Worms, died and the Emperor Joseph II appointed a new commissioner to

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replace him: the new commissioner was none other than Johann Conrad Deinet! It was an astonishing appointment for any number of reasons: because of Deinet’s numerous clashes with the Lutheran authorities in Frankfurt; because he had been such a staunch critic of the Imperial Book Commission and supporter of the Congress of Hanau; and, above all, because he was a Protestant, the first Protestant ever to occupy the office of Imperial Book Commissioner since its creation in the age of the Counter-Reformation. That Deinet of all people would be appointed to fill such an office came as a shock to nearly everyone— especially to officials in the Catholic Church, who complained bitterly of Deinet’s appointment. When Deinet informed the STN of his new appointment, he made it clear that he intended to be a booksellers’ commissioner rather than an agent of repression, modeling his policies on those of the Leipzig Book Commission, which always gave priority to the economic interests of the book trade: “My principal goal is to restore the book trade here to what it was previously, and I have reason to hope that I shall attain that goal,” he told the STN. At the same time, he also told the STN of several policy changes that he would be introducing in the conduct of his own trade. First of all, no more prohibited books, not even the kind of mildly prohibited books that were implicitly tolerated, like the works of Voltaire: “The collection of the Oeuvres de Voltaire in 36 volumes that I received from you is still in my hands. Voltaire is not suitable . . . to be sold by me. There are too many pieces in the new collection that have been prohibited. . . . It is necessary, therefore, that someone demand this collection from the Heirs of Eichenberg,” he informed the STN. Second, Deinet explained, it would no longer be possible for him to play a direct role in running either his bookshop or his printing shop, “by reason of my office [état] and too many occupations.” So august an official as the Imperial Book Commissioner had to behave in a manner befitting his station. But that did not mean retiring from business; it only meant withdrawing into the background. Deinet had not the least intention of liquidating his firm, “seeing as I would have expended so much time and effort to no purpose if I closed up shop.” His plan, he told the STN, was to maintain his ownership of the Heirs of Eichenberg and simply delegate the daily management of the firm to an associate, with whom he was already in negotiations. Deinet did not therefore see any fundamental conflict between producing and selling books on the one hand and censoring them on the other. And why should he have done? He had, after all, been censoring himself all along— at least when it came to pornography. As book commissioner and bookseller

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in personal union, he provided the perfect symbol for the practice of selfcensorship. And yet Deinet was anything but the perfect man to handle such a dual role. At some point shortly after his appointment as commissioner, he published a burlesque poem in German mocking an image of the Virgin Mary. The poem, which appeared in an issue of one of Deinet’s literary reviews, seemed perfectly innocent to him. But that was not how it seemed to the Imperial Prosecuting Attorney, von Werner. To Werner, it seemed deeply offensive, so deeply offensive that he complained of it to the Imperial Aulic Council in Vienna. In July 1783, the Aulic Council initiated legal proceedings against Deinet; and the following spring, the City Council in Frankfurt did likewise. Within just a few years of his appointment, in other words, Deinet had managed to unite the Lutheran magistrates of Frankfurt and the Catholic officials of Vienna in a common front against him. For the religiously divided Reich of the late eighteenth century, it was a rare moment of ecumenical understanding. With both Lutherans and Catholics clamoring for his removal, Deinet was suspended from his functions as commissioner in late April 1784, roughly one year after his stepson, Philipp Wilhelm Eichenberg, had attained his majority and taken over the direction of the Heirs of Eichenberg. Deinet was reinstated as commissioner sometime afterward, but he certainly never realized his goal of restoring the book trade in Frankfurt to its former glory. It is doubtful, in fact, whether anyone could have realized that goal, even someone less controversial and more diplomatic than Deinet. The glory days of Frankfurt belonged to an earlier and very different epoch in the history of the German book trade.

* * * Now that we have completed our survey of the STN’s principal correspondents in the Reich, what conclusions can we draw? One conclusion certainly is that the French booksellers of the Reich were not all cut from the same cloth and that none of them can be taken as “typical.” Each had his own distinct character: the adventurous Mettra, ex-diplomat turned publisher of livres philosophiques; the solid, reliable, and ever-cautious Charles Fontaine; the honest but unlucky Hemmerde; and, most enigmatically, the exuberant, opinionated, and much-hated Deinet. From each of their dossiers in the Neuchâtel archives emerge the outlines of a portrait, sharper in the case of Deinet than

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in any of the others but always distinct enough that we can glimpse the human figure behind the comptoir of an eighteenth-century bookshop. We can also glimpse many memorable scenes of life in the eighteenth-century book trade— of Mettra’s shop submerged beneath the flood waters of the Rhine, of Hemmerde’s annual sojourn to the baths of Hofgeismar, of Deinet deserted by his shop assistants, and of Jewish peddlers hawking “infamous books” in the Frankfurt ghetto. The scenes seem so vivid, it is as if a series of historical tableaux were coming to life before our eyes. If we are to assemble those tableaux into a composite picture of the French book trade in the Reich, however, we’ll need to step back from all the detail and concentrate our attention on certain common themes. Two themes stand out: first, the identity, the size, and the location of the public for French books; and, second, the nature and the effectiveness of censorship. There can be no doubt that the STN’s correspondents in the Reich supplied French books to customers at princely courts. Because the Reich was so fragmented politically, it was dotted with princely courts, outposts of L’Europe française that generated a strong demand for French books. And at some princely residences, there was little demand for French books beyond the milieux of the courts. That was the case in Mannheim, where the demand for French books all but evaporated after the Elector Karl Theodor had moved his court to Munich. It also seems to have been the case in Karlsruhe, where Charles and Matthias Fontaine supplied French books to the court of the Margrave of Baden, as did the local “court bookseller,” a person named Macklot, whom Bosset visited in 1779. By supplying the Margrave’s court, the Fontaines and Macklot creamed off the demand for French books and left almost nothing for Christian Gottlob Schmieder, whom Bosset also visited: “Here there is little to be done with French books,” Schmieder told the STN. Does it follow, then, that the public for French books in the Reich consisted exclusively of princes and courtiers? Certainly not. In Cassel, the Landgrave Friedrich II sought to enhance the cultural prestige of his residence by raising the intellectual level of the local college, the Collegium Carolinum; and, to that end, he recruited a number of prominent scholars and Aufklärer, including Jacob Mauvillon, Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, Johannes Müller, and Georg Forster, who are likely to have belonged to one or another of the reading societies in Cassel. According to a description of Cassel published by a German journal in 1789, the members of those societies “read a great deal of French but an increasing amount of German.” Likewise in Frankfurt, an

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imperial city where there was no princely court at all, cata logues of eighteenthcentury private libraries disclose the presence of French books in the collections of doctors, lawyers, and city officials, as well as a few wealthy merchants. In the eighteenth century, practically all educated middle-class Germans were able to read French. Clearly, many of them also read French books, like the philosopher Friedrich Jacobi in Düsseldorf, who received regular shipments of French books from booksellers in Mettra’s “cantons”—notably, from the Amsterdam bookseller Marc-Michel Rey. The public for French books cannot therefore be identified with any one social class. Its chief characteristic was not social class so much as a high level of education. And yet it was an elite public all the same, too small and too widely dispersed to allow any French bookseller in the Reich to prosper if he was relying exclusively on the demand from the retail customers in his locality. Nearly all the STN’s correspondents in the Reich found it necessary to supply books to retail customers at a considerable distance from their shops—at a very considerable distance in the case of Charles and Matthias Fontaine, whose clientele was scattered across a broad swath of southern and western Germany. The one exception was Hemmerde, whose clientele appears to have been confined to Hesse-Cassel. Hemmerde, however, was always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy; so he was the exception that proved the rule. As a rule, the French booksellers of the Reich had to cast their nets widely if they were to capture enough customers to sustain their trade. Many of those customers never set foot in the bookshops from which they drew their supplies of French books. Sold to widely scattered customers, French books in the Reich were subject to a correspondingly wide range of censorship regimes. It was not possible therefore to identify a corpus of prohibited French books valid for all the Reich, and neither was it possible to identify which booksellers were engaged in an illegal trade. Take Mettra, for example. From the standpoint of the papal nuncio in Cologne, Mettra’s shop was full of prohibited books. But those books do not seem to have been prohibited in Münz, and they certainly were not prohibited in Neuwied, where Mettra published the Correspondance littéraire secrète under the imprint of the Société Typographique de Neuwied. His trade was legal in some localities, illegal in others. The same can be said of Fauche, whose “honest books” were burned in Cologne, while his entrepôt in Hanau was under the protection of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel; Baerstecher, who kept Système de la nature in his shop in the Prussian enclave of Cleve, while copies of his Histoire des diables modernes were consigned to the flames in Cologne; Esslinger, who ran afoul of the imperial and Frankfurt

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authorities for selling the same kind of books that he announced in the Leipzig fair cata logues; and Deinet, who sold Linguet’s Essai philosophique sur le monachisme, even though the Imperial Book Commission had placed that work on its list of prohibited books. All of those booksellers traded in books that would have passed for livres philosophiques in France, but none of them resembled the underground booksellers of France, least of all Deinet, who abhorred pornography and who eventually became a kind of censor in his own right. In the absolutist monarchy of Old Regime France, a clear and sharp boundary separated the trade in prohibited books from the trade in legal and quasi-legal books; in the Reich, no such boundary existed—and that was a fact of great consequence for the circulation of French books. Because tolerance and intolerance coexisted side by side—Münz next to Cologne, Hanau next to Frankfurt—some prohibited books were bound to trickle through the dikes that the governments of the Reich tried to erect against them. The authorities in Frankfurt raided Esslinger’s shop; several years later, Fauche was smuggling “infamous books” into the Frankfurt ghetto from his entrepôt in Hanau. They broke up Fauche’s smuggling ring, but it was only a matter of time before someone else stepped in to take over Fauche’s role. If repression accomplished anything, it was simply to make life difficult for booksellers, as a German journal explained in an article about the book trade in Cologne: Strict censorship and suchlike harm the publishing industry [in Cologne] just as the inspection of incoming books harms trade. For on the initiative of the resident papal nuncio it has been decreed for several years that every arriving crate of books must be brought to the guild hall [Syndikat] for inspection, where forbidden, suspicious or otherwise wicked-seeming works are then turned back. This does not in the least prevent readers from procuring those works at their pleasure, since there are a thousand ways, both very practicable and widely practiced, to distract the attention of the officials. Only the [book] trade suffers. Of course prohibited books were smuggled into France too, notwithstanding the comparative strength of the French monarchy. No early-modern state possessed a bureaucratic and police apparatus with sufficient power to halt the circulation of prohibited books entirely. But, in 1783, when the French foreign

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minister adopted a measure to stem the tide of prohibited books entering the kingdom—by compelling all book imports to travel for inspection to the Chambre Syndicale in Paris and thereby saddling them with a heavy weight of additional shipping costs—it succeeded. In the years following the adoption of that measure, the trade between foreign firms and their provincial customers in France came to a virtual standstill. Nothing remotely comparable was even conceivable in the Reich. In individual states, officials raided book shops, inspected book imports, intercepted shipments, and burned prohibited books; concerted action between states of the Reich was nearly impossible. In the Reich, books flowed through the same channels as other merchandise, and the states of the Reich—particularly those along the Rhine— derived a good deal of their tax revenue from levies on trade. As fiscal predators, they were in competition with one another and had no incentive to confiscate books that were merely transiting through their territories. When prohibited books were confiscated in the Reich, it was always at their final destination, never en route. So what to conclude? Certainly not that the Reich was a haven of enlightened tolerance or that booksellers had nothing to fear from zealous officials. Charles Fontaine in Mannheim and Van Düren frères in Frankfurt were so fearful that they censored themselves. And in Lutheran Frankfurt, no less than in Catholic Cologne, the authorities made bonfires of lumières. The point is not that the French book trade in the Reich benefited from freedom of the press—far from it. It is that the fragmentation of political authority, the diversity of censorship regimes, and the competitive economic relations of German states to one another undermined the effectiveness of censorship, undermined it so much, in fact, that German readers could obtain just about any French book they desired, even if they happened to live in a state where that book was prohibited. Let us give the final word, then, to one of those German readers—to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who grew up in Frankfurt during the period when Esslinger was conducting his trade in livres philosophiques, and who returned there in the late 1760s at about the same time that Deinet married Eichenberg’s widow. In the memoirs he wrote half a century later, Goethe recalled that in the Frankfurt of his youth, he had been a witness to the burning of a French book, “a French comic novel that spared the state but not religion and morals.” Even with the passage of time, the memory of that event filled him with horror: “There is something truly terrifying about seeing punishment

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inflicted on a lifeless being. The crates [of books] burst in the fire while oven forks were prying them apart and stoking the flames. Soon, burnt sheets were flying around in the air, and the crowd was chasing eagerly after them.” And yet: “We, too, did not rest until we had got hold of a copy, and it was not just a few people who knew how to procure the forbidden pleasure. Indeed, if the author had wanted publicity, he couldn’t have done a better job of it himself.”

chapter 4

Demand

Il me semble que vous ne vous souciez pas assez de livrer des nouveautés. C’est pourtant avec des pièces du jour qu’il se fait le plus. Si vous auriez imprimé Anecdotes sur la vie de la comtesse Du Barry, Lettres du Pape Clément XIV, vous y auriez certainement trouvé votre compte. (It seems to me that you do not devote sufficient attention to supplying nouveautés. It is, however, with pièces du jour that one can do the most. If you had printed Anecdotes sur la vie de la comtesse Du Barry, Lettres du pape Clément XIV, you would certainly have made a profit.) —Johann Conrad Deinet to the STN, 22 March 1776

For all of their many differences— of temperament, commercial strategy, professional background, and educational level—the French booksellers of the Reich faced a common challenge: to make their supply of French books coincide with the demand of the public. Of course, all booksellers everywhere strove to harmonize supply and demand. The French booksellers of the Reich, however, were seldom in a position to order their supplies in response to the specific requests of their customers. Their customers were so widely scattered and commercial shipping in the Reich so painstakingly slow that the resulting delays would have been much too long: “It rarely happens that customers [les amateurs] are disposed to wait out the long interval that would come between their orders and the arrival of the items that we would order for them from you,” Mettra explained to the STN. In most cases, Mettra and his colleagues

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in the Reich had little choice but to order at least some French books before their customers had requested them. Nor was the situation any different for the STN’s correspondents in other parts of Germany. The shipments that the STN made to Wolfgang Gerle in Prague took roughly three months to complete their journey, traveling eastward from Basel to Schaff hausen, from there to Ulm, and thence through Nuremberg to Prague— or rather to the customs post (Mautstelle) at the entrance to Prague; it took an additional four to six weeks before the Bohemian Censorship Commission, a notoriously dilatory institution, had inspected all the books and finally released them to Gerle. Unlike Gerle, Jean-Guillaume Virchaux, the STN’s correspondent in Hamburg, did not have to worry about delays caused by the inspections of censors. He too, however, had to allow several months for shipments to reach him from Switzerland, whether they traveled overland from Frankfurt or down the Rhine to the Low Countries and thence across the North Sea and up the Elbe to Hamburg. And Virchaux’s customers were scattered all along the Baltic littoral. Had he ordered his books from the STN in response to the specific requests of his customers in Königsberg, Mitau, or Petersburg, areas usually closed to shipping in the winter, it could easily have taken a year before the books reached their final destination. Nearly all of the STN’s correspondents in Germany, therefore, found themselves in a similar position in relation to their customers: they had to anticipate demand as well as respond to it. And it was vitally important for them to anticipate it correctly because the STN seldom granted their requests to receive books en commission. In most cases, if they ordered the wrong books, they were stuck with them. To anticipate the demand of the public was hardly an exact science, not in an age before best-seller lists or marketing research. But neither was it mere guesswork. The STN’s correspondents in Germany listened to the news coursing through the communications networks of the book trade, they corresponded with their customers, and they extrapolated from which books had sold well in the past to which ones would sell well in the future. In all of those ways, and with a bit of Fingerspitzengefühl honed through years of experience, they were able to tell in which direction the winds of literary demand were blowing. How, then, did they perceive the demand for French books in Germany during the period of their correspondence with the STN?

* * *

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To answer that question, we have an extraordinary source at our disposal: the STN’s Livres de commissions, a running account of orders and shipments that has survived in an unbroken series from early 1774 to mid-1785. Of course, one would not expect the Livres de commissions to provide a complete inventory of every French book that the STN’s correspondents in Germany wanted to buy. If the latter did not order a particular book from the STN, they could still have obtained it from some other supplier, especially if it was a really popular book that had been printed in multiple editions and was widely available. The orders recorded in the Livres de commissions were bound to exclude at least some works for which the demand was strong, and they probably contained some bias in favor of the STN’s own editions. Not so much bias, however, as to distort the overall picture of the demand for French books. By 1774, the first year covered by the Livres de commissions, the STN had already compiled a wide assortment of books through exchanges with other Frenchlanguage publishers—a method of trade that it continued to practice throughout its existence and that allowed it to diversify its stock in response to demand. There is no reason to think that booksellers in Germany would have favored Neuchâtel for one genre of literature and Amsterdam, say, for another. We can be reasonably certain they would have ordered the same kinds of books, if not exactly the same titles, from the STN as they did from the Low Countries. The difficult question is how to distinguish between different kinds of books. In the Livres de commissions, the STN did not make any distinctions at all. When orders arrived at the shop in Neuchâtel, an employee of the firm would simply copy them out, one title after another. If we are to analyze those orders, we will have to filter them through categories of our own devising. But which categories? And where to take them from? Clearly, we cannot derive the categories from twenty-first-century notions of genre and subject matter without running the risk of anachronism. Neither, however, can we lift them from the cata logues of eighteenth-century libraries. Like nearly all libraries, those of the eighteenth century were built up over an extended period. Their contents reflected the literary inheritance of the past, and so too did the categories into which they were organized: the two academic “faculties” of theology and law, the vast omnibus category of “arts and sciences,” and such other categories as history and belles-lettres. Those categories fitted the literary market well enough as long as book dealers were catering for an academic public. By the last third of the eighteenth century, however, the old Gelehrtenbuchhandel represented only a tiny fraction of

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the book trade as a whole. The literary market was expanding and mutating so rapidly that it could no longer be contained in traditional systems of classification. Eventually, therefore, the editor of the Leipzig fair cata logue gave up trying to subsume new publications under the traditional subject headings of “libri theologici,” “libri juridici,” “libri medici et chymici,” “libri historici, philosophici et aliarum artium humanarum,” and “libri musici.” From 1759 onward, the catalogues no longer contained any subject headings at all; new publications were simply listed in alphabetical order by title or author— a solution that may well have been adequate to the needs of booksellers who consulted the cata logues at the fairs and who usually knew what they were looking for in any case, but that, for the historian, is no solution at all, just a form of bibliographic nominalism: a lot of trees and no wood.  For the purposes of historical analysis, the best solution involves a compromise, one that respects eighteenth-century notions of genre and subject matter but that amends them slightly to reflect the realities of a changing market. Hence the system of classification shown in Table 2, which has also been tailored to fit the specific selection of works available in the STN’s catalogue d’assortiment. Of course this system of classification is not immune to criticism either: one could challenge it on any number of points. But then there is no such thing as an unassailable system of literary classification. Books are hybrid forms. There will always be some that straddle generic and thematic boundaries— a philosophic novel, history as political criticism, social criticism masquerading as a travelogue, and so on. One can never claim that any particular set of bibliographic categories represents the world of books as it really is. Bibliography is not ontology: it is just a way of organizing a mass of disparate material. And the test of its value is a purely pragmatic one—whether it helps us discern meaningful patterns and whether it provides a workable tool for analyzing the book orders of the STN’s correspondents in Germany.

* * * In analyzing the orders of the STN’s correspondents, the first question we need to ask is how uniform their orders were. During the period covered by the Livres de commissions, most of the STN’s correspondents were concentrated in western Germany—Mannheim, Cologne, Frankfurt, Cassel—but the STN was also supplying books to Virchaux in Hamburg and Gerle in Prague. We should not assume at the outset that the demand for French books was the same in western as it was in northern and central Germany. So

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Table 2. Bibliographic Categories and Subcategories Main Category Belles-Lettres, Beaux-Arts, Music Narrative prose fiction: novels, contes Theater Verse Language: rhetoric, grammars, dictionaries Fine arts and music Lives of authors: biography, autobiography, éloges Other Politics Topical political works: French politics; international politics; ecclesiastical politics Judicial causes célèbres Treatises on politics and law Warfare Political economy History, Travel, Geography History: modern; ancient; general; bibliography Travel, geography Philosophy Religion, morals, metaphysics, epistemology General social and cultural criticism Pedagogy: Theories of Education, Instructional Works Freemasonry Arts & Crafts, Agriculture, Trade Natural Sciences Medicine Protestant Devotional Works Encyclopedias Collected Works

before putting together a composite picture of demand, we need to take snapshots of the market in the different geographic areas and compare them to one another. The comparison of demand does, in fact, reveal some slight differences. Deinet in Frankfurt and Hemmerde in Cassel were the only ones to register any demand, however weak, for Protestant devotional works (sermons, hymn

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Table 3. Snapshots of Demand for French Books at Six Locations in Germany, 1774–1785 Virchaux Belles-Lettres Politics History and Travel Philosophy Pedagogy Freemasonry Arts & Crafts Natural Sciences Medicine Protestant Devotional Works Encyclopedias Collected Works Unidentifiable Totals

Fontaine

Gerle

Deinet

Mettra

Hemmerde

507 754 555

248 178 186

141 83 120

125 103 51

360 236 112

183 61 101

1,564 1,415 1,125

290 155 216 65 56 30 8

33 45 54 16 21 25 9

39 36 0 5 10 7 0

30 70 0 8 5 6 35

87 55 6 24 26 24 9

33 45 14 3 8 24 24

512 406 290 121 126 116 85

13 203 49 2,901

27 28 0 870

6 24 4 475

3 18 4 458

1 27 36 1,003

1 25 15 537

51 325 108 6,244

Totals

Source: Livres de commissions, Ms. 1016–21. Note that the data in this and all the subsequent tables in Chapter 4 reflect the orders (commissions) the STN received from booksellers in Germany, not the shipments (envois) it made to them. The contents of orders and shipments were generally quite similar, but they were not identical in every case. Also, it should be noted that Virchaux ordered and received 928 copies of one single work, the abbé Mably’s Du gouvernement et des lois de la Pologne, which he announced in the Leipzig fair cata logues in 1781 and 1783. So large an order, if included in the data, would distort the overall picture of demand. It has not therefore been counted in this or any of the subsequent tables in Chapter 4. For a complete list of the books ordered from the STN by its principal correspondents in Germany, as well as additional information on how the data in the table were compiled, see the electronic supplement to Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe at www.yu.edu/freedman/supplement.

books), presumably because of their proximity to the Huguenot refugee communities of Hesse; in Habsburg-governed Prague, not surprisingly, the demand for such works was completely absent. Frankfurt, with its Protestant Bildungsbürgertum, generated a bit more demand for pedagogy than existed elsewhere; Hamburg, site of the first Masonic lodge in Germany, produced a comparatively strong demand for works about Freemasonry. And yet these slight differences in demand seem trivial when set against the similarities. In nearly every case, the demand for French books rested on three main pillars: belles-lettres, history and travel, and politics. Such variations as occurred were confined primarily to the other categories, and even there the variations

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were minor in comparison to the regularities. The conclusion therefore seems clear: regional differences had very little impact on the overall structure of the demand for French books in Germany. Our next step, then, is to produce a composite picture of the demand from all of the STN’s correspondents. To accomplish that goal, however, we will have to do more than merely synthesize the numerical data from Table 3. The numerical data alone would yield a rather flat and lifeless picture. In order to give the picture depth, we will have to go behind the numbers and examine a sample of actual books— specific instances of political works, novels, travel narratives, and so on. Another thing we will have to do is consider the comments of the STN’s correspondents. In their letters to the STN, booksellers in Germany not only transmitted orders for books; sometimes they also included observations about their orders, explaining why particular books were enjoying a strong demand while others had fallen out of favor. Such commentary can help illuminate the meaning of the numerical data, as well as trends in the nature of demand— and trends we could not possibly perceive in the numbers derived from the Livres de commissions. The numbers produce an illusion of stasis: the literary market of an entire decade as if frozen in a single extended moment. By treating the commentary of the STN’s correspondents as a running gloss on market trends and by pausing occasionally to examine specific works, it should be possible to impart movement and depth to a picture of demand that would appear static and flat if seen from the perspective of the numerical data alone. But fi rst the numerical data: Table 4 presents them in the same way as Table 3, organized according to categories of genre and subject matter; Table 5 indicates the most frequently ordered works from the three leading categories; and Table 6 lists the best-selling authors. In evaluating the data in the tables, we would do well to bear in mind that Virchaux ordered many more books than any of the STN’s other correspondents, nearly as many books, in fact, as all of the other correspondents combined. The data are heavily weighted, therefore, in favor of the demand that Virchaux encountered among his customers in the North—heavily weighted, yet not in such a way as to produce a lopsided or skewed picture of the overall demand, precisely because Virchaux’s orders conformed to the same general pattern as that of the STN’s other correspondents. If we begin with Table 6 and the list of best-selling authors, the first thing we are likely to feel is a sense of familiarity. Enthroned near the top of the list are Rousseau and Voltaire, the two most famous of the philosophes. By 1774,

Table 4. Composite Demand for French Books in Germany, 1774–1785 Composite Demand for French Books in Germany [Bibliographic Category, Number of Copies/Number of Titles] Belles-Lettres, Beaux-Arts, Music (1,564/140) Narrative Prose Fiction: Novels, contes (926/81) Theater (243/21) Verse (51/11) Language: Rhetoric, Grammars, Dictionaries (56/7) Fine Arts and Music (101/4) Lives of Authors: Biography, Autobiography, éloges (131/10) Other (56/6) Politics (1,415/97) Topical Political Works (806/56): French politics (347/27); International politics (386/25); ecclesiastical politics (73/4) Judicial causes célèbres (232/8) Treatises on Politics and Law (134/16) Warfare (142/9) Political Economy (101/8) History, Travel, Geography (1,125/92) History (717/52): modern (602/41); ancient (24/6); general (76/3); bibliography (15/2) Travel, Geography (408/40) Philosophy (512/46) Religion, Morals, Metaphysics, Epistemology (387/40) General Social and Cultural Criticism (125/6) Pedagogy: Theories of Education, Instructional Works (406/34) Freemasonry (290/8) Arts & Crafts, Agriculture, Trade (121/16) Natural Sciences (126/12) Medicine (116/22) Protestant Devotional Works (85/22) Encyclopedias (51/3) Collected Works (325/36) Unidentifiable (108/20) Source: Livres de commissions, Ms. 1016–21. The figures in the table reflect the orders that the STN received from its six principal correspondents in Germany: Jean- Guillaume Virchaux in Hamburg, Charles and Matthias Fontaine in Mannheim, Wolfgang Gerle in Prague, Johann Conrad Deinet in Frankfurt, Louis-François Mettra in Cologne and Neuwied, and JeanFrédéric Hemmerde in Cassel. For information on how the data were compiled, see the note following Table 3 as well as the electronic supplement to Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe at www.yu.edu/freedman/supplement. In the supplement, readers will find a complete list of the books ordered from the STN by its principal correspondents in Germany.

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Table 5. Most Frequently Ordered Books from the Th ree Leading Categories, 1774– 1785 Virchaux Fontaine Gerle Deinet Mettra Hemmerde Total Belles-Lettres L’An 2440 [Mercier] Liaisons dangereuses [Laclos] Politics Discours politiques (d’Albon) Entrevues du Pape Ganganelli [Abbé Baston?] History & Travel Portraits des rois de France (Mercier) Eléments d’ histoire générale (Abbé Millot) Voyage en Sicile et à Malte (Patrick Brydone)

12 72

24

24

48

12

24 7

8

9

4

48

6

6

36

19

10

14

24

4 14

52 93

65

6

58

3

8

71

5

1

2

73

4

1

2

45

Source: Livres de commissions, Ms. 1016–21. The table lists the most frequently ordered books from the three leading categories of demand: belles-lettres, politics, and history and travel. The figures beside the book titles indicate how many copies were ordered and by whom. The total number of orders for each book appears in the far right column. Note that the table excludes books ordered by fewer than three booksellers.

the first year for which the Livres de commissions have survived, Rousseau and Voltaire were nearing the end of their careers (both of them died in 1778), and at least one or two decades had passed since the publication of their bestknown works. It is not surprising, therefore, that there were few if any orders for those works in the Livres de commissions: only two orders for Emile and one for La Nouvelle Héloïse, none at all for Le Contrat social or Le Discours sur l’inégalité; none for the Lettres philosophiques, Candide, or the Dictionnaire philosophique. Voltaire, however, remained prolific until the end of his life—the STN’s correspondents in Germany ordered no fewer than eighteen different works by Voltaire, most of them recent publications— and Rousseau held the public in thrall even after his death, thanks to the posthumous publication of

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Table 6. Best-Selling Authors, 1774–1785 Author Mercier Rousseau Voltaire Mirabeau Mme. de Genlis Beaumarchais Millot

Total Copies Ordered

Number of Individual Titles

282 199 176 166 124 102 99

15 8 18 5 4 4 5

Source: Livres de commissions, Ms. 1016–21. The table lists the best-selling authors as reflected in the book orders of the STN’s principal correspondents in Germany: Jean-Guillaume Virchaux in Hamburg, Charles and Matthias Fontaine in Mannheim, Wolfgang Gerle in Prague, Johann Conrad Deinet in Frankfurt, Louis-François Mettra in Cologne and Neuwied, and Jean-Frédéric Hemmerde in Cassel. Authors with fewer than four different works ordered by booksellers are not listed.

a large batch of his manuscripts, including the famous Confessions, which were finally published in 1782 after several years of delay. The STN published a pirated edition of the Confessions and received only twenty orders from its correspondents in Germany, but it would be a mistake to draw any conclusions from the weak demand for the STN’s edition. Virchaux, who obtained copies of the Confessions from some other supplier— probably the original publishers in Geneva—reported that he had sold “several hundred . . . in the space of eight days” because of the “avidity” with which the public was clamoring to obtain “this curious work,” and thereupon he resolved to pirate the work himself, employing “all of my presses and all of my workers night and day” in order to accelerate the printing. In addition to Rousseau and Voltaire, Table 6 includes a handful of second-generation philosophes: Mirabeau, Beaumarchais, Mme. de Genlis, the abbé Millot, and, above all, Mercier, who sits at the very top of the list of best-selling authors. Since the STN published its own editions of thirteen different works by Mercier, and since the orders recorded in the Livres de commissions probably contained some bias in favor of the STN’s editions, it is possible that the figures derived from that source overstate slightly the demand for Mercier’s works—but only slightly. Le Tableau de Paris, unquestionably one of Mercier’s best-selling works, the STN published in association with Jonas Fauche and Jérémie Witel (the son and son-in-law of Samuel

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Fauche), and it was Fauche and Wittel rather than the STN who supplied it to booksellers in Germany. Of the orders that German booksellers placed for Le Tableau de Paris, only twenty-three were entered in the Livres de commissions, a mere fraction of the total German demand for that work. In the case of Le Tableau de Paris, therefore, the figures derived from the Livres de commissions understate the actual demand, understate it by so much that one would expect any biases in the source to cancel out. Whether Mercier really was the best-selling French philosophe in the German literary market during the years from 1774 to 1785 we cannot say; that he was one of the best-selling French philosophes is beyond question. Finally, to the authors listed in Table 6 should also be added those whose collected works attracted the strongest demand: Mme. Riccoboni and Claude Joseph Dorat, both of them authors of tearful romances and sentimental verse. If the demand for their collected works is any indication, then Riccoboni and Dorat also enjoyed considerable popularity beyond the Rhine. But is it reasonable to treat the orders for books as an indication of which authors were popular? How can we be certain that any particular book was ordered because of its author? In the case of collected works, it is hard to see how it could have been otherwise. The mere publication of an edition of collected works was in itself a tribute to the selling power of the author’s name, and the purchase of even one set of oeuvres complètes was a significant act, more significant than the purchase of several individual works, because the price was relatively high—8 livres, 10 sous for the six-volume set of the Collection complète des oeuvres de M. Dorat, or 8 livres, 9 sous for the eight-volume set of the Collection complète des oeuvres de Mme. Riccoboni, as compared to only 1 livre for a typical one-volume work in-octavo. Even though the total number of orders for the works of Dorat and Riccobini was modest—twentythree for Dorat, thirty-two for Riccoboni—those orders provide strong evidence for the popularity of the two authors. And the same can be said of the orders for a work like Rousseau’s Confessions, the subject matter of which was so intimately connected to the author himself. With the orders for most individual works, the situation is more ambiguous. Sometimes, to be sure, German booksellers would say explicitly that they were ordering a particular work because of its author. Thus Deinet on the Barbier de Séville by Beaumarchais: “I am eagerly awaiting the Barbier de Séville. The name [of the author] alone will certainly give credit to the play, for Beaumarchais showed himself to such good advantage in his mémoires

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[i.e., judicial memoirs] that one cannot but love him, and Les Deux amis revealed that he has talent for the theater, too.” Likewise, Virchaux on the Eléments d’ histoire générale of the abbé Millot: “He [Millot] is the favorite and most attractive author for all people of taste.” And, as noted in the previous chapter, Mettra placed a standing order of two dozen copies for anything by Mirabeau, while both Fontaine in Mannheim and Hemmerde in Cassel asked for “nouveautés” or “brochures” by Voltaire without indicating what kind of “nouveautés” or “brochures” they had in mind. Clearly, Voltaire enjoyed such extraordinary celebrity at the courts of the Palatine elector and the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel that his authorship (or putative authorship) was enough to guarantee demand for his works. And yet precisely because Voltaire’s celebrity was extraordinary, we cannot draw from it any general conclusions about the importance of authorship to the demand for individual works. Most authors, after all, were not celebrities. The STN’s cata logue was full of works by authors whose names would have been known to very few of their contemporaries and whose works sold well nevertheless. The list of the most frequently ordered works presented in Table 5 includes at least one title by a relatively obscure author: Discours politiques by the comte d’Albon. It is hard to imagine that any bookseller in Germany would have ordered that work because his customers were clamoring to receive the latest nouveauté from the pen of d’Albon. And they certainly were not concerned about authorship when they ordered Entrevues du Pape Ganganelli, an anonymously published work that also appears in Table 5. Except in the cases of works by a handful of famous authors, the booksellers in Germany probably attached greater importance to what works were about, or which genres they belonged to, than they did to who wrote them. As already noted, the STN’s correspondents registered the strongest demand for works belonging to three categories of literature: history and travel, belles-lettres, and politics. We shall examine those three categories presently. Before that, however, we would do well to consider the demand for the two largest of the STN’s publications: its nineteen-volume quarto edition of the Description des arts et métiers and its thirty-nine volume quarto edition of the Encyclopédie. Those two works cost so much more than any other work in the STN’s catalogue—228 livres for one set of the Arts et métiers, 384 for one of the Encyclopédie—that it would be absurd to compare the number of orders for them with that for other works. They are sui generis and should be treated accordingly.

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The Arts et métiers was a vast compendium of practical knowledge about a wide range of subjects in the arts and crafts, from metallurgy to wigmaking to textile manufacture. Published in installments, it occupied the presses in Neuchâtel intermittently for twelve years beginning in 1771, a longer period than any other of the STN’s publications. Jean-Elie Bertrand, the editor of the work for most of that period until his sudden death in 1779, worked tirelessly on the project, compiling the text from two principal sources: a Parisian edition of a work with the same title and a German work called Schauplatz der Künste und Handwerke, which was partly an original work of German scholarship and partly a translation of the Parisian edition. By the time Bertrand had completed the job of pasting, cutting, and annotating, the STN’s edition could well have been seen as a distinct work in its own right. And for the overall quality of its typographical execution and its accompanying plates, it stood out as the STN’s most elegant edition. But how well did it sell? It sold fairly well in the restricted milieux of princely and royal courts in Germany and the North. At the royal court in Copenhagen, the STN recruited the ser vices of Johann Heinrich Schlegel, the royal historiographer, who acted as sales agent for the STN. He succeeded in placing twelve subscriptions, with the king himself, the king’s brother, the queen, the heir to the throne, and eight others whom Schlegel described as “ministers of state and people with official positions above all in the departments of finance and commerce.” In Potsdam, by contrast, the STN began at the very top, by sending complimentary volumes of the Arts et métiers to Frederick the Great; then it received a subscription order from the Baron von Schulenburg, a Prussian finance minister, whom it asked to solicit subscriptions from other Prussian ministers; and finally, thanks to Schulenburg’s efforts, it obtained a subscription from le grand chambellan du roi, the Graf von Sacken, who accompanied his order with a congratulatory letter to the directors of the STN (themselves Prussian subjects, it should be recalled): “I have delighted for too long now in the sciences and letters not to honor and cherish those persons who devote themselves with as much success as do you to cultivating them and providing them with all the radiance and utility of which they are susceptible under the enlightened, benevolent, and glorious reign of the greatest monarch [i.e., Frederick the Great] who has ever adorned throne and royalty,” von Sacken wrote. Elsewhere in Germany, the STN obtained subscriptions from the Prince Victor von Anhalt Schaumburg, the Landgrave Ludwig IX of Hesse-Darmstadt

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and two of his courtiers, and the Graf von Dann, grand écuyer of the Elector of Bavaria, a Munich bibliophile who was especially impressed by the typographical execution of the STN’s edition: “I cannot but applaud this large and beautiful work. I must praise the paper, the printing, and the engravings; in a word, it gives me true pleasure,” Dann told the STN. While the STN’s edition of the Arts et métiers found a warm reception among a small number of wealthy bibliophiles at royal and princely courts, however, it met with a frosty reception among booksellers in Germany. All of the kings, princes, and courtiers mentioned above ordered the Arts et métiers either directly from the STN or through some third party like Schlegel, who was not himself a bookseller. Booksellers in Germany, on the other hand, ordered only nine subscriptions altogether (some of which were probably discontinued as the publication of the STN’s edition dragged on through the 1770s), and none of them had anything the least bit encouraging to say about the demand for the work in Germany. In 1771, after the first volume had left the press, Charles Fontaine in Mannheim told the STN: “This work is not at all for these countries, and I’ll be unable to place a single copy.” Twelve years and eighteen volumes later, Hemmerde in Cassel expressed regret over his earlier decision to order one copy: “I would gladly have done without the volumes of the Description des arts et métiers. In fact, I wish I had never asked for it at all, since this work is becoming too voluminous and God knows if I’ll ever have the opportunity to rid myself of it.” And, in 1778, at roughly the midway point in the printing of the work, Gerle in Prague wrote pessimistically: “The great lords who know French do not care for this sort of work and those who could profit from it do not know the language or they already own the German translation [i.e., Schauplatz der Künste und Handwerke].” It is enough to crack open any volume of the Arts et métiers, and one sees immediately the reason for Gerle’s pessimistic comment: the work is crammed full of arcane terms for the techniques and equipment used in the different crafts. Indeed, even the names of the crafts would have seemed daunting to anyone other than a native French speaker—chamoiseur, mégissier, corroyeur, parcheminier, hongroyeur, maroquinier, to cite just a few of the crafts treated in the volume devoted to the preparation of skins and leathers. Of course, it may not have mattered to a bibliophile like the Graf von Dann what all of those obscure words meant—von Dann seems to have viewed the STN’s edition in a mainly aesthetic light, as an object of beauty rather than a repository of knowledge—but what a formidable challenge it would have been for Ger-

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mans who really wanted to extract practical information about the preparation of skins and leathers from the Arts et métiers! They could have read the plays of Corneille, Racine, and Molière without difficulty, and still not had any clue what half the terms in the Arts et métiers referred to. It is no wonder that most of them turned instead to the Schauplatz der Künste und Handwerke. In Germany, if Gerle’s analysis was accurate, the Arts et métiers ran into a language barrier. And besides the problem of language, there was the problem of cost. At 12 livres per volume, the nineteen volumes of the Arts et métiers were simply too expensive, not for kings, princes, and courtiers, of course, but certainly for artisans, the members of the public who stood to gain the most from the STN’s edition. To remedy that problem, Johann Gottfried Bauer, a bookseller in Strasbourg, advised the STN to remove individual articles from the volumes of the Arts et métiers and sell them separately: “Without that facility, this work, made for public utility, will have seen the light of day merely to sit in the libraries of grands seigneurs or a few rich individuals, while the worker for whose instruction it was primarily intended will be unable to profit from it.”  To the STN, Bauer’s advice must have seemed quite sensible, for eventually it did exactly what its correspondent in Strasbourg had recommended. But what was sensible for Strasbourg, a bilingual city, does not appear to have made any difference in other parts of the German-speaking world. When the STN told Virchaux of its plan to lift a volume from the Arts et métiers on the subject of fishing and publish it as a separate work, Virchaux argued against it. The subject of fishing was of interest primarily to a middling public, “estate stewards and provincial administrators [ fermiers et intendants] who usually do not know French,” Virchaux reasoned, and that kind of public would prefer to wait for the German translation: “In general anything connected to the economy will succeed in Germany only in the language of the country.” The STN published the work on fishing despite Virchaux’s warning, only to discover that Virchaux had been right: Traité des pêches, as the STN called the work, garnered only one order from booksellers in Germany. Other works on the arts and crafts generated a little bit more demand than Traité des pêches, but none of them sold particularly well. It probably did not matter, therefore, how the Arts et métiers was packaged. Whether its volumes were sold separately or altogether, they would still have sold badly because the vast majority of Germans who wanted practical information about the arts and crafts would not— or could not— draw that information from a work in French.

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But now, by way of comparison, consider Diderot’s Encyclopédie, a work that also contained a great many articles on the arts and crafts. Unlike the Arts et métiers, the Encyclopédie seems to have sold quite well in Germany. According to Karl von Neorberg, a private secretary of the Palatine Elector who wrote to the STN in late 1779, the Encyclopédie had been “disseminated in abundance in all of our German courts”— and not only at German courts. “I find it even in the most modest libraries of the most ordinary individuals,” Neorberg said. To be sure, Neorberg’s comment did not refer to the STN’s quarto edition of the Encyclopédie; it referred to an octavo edition published in Bern, an edition that preempted the STN’s in Germany. Most of the copies of the quarto Encyclopédie the STN sold in France. And yet it also managed to place a number of subscriptions in Germany: a total of thirty-six, including twenty-seven with Matthias Fontaine in Mannheim. There seems little doubt, therefore, that Germany presented a lucrative market for the Encyclopédie. How did it happen that two such similar works as the Arts et métiers and the Encyclopédie met with such strikingly different fates in the German market? The answer presumably is that the Encyclopédie was a compendium of practical knowledge about the arts and crafts, but not just a compendium of practical knowledge. Alongside entries on glassblowing, iron smelting, or silk weaving, it contained articles by leading philosophes attacking orthodox opinion on nearly every front, and it was preceded by d’Alembert’s Discours préliminaire, one of the classic texts of the French Enlightenment, which explained how the different parts of the Encyclopédie fitted together within a cohesive universe of knowledge that was grounded in a sensationalist epistemology derived from Bacon and Locke. Germans who purchased the Encyclopédie were not only acquiring a reference work; they were also acquiring a symbol of the Enlightenment, and a symbol that was ideally suited for representational purposes. When displayed on the shelves of private libraries, the volumes of the Encyclopédie served to advertise their owners as men of taste, refinement, and advanced opinions. If the Encyclopédie sold so much better in Germany than the Arts et métiers, it was at least in part because of its value as an object of prestige. And there may have been a few other works (Raynal’s Histoire philosophique, for example) that sold well for similar reasons. It is doubtful, however, whether there was any other work from the whole eighteenth century whose prestige value approached that of the Encyclopédie. As a symbol of the

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Enlightenment, the Encyclopédie was unique, as far removed from the other works listed in Table 5 as was Voltaire from the common run of authors.

* * * So much, then, for encyclopedias: what of politics, belles-lettres, and history and travel, the three leading categories in Table 4? Let us start with history and travel. The first thing to be said about the demand for works of history is that it favored modern over ancient history. That preference showed up clearly in the overall breakdown of orders— 678 orders for works of modern and general history as compared with only 24 for works of ancient. It showed up too in the three works of history that were among the most frequently ordered titles: the STN’s nine-volume duodecimo edition of Eléments d’ histoire générale by the abbé Millot, its four-volume octavo edition of Portrait des rois de France by Mercier, and a one-volume folio edition of Histoire des conquêtes de Gustave-Adolphe by Grimoard, all of which dealt either with modern history or modern and ancient together. In contrast to the works of Millot and Mercier, Grimoard’s was narrowly focused on a specific historical moment: the military campaigns of Gustave-Adolphe during the Thirty Years’ War. As a general indicator of demand in the German market, however, it was the least significant of the three. Most of the orders for that work came from Virchaux, 44 out of the total of 53, and Virchaux indicated that 37 of those 44 were intended for a bookseller in Stockholm. Because of its subject— a Swedish military hero— Grimoard’s work was of particular interest to the public of the North and especially to a Swedish public. The works by Millot and Mercier are the ones most revealing of the demand for history in the German market, and both of them suggest that the public wanted vast historical tableaux painted in broad strokes rather than erudite treatments of narrowly circumscribed subjects. To accompany Millot on his brisk jaunt across the centuries, from the breakdown of the Roman Empire to the age of absolutism in France, was to contemplate a multitude of different historical scenes. Millot made not the slightest effort, however, to depict those scenes in a spirit of historical objectivity, for he wrote his history, as the French of the eighteenth century would have said, en philosophe. Like Voltaire in his Siècle de Louis XIV, Millot identified the consolidation of royal power with civilization, civilization with politesse, and politesse with reason, and he represented the past as a struggle of

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monarchy against the many-headed hydra of feudal anarchy, priestly tyranny, and popular credulity. Rather than attempt to treat the past in its own terms, as Herder and his followers among the German Romantics insisted the historian should do, Millot set himself up as judge and jury. Whole epochs were arraigned and condemned as if they were defendants in a court of law—most notably, the Middle Ages, whose every aspect was denounced and derided, from the violence of its warrior knights and the fanaticism of the Crusades, to the vacuous intellectual debates and meaningless word games of scholasticism, the superstitions of popular piety, the usurpation of temporal authority by the Church, and the general coarseness of manners. It is hard to imagine a bleaker picture of the Middle Ages than the one presented by Millot. And yet his work as a whole was not bleak at all— quite the contrary. Unlike traditional humanist historiography, which treated the past as a repository of exempla (object lessons of good and bad behavior that could be applied, mutatis mutandis, to all periods and places), Millot’s history laid emphasis on development—in the most abstract terms, the development of the human spirit. And it traced that development—the halting, sometimes zigzag movement from chaos to order, brutishness to civility, prejudice to science—in a manner that recalled d’Alembert’s Discours préliminaire and that anticipated Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau du progrès de l’esprit humain. At first glance, Mercier’s Portraits des rois de France seems quite different from Millot’s Eléments d’ histoire générale. For one thing, Mercier did not make out of the messiness of the past quite so neat and purposeful a pattern as did Millot: he offered a series of portraits rather than a cohesive narrative. Nor, most important, did he embrace the Voltairean model of civilization. If his work had a hero, it was not Louis XIV but rather the rough-hewn, coarsemannered Henri IV, the un-courtly king par excellence. Henri IV, however, was a culture hero for all of the philosophes (including Voltaire, who sang his praises in an epic poem, La Henriade). It is worth noting, therefore, that Millot also lavished praise on Henri IV and that he did so for some of the same reasons as did Mercier: because Henri IV stood for an alliance between the crown and the tiers état and because he introduced religious toleration through the Edict of Nantes. Politically, in other words, Millot’s history and Mercier’s were not so far apart. And chronologically they covered much the same ground, a vast historical subject matter extending from the fall of the Roman Empire through the seventeenth century. Both Millot’s work and Mercier’s allowed readers to journey backward in time. Travel books (récits de voyage), by contrast, allowed them to journey

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laterally in space. But what did history and travel have to do with one another? And why lump them together in the same category? The answer is that to eighteenth-century readers, time travel and space travel were closely related. If a travel book recounted a voyage of exploration to some remote region of the globe like the islands of the South Pacific or the wilds of America, then the two dimensions of travel coincided because the inhabitants of those regions were thought to embody an earlier stage in the history of humanity. Taken together, the demand for history and travel (702 orders for works of history, 408 for travel and geography) testify to the same powerful impulse: wanderlust through the medium of print. Where did the armchair German traveler wish to go? Not necessarily, it turns out, to remote regions of the globe. The most frequently ordered travel book concerned a journey to the Mediterranean: Voyage en Sicile et à Malte, the French translation of a travelogue by the English writer Patrick Brydone. At first sight, it may seem a little surprising that French-readers in Germany would have slaked their thirst for adventure by traveling imaginatively to destinations in southern Europe. In the eighteenth century, however, travel retained an element of adventure even within the frontiers of Europe. Before the advent of railroads and steamships, travelers did not have to go to other continents in order to test their mettle. And neither did they have to do so in order to find primitive cultures. Europe had its own primitifs, or so it would have appeared to educated Germans. Brydone’s Voyage en Sicile et à Malte contained both the drama of a perilous voyage and an encounter with a primitive culture: the drama of sailing to Sicily, like Odysseus in the Homeric epic, through the narrow straits between Scylla and Charybdis; the encounter with Sicilian bandits, a people that Brydone described as at once honorbound, unerringly faithful, and ruthlessly violent. Voyage en Sicile et à Malte had a good deal to commend itself to readers with a taste for seafaring adventure and ethnographic description. And it also had a good deal to commend itself to amateur naturalists—notably, its descriptions of Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna. Should we conclude, then, that French-readers in Germany found the Mediterranean more alluring than, say, the South Pacific, that they took a keener interest in Sicilian bandits than they did in Hawaiians or Australian aborigines? Certainly not—the STN received a few orders for the French translations of books dealing with all three of Captain Cook’s famous voyages, and those translations were published in so many different editions that booksellers in Germany could easily have ordered them from some other supplier

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than the STN. The strong demand for the work of Brydone does suggest, however, that remote foreign climes were not the only destinations that beckoned to the armchair German traveler. From history and travel let us turn next to the category of belles-lettres. It is an omnibus category comprising many different genres. But the demand for belles-lettres was concentrated almost exclusively on two genres, narrative prose fiction and plays; of those, the STN received almost four times as many orders for the former as it did for the latter, 926 orders for narrative prose fiction as against only 243 for plays; and most of the works belonging to narrative prose fiction could be described as novels. In effect, the strong demand for belles-lettres meant a strong demand for novels. To say that, however, is not to say terribly much. Unlike history and travel, which cohered as a literary category by virtue of its subject matter (displacements in time and space), the novel could be about practically anything. It was simply a literary form, a vessel into which authors could pour a wide range of narrative, thematic, and stylistic ingredients, from the tears of a fashionable sensibilité, to the sugar of boy-meets-girl romance, to the vitriol of social criticism. The important question, therefore, is what kind of novels elicited the strongest demand, and to that question there is no simple answer. One kind of novel that seems to have enjoyed considerable popularity was the English novel of manners: for example, Cecilia ou mémoires d’une héritière, the French translation of a work by Frances Burney, an English woman writer whose novels satirized the foibles of the English upper class and dramatized the constraints that social expectations placed on young unmarried women. The STN received thirty-three orders for Burney’s novel from four different booksellers. And it received forty orders from five different booksellers for what appears to have been a French imitation of the English novel of manners, Les Dangers de la calomnie ou mémoires de Fanny Spingler, histoire anglaise by Madame Beccary. In the German demand for Cecilia and Fanny Spingler, one can discern a strong current of Anglomania flowing into Germany through a circuitous channel, from England to France, then from France to Germany. On the other hand, the two most frequently ordered novels had nothing to do with England. Both were set in France and laced with a heavy dose of vitriolic social criticism: Mercier’s L’An 2440, a utopian fantasy that condemned the despotic politics, religious hypocrisy, and social inequalities of eighteenthcentury France by juxtaposing them with an idealized vision of Paris in the future, and Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses, a thoroughly unsentimental episto-

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lary novel that exposed the treachery and moral turpitude of aristocratic libertines. Of course it would be absurd to claim that those two novels served up exactly the same cocktail of social criticism. In the first place, Laclos merely exposed the vices of Old Regime society, while Mercier condemned them. Laclos’s novel therefore permitted a much wider interpretative license than did Mercier’s, which guided its readers, somewhat heavy-handedly through the use of long footnotes toward the author’s own conclusions. Further, while Mercier’s novel hardly told any story at all (the narrator simply wakes up all of a sudden in Paris in the year 2440 and then walks around the city in the company of a guide describing what he sees), Laclos’s recounted a gripping and complicated tale of intrigue and duplicity. To literary historians, it may seem extravagant even to mention Mercier and Laclos in the same breath. In the eighteenth century, however, both L’An 2440 and Liaisons dangereuses would have passed for romans philosophiques because they were novels of ideas, because the ideas that they expressed were offensive to the censors in France, and because those ideas were, broadly speaking, the ideas of the philosophes. The novel too, after all, could serve as a vehicle for the diff usion of Enlightenment, and, given the relatively weak demand in Germany for philosophical treatises, it seems likely that many French-readers in Germany preferred the heady cocktail of a roman philosophique to straight philosophy. Finally, we come to politics, the last of the best-selling categories. By 1780, works belonging to that category were attracting so strong a demand that to Virchaux, they seemed to be dominating the literary market: “The educated public [le public lettré] demands absolutely nothing other than works of politics,” he told the STN. No doubt Virchaux was exaggerating just a bit; and he did not say what kind of works of politics the public was demanding. The data in Table 4, however, say it loud and clear: nearly 60 percent of the orders for works of politics went for topical works, 806 out of a total of 1,415. The question, then, is what kind of topics those topical works were about. Certainly not the same topics throughout the entire period from the early 1770s to the mid-1780s. A great deal happened during that period—the first partition of Poland, the judicial coup of the chancellor Maupeou in France, the revolt of the American colonies against the British crown, and much else besides. As events unfolded, new topics came to dominate the market, sometimes with all the suddenness of a shift in the weather. In the early 1770s, the event that seems to have generated the greatest storm of controversy in Germany was the papal decree suppressing the Jesuit order. Following the publication of that decree, all manner of writings on the

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subject of the Jesuits were suddenly in demand, according to Deinet, who wrote to the STN in the autumn of 1773: Developments in the Roman church have led to the publication of several works in Italy as well as in France and elsewhere. It is by means of such brochures, which are very much in demand, that one can make money. The brief of the Pope [Clement XIV] announcing the dissolution of the Society of Jesus allowed me to make a bit of profit during this fair. I translated it into German and was obliged to run four presses day and night in order to satisfy the inhabitants of our city and foreign [customers]. If you have acquaintances in Italy, in Rome and in Florence, and they were able to obtain for us their pièces fugitives, for you the Frenchman and for me the German, that would give us some advantages. . . . In a word, Messieurs, let us try to be useful to one another during this period of ferment in the Roman church. Of course, the suppression of the Jesuit order belonged to the domain of ecclesiastical rather than secular politics. In the eighteenth century, however, the two types of politics were so closely intertwined that it would be anachronistic to make a sharp distinction between them, especially in the case of the Jesuits, who had for so long served as the confessors, confidants, and educators of sovereign princes all across Catholic Europe, and whose suppression the ambassadors of the Bourbon kings had been lobbying for intensively in the corridors of the Vatican since the late 1760s. The suppression of the Jesuit order was major political news (even if it was not unexpected), and it seems to have held the interest of the French-reading public in Germany at least through the mid-1770s, to judge from another of Deinet’s letters, this one from 1776, which chastised the STN for its failure to publish an edition of Pope Clement’s correspondence, as well as an apparently unrelated work about the mistress of the recently deceased Louis XV: “It seems to me that you do not devote sufficient attention to supplying nouveautés. It is, however, with pièces du jour that one can do the most. If you had printed Anecdotes sur la vie de la comtesse du Barry, Lettres du pape Clément XIV, you would certainly have made a profit,” Deinet told the STN. Actually, the STN was printing a three-volume edition of Lettres du pape Clément XIV (Gangenelli) at the very moment that Deinet was complaining

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of its failure to do so; and, in June 1776, after the STN’s edition had left the press, Deinet ordered twelve copies of it, despite the multitude of other editions in circulation and the publication of several German translations, including one that the Frankfurt booksellers Van Düren frères brought out in the same year as the STN’s French edition. That the collection of Ganganelli’s letters was rumored to be a forgery does not seem to have affected the demand for that work. Clearly, a great many readers wanted to believe in the authenticity of the collection. And it is no wonder. From his surprising election as pope at the hotly contested conclave of 1769 to his sudden death six years later under mysterious circumstances, purportedly by poisoning at the hands of his Jesuit adversaries, Ganganelli had stood in the eye of one of the greatest storms of international politics; now the collection of his letters promised to disclose what he really thought about the theological, philosophical and political issues of the day. Composed in a light, conversational style, it claimed to reveal the character of Ganganelli the man. And so too, in a rather more satirical manner, did the “sequel” published in 1777, Entrevues du pape Ganganelli, servant de suite aux lettres du même auteur, which pursued the story of the recently deceased pope beyond the grave. Set in a spirit world somewhere this side of purgatory, the Entrevues depict Ganganelli in dialogue with a series of eminent historical figures, including St. Ignatius of Loyola. Questioned by Loyola about the cause of his death and the circumstances of his election, Ganganelli admits, after much equivocation and hemming-and-hawing, that the cause of his death was poisoning—in fact, poisoned communion wine—but he denies, with considerably more vehemence than persuasiveness, that he had campaigned for and won election as pope by promising to destroy the Jesuits. Unlike the apocryphal Lettres du pape Clément XIV (Gangenelli), the “sequel” was a transparent fiction. But it generated a strong demand nevertheless, 58 orders from three different booksellers. While Clement XIV in his various historical and fictional guises inspired a keen interest in the years following the suppression of the Jesuits, by the end of the decade, another event was captivating the attention of the Frenchreading public in Germany: the revolt of the American colonies against the British crown—hence the strong demand for the STN’s one-volume octavo edition of the Discours politiques, historiques et critiques sur quelques gouvernements de l’Europe by a French aristocrat named the comte d’Albon. The Discours politiques included a lengthy discussion of the American conflict in its early stages (the historical references contained in the work indicate that it

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was written sometime after Lexington and Concord), and it attracted a larger number of orders than any other work in the category of politics: a total of sixty-five from four different booksellers. To Virchaux, it seemed the very model of a commercially successful political work, the kind of “bonne nouveauté” that merited an unsolicited shipment of two dozen copies “as soon as it leaves the press.” How to describe d’Albon’s work? Actually, to describe it as a work at all would be somewhat misleading. It was merely a collection of four essays: two linked essays on Britain and its North American colonies and one each on Switzerland and the United Provinces. A few themes cropped up in several of the essays, like the benefits of free trade and the harmfulness of tariffs, or the wickedness of war-mongering, glory-seeking, spendthrift monarchs and the virtues of frugal, peace-loving commercial republics. But d’Albon made no effort to develop those themes in any systematic way. He simply recurred to them as the occasion arose, then abandoned them to pursue digressions on a variety of different subjects— the barrenness of the Dutch soil, the cumbersomeness of the States General in Holland, the growing power of the Stadholder, the iniquity of the Swiss trade in mercenaries, the religious division between Protestant and Catholic cantons, sumptuary laws in Geneva, the political writings of Rousseau, and even the evils of Oliver Cromwell and justifications for tyrannicide, a discussion of which d’Albon appended, somewhat incongruously, to his essay on Switzerland. That a work containing such a hodgepodge of different elements attracted a strong current of demand would be hard to understand had it not been for the two essays on Britain and North America. Those essays, however, stood out prominently from the others because they cohered around one principal argument: a defense of the American colonies. D’Albon’s argument in support of the American colonies unfolded in two stages. In the first stage, he followed the lead of the British Commonwealthmen by challenging the notion, fashionable among Anglophile philosophes, that the British political system represented the ideal of a “mixed constitution.” Against that ideal he set what he took to be the reality of the British political system: that the Crown had made itself the real power in the state by controlling patronage and by manipulating a corrupt system of Parliamentary elections. The British political system, he concluded, was not a mixed constitution at all but rather a tyranny cloaked in the mantle of constitutionalism. From that conclusion, then, it was but a short step to the second stage of the argument, which focused on events in America. D’Albon

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picked up the narrative of events in the fall of 1774, at the moment when the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. He described the Congress in the most laudatory terms, as a modern Areopagus, and praised its declarations for their wisdom, moderation, and good sense. Of course, those declarations were not yet declarations of independence. They were protests against the Coercive Acts, expressed in terms of the rights of free-born Englishmen rather than the Jeffersonian doctrine of natural rights. But d’Albon saw which way events were heading. Eventually, he argued, the colonies would rally around the cause of independence for the simple reason that they did not derive any tangible benefits from their connection to Britain: they merely suffered the inconvenience of trade restrictions, the burden of heavy taxation, and the enmity of Britain’s European rivals. The conflict, therefore, could not be resolved peacefully, and once it escalated from words to bullets, as had already happened in New England, the movement toward independence would be unstoppable, for America’s citizen-soldiers, fighting in defense of their own country, were bound to prevail against the professional troops of an overseas empire. As a case for American independence, the argument of the Discours politiques was hardly original; it did little more than express the Common Sense of an American revolutionary. It expressed it, however, in the elegant French of a liberal Old Regime aristocrat, and so made it accessible to those Frenchreaders in Germany who wanted news and opinions about the conflict in the New World and who did not know enough English to read Thomas Paine or other American authors in the original language. Published by the STN in 1779, the Discours politiques seems to have arrived on the German market at precisely the right moment, just in time to capitalize on the public’s interest in the American Revolution.

* * * Notwithstanding Virchaux’s sweeping claim that the “educated public” wanted “nothing other than political works,” no single genre or subject matter can be said to have dominated the German market for French books. The orders of the STN’s correspondents covered so wide a range of works, from the Eléments d’ histoire générale, to the Liaisons dangereuses, to the Discours politiques, that it would be absurd to try to reduce them to any one common denominator. What general conclusions, then, can we draw about the demand for French books in Germany?

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First, the demand for French books did not necessarily mean a demand for books by French authors. Several of the most frequently ordered French books were translations from other languages, above all, English. At a time when Germans were far more likely to read French than English, French books provided a medium for the dissemination of English literature in Germany. Equally important, they provided a medium for the dissemination of news and opinions about international political events, about papal politics in Rome or American politics in Philadelphia. The market for French books in Germany cannot, therefore, be adequately conceptualized in terms of a simple binary relation, with France on the one side and Germany on the other. As vehicles of cross-cultural transmission, French books connected French-readers in Germany to a world much broader than that of the Bourbon monarchy. Second, the demand for French books was remarkably uniform across the different regions of Germany. From the standpoint of demand, it hardly seemed to matter where in Germany the STN’s correspondents had their shops, whether in the Catholic Rhineland or Lutheran Hamburg, in the Habsburg monarchy or the politically fragmented areas of the southwest. Everywhere the categories of literature most in demand were the same: history and travel, belles-lettres (above all novels), and topical political works. In the previous chapter, we saw how the French book trade in Germany was embedded in distinct local settings. The German market for French books, however, was supra-regional: it stood above the many political, economic, cultural, and religious divisions that separated the different regions of Germany. Though geographically dispersed, the STN’s correspondents in Germany came to similar conclusions about which kinds of French books would sell well. They also came to similar conclusions about which books would sell poorly. Nearly all of them expressed reservations about the STN’s multivolume Description des arts et métiers, a work that they deemed unsuitable for the German market because its intended audience either knew too little French to read it or had too little money to buy it. True, the STN did succeed in placing a number of subscriptions to the Arts et métiers at princely and royal courts, but the subscribers were princes and aristocrats, wealthy bibliophiles who appear to have viewed the work less as a practical guide to fishing or leather tanning than as an object of beauty. For learning how to fish or how to tan hides, French books in Germany were not of much use. Nor, finally, were French books of much use for devotional purposes— or so it would appear from the very weak demand for French Protestant religious literature. Nearly everywhere works belonging to that category sold badly, so

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badly, in fact, as to prompt sarcastic comments from the STN’s correspondents. “Sermons are not, alas, the works most in demand,” Virchaux remarked after the STN had ignored his request for pornographic works and had sent him a handful of some other works instead. In the good-natured banter of booksellers in the know, the French Protestant sermon was a joke, a shorthand for the kind of work that no bookseller wanted to touch. Does it follow, then, that the market for French books in Germany was undergoing a process of “secularization”? Obviously not if the market was in a Counter-Reformation stronghold like Habsburg Bohemia, where one would not, in any case, have expected to find a demand for French Protestant works (except perhaps in the clandestine book trade). Even in Protestant regions, moreover, the lack of demand for French Protestant works did not necessarily imply secularization. Most German Protestants were Lutherans. As such, they may not have wanted to read sermons by French Reformed Protestants, or they may have made a linguistic division in their reading practices, reading devotional literature in German and profane literature in French. In Germany, the public for French Protestant devotional literature consisted above all of Huguenots. That public, however, was too small— and in some cases too poor—for most professional booksellers to bother about. In order to reach the Huguenot market in Germany, the STN had to recruit commercial intermediaries beyond the ranks of the professional book trade.

chapter 5

The Word of God in the Age of the Encyclopédie

Comme on simplifie tout dans ce siècle, qu’on aime tout ce qui est en petit volume, on préfère partout les petites Bibles. (As everything is being simplified in this century, as people love whatever is in a small volume, so also do they prefer everywhere small Bibles.) —Bosset de Luze in Mainz to STN, 24 July 1779

During the Reformation, the Protestant strongholds of western Switzerland had been major centers of religious publishing, producing French Bibles, hymnals, and religious propaganda that reformers transmitted to the scattered communities of the internationale protestante. More than two centuries later, those same Protestant strongholds had become major centers of Enlightenment publishing. But even so, Swiss publishers continued to turn out editions of devotional literature. The STN published two folio editions of a French Bible, translated by an ancestor of Samuel Ostervald, the STN’s principal founder: the first in 1773, shortly after the Company of Pastors in Neuchâtel had condemned the STN for publishing an edition of d’Holbach’s atheistic Système de la nature; the second in 1779, at the same time that the STN’s presses were turning out sheets of its quarto edition of Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Enlightenment and the Word of God were bedfellows in the cozy confines of the STN’s printing shop, and, from there, they spread outward across the European continent.

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Of course, French Bibles did not spread as widely as did the works of the philosophes. Notwithstanding the prestige of the French language in the era of L’Europe française, French never did attain the status that Latin had once enjoyed as the universal language of the Church: once shattered by the Reformation, the linguistic unity of western Christendom was gone forever. Even those German Protestants who read books in French were very unlikely to read the Bible in French. If they read the Bible at all, most of them read it in German, as Johann Merck, the former editor of Deinet’s Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, explained in a letter to the STN: “In general, there are few readers of the Bible and sermons . . . [but] when we Germans are devout, we are devout in our own language.” The STN’s first edition of the Bible, which had almost sold out within a year of its publication, reached hardly any readers in Germany. Nearly all the copies of that first edition were placed in one of two areas: in French-speaking Switzerland and in France, where the STN managed to sell its Bibles despite a formal prohibition against Protestant Bibles within the French kingdom. And the same geographic distribution also held for the prepublication subscriptions to the second edition. Of 336 prepublication subscriptions for which the customers can be identified, all but 13 came either from French-speaking Switzerland or from France—72 from Switzerland and 252 from France. (See Appendixes B and C.) The public for French Protestant Bibles was confined primarily to French-speaking Protestants. French-speaking Protestants, however, were scattered all across the Protestant states of Europe— above all, in the Low Countries and in Germany, where Huguenot refugees had established colonies following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Surely the descendants of those refugees needed Bibles, the STN reasoned when it went to press with the second edition of its Bible in 1779. Since the number of prepublication subscriptions was far inferior to the pressrun, and, since the Swiss and French markets had already absorbed the lion’s share of the first edition, the STN was wagering that it would be able to sell copies of its second edition to booksellers in Germany. It turned out to be a tough sell. The Huguenots in Germany formed only a small minority of the total population, even where they were most heavily concentrated. They also tended to be poor and to live in remote rural areas, with some noteworthy exceptions, like the wealthy Huguenot merchants of Berlin and Hamburg. For German booksellers, therefore, the Huguenot public was not a lucrative source of demand, as the STN discovered as soon as it tried to market the

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second edition of its Bible in Germany. It offered the Bible to booksellers in areas with Huguenot refugee colonies, in Berlin and Franconia, and assured them that the Bible would be “a good object of speculation.” The booksellers, however, reacted coolly. In Frankfurt, which was located very near the major Huguenot settlements of Hesse, the booksellers Brönner and Andreae told the STN that they still owned copies of another edition of a French Bible and that they saw little prospect of being able to sell them. They had no wish, therefore, to saddle themselves with additional copies of the STN’s: “Sales would amount to little,” they informed the STN. In the end, the STN did manage to place a handful of its folio Bibles with booksellers in various German cities: two with Virchaux in Hamburg, one with Hemmerde in Cassel, one with La Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour in Mannheim, and one with Mettra in Neuwied. Those sales, however, were hardly enough to redeem the investment that the STN had made in its second edition. For the purposes of selling its folio Bibles in Germany, the established professional book trade was of little help. Rebuffed by professional booksellers, the STN turned instead to Protestant pastors, whom it sought to recruit as Bible salesmen. In the heroic age of the Reformation, pastors had often doubled as Bible salesmen, braving persecution to spread the gospel among the Protestant faithful. How did they function as Bible salesmen in the age of Enlightenment? And how successful were they in disseminating the Word of God among the descendants of Huguenot refugees in Germany?

* * * The STN assigned the job of recruiting Bible salesmen to Bosset, who set out on his journey through western Germany in the summer of 1779 equipped with a list of “our reformed ministers in various places in Germany” and who proceeded to meet with a number of ministers on that list. They turned out to be a rather parsimonious lot. In Frankfurt, Bosset met with a young minister named Bodelet who had arrived in his new living from Geneva three months earlier and who complained to Bosset because the STN had sent him two separate letters about its Bible. In Hanau, Bosset got an earful from two ministers to whom the STN had written exactly the same letter—“people who, even more than booksellers, care a great deal about the cost of postage,” he reported in his letter to the home office. Despite their complaints about unnecessary postal costs, several pastors promised that they would purchase

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some copies of the Bible. But Bosset warned Osterwald not to set any store by those promises: “There is nothing more disastrous in business than to rely upon pretty words; deeds are the only things one should pay any attention to.” To judge from the tone of his remarks to Ostervald, Bosset does not seem to have had much use for pastors. He was convinced, however, that the second folio edition of the Bible had been a “bad speculation.” Pastors, therefore, offered the only hope for salvaging something from an unwise investment: “We have to do the best we can,” he concluded regretfully. In the end, Bosset decided that the best candidate to serve the STN as a Bible salesman was a Swiss-born pastor in Hanau named Roques, who had been the religious tutor of the Landgrave Friedrich V of Hesse-Homburg and who, in the late 1770s, was playing a leading role in a literary society called the Société Patriotique de Hesse-Hombourg. As if to prove that he was not just any normal pastor, Roques agreed to peddle not only the STN’s folio edition of the Bible but also its quarto edition of Diderot’s Encyclopédie. The Bible and the Encyclopédie? Clearly, Bosset was steering the STN into the arms of a rather worldly man of the cloth, the sort of Calvinist who would have made Calvin turn over in his grave. Bosset, however, did not object to worldly pastors any more than he objected to greedy ones. And he was firmly convinced that Roques’s principal motive was greed, which he mentioned as if it were a point in Roques’s favor: “He seems to me to be burning to make money,” Bosset said of the STN’s would-be Bible and Encyclopédie salesman. On the strength of Bosset’s recommendation, the STN assembled a crate of thirteen folio Bibles, and on 5 August 1779, sent it off to Roques in Hanau. Whether Roques’s motives were really as mercenary as Bosset claimed is impossible to say. But he certainly drove a hard bargain. Normally, the STN expected its customers to bear the cost of shipping, and, in the case of the crate that it sent to Roques, that cost was considerable—roughly 23 livres (10 Florins, 27 Kreuzer), which represented almost 10 percent of the monetary value of the merchandise. Roques never had any intention of bearing that cost. If the STN wanted him to sell its Bibles, Roques had told Bosset during their meeting, then it would have to pay the cost of shipping them— and not only that; it would have to release the Bibles to him en commission, allowing him to pay only for such copies as he sold according to a price of 18 livres per copy. It was a lot to ask, far more than the STN was accustomed to granting. Roques, however, was bargaining from a position of strength. Since booksellers were not interested in the Bible, the STN saw no alternative but to accept Roques’s conditions and hope for the best.

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By the following spring, all hope for selling the Bible seemed to have evaporated. “Since you sent me 13 copies of the Bible d’Ostervald, not a single one has been sold,” Roques reported to the STN. “I announced them several times in the local papers, both here and in Frankfurt, and spoke of them to our booksellers and others in the area. But because it is the Word of God, everyone finds it too dear. Had it been an item with some connection to luxury and frivolity, I would have been rid of it in no time in our frivolous century [notre siècle inconséquent].” What was the STN to do? In its reply to Roques, the STN sounded slightly incredulous that price could really have been an obstacle to the sale of “a holy book.” But if the public wanted cheaper Bibles, then so be it. As early as December 1779, in fact, the STN had already obtained some copies of a smaller Bible, an octavo edition published in Bienne in the canton of Bern by a bookseller named Heilmann. That edition sold at a price of 6 livres per copy, one-third that of the STN’s folio. And so the STN offered it to Roques, “in case there are people around you inclined to acquire a Bible at lower cost.” Roques, however, did not take up the STN’s offer of the octavo Bibles, nor did he keep it abreast of his efforts on behalf of the folio. A full two years elapsed before he even wrote to the STN again, and, when he finally did write, his report was every bit as discouraging as the one he had submitted in the spring of 1780. No one wanted to purchase the STN’s folio Bibles, he explained: “On the one hand, they are too dear for most of our Christians, and on the other hand, unfortunately, what is called a Christian today dispenses easily with anything that smells of devotion.” It was as if Roques were preaching from the pulpit of an empty church. And he let it be known that he had not the slightest desire to persevere in such a futile exercise: “You will have the kindness, Messieurs, to dispose of your Bibles. They are uselessly occupying one of my rooms, which I would like to employ for other purposes.” The only thing that remained to be settled was the matter of postal costs, which Roques had no intention of paying out of his own pocket: “In postage, I spent about 3 Florins, which you can remit to me by the first opportunity.” Before agreeing to bear the costs of shipping the Bibles to some other destination, the STN wanted to be certain that Roques really had exhausted all the possible avenues for disseminating them from Hanau. For the next several years, therefore, it dragged its feet, leaving its Bibles with Roques while it made inquiries about him with a man named Hestermann, who was some kind of associate of Roques’s in Hanau. In response to the STN’s inquiries, Hestermann wrote to confirm that Roques had made good-faith efforts to

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place the Bibles. If those efforts had come to nothing, it was simply because the price of the STN’s folio Bible was too high: “Most people are already supplied with Bibles, and those who are not prefer to acquire one at a better price. . . . If you wish him [i.e., Roques] to unload them [i.e., the STN’s Bibles], you will have to set a lower price, one for which he can sell them,” Hestermann told the STN in 1784. The following year, Hestermann paid a visit to Neuchâtel, where the STN agreed that he and Roques should attempt to sell the Bibles at whatever price they could fetch. After returning to Hanau, however, Hestermann failed to keep the STN abreast of how the new commercial strategy was faring. The STN waited nearly a year for some word from its Bible salesmen in Hanau; then, in early 1786, it dispatched an employee, a traveling commissioner named Victor Durand, to confront them directly. The results were disappointing. Even under direct questioning from Durand, Roques was evasive. He indicated that a few of the STN’s Bibles had, in fact, been sold at a reduced price, but he did not say how many, nor did he remit any payment for them. For the STN, it must have been a very frustrating experience. Nearly seven years had elapsed since the crate of Bibles had been sent to Hanau, and the STN could not even get a clear accounting of what had become of them, let alone any money. Then, sometime soon after Durand’s departure from Hanau, Roques died. Someone else would have to answer for the Bibles. But who? To make good its claims, the STN turned to Roques’s recently appointed successor, the pastor Girard. “Roques had died without fulfilling his engagements,” it told Girard. “We beseech you therefore to take charge of demanding an accounting of the aff air from the heirs of M. Roques—in short, payment for the Bibles that were sold and the return of those that still exist.” To demand payment from grieving heirs was a delicate business, the more so as the deceased was an outwardly respectable Protestant pastor. It is hardly any wonder, therefore, that Roques’s daughter felt deeply offended when Girard told her of the STN’s grievances against her father. She complained of the offense to Hestermann, who, in turn, rebuked the STN for disparaging the memory of his venerable associate. But what was the STN to have done? Roques may have been a pastor selling a “holy book.” Yet he bargained down prices, haggled over costs, and dodged the payment of his bills just like a professional bookseller. And a pastor who behaved like a bookseller had to be treated accordingly, even beyond the grave. Clerical status ended where the cash nexus began.

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In his letter to the STN, Hestermann did finally provide a full accounting of the STN’s Bibles and promised to remit payment for those that he and Roques had managed to place: a total of six, which had been sold at an average price of 12 livres—three, by means of a swap, to a bookseller in Frankfurt and three others to individual customers. That left seven unsold Bibles. To return them to Neuchâtel would have meant additional shipping costs. So the STN tried to recruit Girard as its new Bible salesman, and, to persuade him to take over that job, it fell back on one of the tried-and-true methods of the commercial book trade: mendacity. It told Girard that “this work is an excellent seller” (an exaggeration at the very least), that “our edition is almost sold out” (untrue), and that “we are considering publishing a new one” (not likely). Whether Girard believed that pack of lies is impossible to say. But it hardly mattered. He did not want to take over the job of Bible salesman any more than Hestermann wanted to keep it. After having collaborated with Roques for several years, Hestermann was weary of peddling Bibles, and he implored the STN to repossess the ones he still had, “which could suffer decay as they are not wrapped, and which occupy a space that I would like to use for other purposes.” By May 1788, Hestermann had transferred the Bibles to a correspondent of the STN in Frankfurt, where a shipping agent arranged to have them transported to the STN. They returned to Neuchâtel on 20 October. After almost a decade abroad, seven of the STN’s folio Bibles had come full circle.

* * * At first glance, it seems hard to imagine a more poignant image of secularization in the age of Enlightenment than that of the STN’s unsold Bibles decaying in Hestermann’s residence, “holy books” rejected by pastors and booksellers alike and then returned, like yesterday’s pièce du jour, to their publisher after nearly ten years of futile efforts to sell them. But could the demand for Bibles really have vanished among Huguenots in Germany, less than a century after their ancestors had braved the dragonnades of Louis XIV and chosen the path of exile rather than renounce their Protestant faith? Before jumping to that conclusion, we need to set Roques’s experiences as a Bible salesman against those of a second pastor, Isaac Maurice Lagisse, who was also trying to sell copies of the STN’s folio Bibles in Hesse during the early 1780s. Although both Roques and Lagisse were pastors and although both of them lived in Hesse (Roques in Hanau, Lagisse in Cassel), the two men dif-

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fered in a number of important ways. To begin with, Lagisse did not come from Switzerland; he was a native son of Hesse- Cassel, probably trained at the theological faculty of the University of Marburg. Unlike Roques, therefore, he belonged to the same world as those to whom he ministered and shared with them the common experience of growing up and living as the member of a linguistic minority in a German-speaking country. He also occupied an important ecclesiastical post: that of inspector of all the French Reformed churches in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel. Besides ministering to his own congregation in Cassel-Neustadt, he made annual visitations to all the other congregations scattered throughout the territory of the principality.  And in his letters to the STN, he showed no sympathy at all for modern secular ideologies, nor any inclination to derive personal profit from the sale of Bibles. It was as if he had stepped out of an earlier period of European history, a selfless, charitable man of the cloth dedicated to the spiritual edification of his flock. If anyone was capable of selling Bibles to Huguenots in Germany, it was Lagisse. In April 1780, roughly ten months after the STN had informed him of its new edition of the Bible, Lagisse placed an order for nine copies at the full price of 18 livres per copy (three more copies than Roques would be able to place, even at a discount, during nearly ten years as the STN’s Bible salesman). It was an auspicious beginning. Lagisse, however, did not consider it a success to have placed nine copies of the Bible at one stroke. Indeed, he felt compelled to apologize for the smallness of his order. All the congregants in his church in Cassel already owned copies of other editions of the Bible, he told the STN— either copies of an earlier Neuchâtel edition or those of a Dutch edition. And the other Hessian churches provided Bibles free of charge for the public service so that the congregants did not absolutely need to purchase their own. One colony, whose church had only just been established three years earlier, was still in need of Bibles, but it was too poor to afford them. Lagisse wanted to present the new church with a gift of one of the STN’s Bibles, and so he asked the STN to contribute to that worthy cause by releasing a tenth Bible at a discounted price of 6 livres. Of course the STN was not in the business of subsidizing the spiritual needs of its impecunious coreligionists. But it was able to spot a good thing when it saw it, and Lagisse seemed a very good thing indeed: a dedicated pastor who held the key to unlocking the Bible market in Hesse. Usually, when the STN received an order for twelve copies of a book, it released the thirteenth copy gratis. In the case of Lagisse, it agreed to make a gift of the tenth

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copy, a more generous gift than that requested by Lagisse himself, who had only asked for a discounted price of 6 livres. And to those ten folio Bibles it added an unsolicited copy of the Bienne octavo. When the crate with the eleven Bibles arrived in Cassel in June 1780 after a journey of nearly three months, Lagisse complained of the high cost of shipping, which came to roughly 30 livres. He also noted that the Bible had not lived up to everyone’s expectation: “Those who ordered your Bibles did not find the edition as beautiful as you made it out,” he told the STN. Even so, he expressed his gratitude for the free tenth copy and enclosed a bill of exchange for 168 livres, which covered the full value of nine folios and one octavo. To reward Lagisse for his prompt payment and to keep the orders from Cassel flowing, the STN consented to pay all the costs of shipping in the future. If dispensed wisely and in small doses, largesse was not charity; it was good business. And in the case of Lagisse, the largesse paid off. No doubt encouraged by the STN’s gift of the folio, Lagisse announced that he would take along the copy of the octavo Bible on his inspection tour in the summer of 1780 and would show it around: “In that way I’ll find persons who wish to obtain it,” he wrote confidently. Sure enough, in the following spring, he wrote back to the STN with an order for a dozen copies of the octavo. Through his success as a Bible salesman, Lagisse seemed to be giving the lie to Roques’s claim about “our frivolous century.” Even Lagisse, however, found it increasingly difficult to sell the STN’s own edition. He told the STN that he had done everything he could to place the folio but that “nearly all the French in this country are already supplied with it, either with the Dutch edition or with the one that was executed in your city.” For his next inspection tour in the summer of 1781, therefore, he planned to concentrate his efforts where demand was strongest: “I hope to be able to place several copies of the small Bibles by taking one along to show around,” he informed the STN shortly before his departure at the end of June. After his return in August, he submitted another order for the octavo, this time for ten copies, but none for the folio. No doubt the STN found the flagging demand for the folio somewhat worrying, but it could hardly blame that on Lagisse, who was clearly doing the best he could and whose value as a Bible salesman had been proved beyond question. The STN continued, therefore, to pursue the same policy of self-interested largesse, and Lagisse continued to benefit from it. In addition to the free copy of the folio, which the STN had sent to him with its first shipment of Bibles, Lagisse now requested a free copy of Lettres contre Vol-

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taire by the famous Bern physician Albrecht von Haller, which he said it was his intention to give to “a person unable to pay for it.” As a conscientious pastor in the eighteenth century, Lagisse did not consider it sufficient to promote the reading of the Bible; the spiritual health of his flock also demanded measures to stem the contagion of irreligion, and what better prophylactic than Haller’s polemic against Voltaire? Ironically, the STN bore a considerable weight of responsibility for spreading that contagion; but to maintain good relations with Lagisse, it consented to offering a free copy of Haller’s work. What else could it have done? Not even Bosset could have found a base motive behind Lagisses’s “pretty words,” nor could he have found any fault in his financial dealings. On one occasion, in early 1782, when Lagisse was just a little slow to make a payment, he did not wait for the STN to complain but immediately took up his pen to issue an apology: “Please excuse me for not having sent to you any sooner the payment for what I owe you. Despite repeated requests, there are still some churches that have not collected the Bibles that they ordered. I am advancing my own money so as not to delay any longer in satisfying you.” Unlike Roques, Lagisse was not a pastor who behaved like a bookseller; he was a pastor who behaved like a pastor. By February 1782, not quite two years since Lagisse had placed his first order for Bibles, the STN had become sufficiently persuaded of his probity and zeal that it began to look for ways to broaden the scope of their correspondence. It asked Lagisse for recommendations of booksellers who shared his religious zeal and who would be willing to purchase its Bibles. Lagisse responded that he did not know of any such bookseller— or, at least, none willing to purchase the STN’s Bibles for his own account. But he declared that he would be prepared to receive a stock of Bibles for the STN’s account: “If you wish to send me some copies of both formats en commission, above all, copies of the octavo, I shall sell them for you without any profit at all [sans le moindre bénéfice] and shall remit payment to you as they are sold.” Without any profit? Lagisse’s offer seemed almost too good to be true; so the STN wasted no time in accepting it. On 5 March 1782, a crate containing another nineteen Bibles— six folios and thirteen octavos— departed Neuchâtel for the journey to Cassel. Initially, sales of those Bibles proved disappointing, perhaps because Lagisse had already creamed off much of the demand during the previous two years. By May 1783, more than a year after the STN had sent him the new shipment of Bibles, he had still sold only one copy of the folio and one of the octavo: “I confess to you frankly that I was mistaken in my expectations,”

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he told the STN. Lagisse, however, was not the sort of man to abandon his calling at the first sign of trouble. He declared his intention of advertising the Bibles in the local papers, and, “God willing,” of making his annual inspection tour in the following summer: “I flatter myself that I shall be able to place some of them, and I shall take care to inform you of the number that I sell.” True to his word, Lagisse wrote back the following year to announce the successful sale of nine octavos. That left him with only four copies of the small Bible, which he was confident of being able to place by the end of 1784. And, in the meantime, he would consider purchasing two hundred copies of the Abrégé du catéchisme d’Ostervald, a devotional work whose use he had introduced in the churches under his authority. In the past, he explained, the French churches in Hesse had drawn their supplies of catechisms from a Protestant publisher in Geneva, but he would shift the order to Neuchâtel if the STN were able to supply the Genevan edition at a price of 9 Kreuzer for each bound copy. And, in June 1784, the STN did in fact send two hundred copies of the catechisms to Cassel. After a brief interruption, the religious market in Hesse had begun once again to yield a strong and lucrative demand. But that demand did not embrace the STN’s folio Bible, of which Lagisse had been able to place only two copies since March 1782. Indeed, demand for the folio was so weak that when Lagisse came to speak of it, he sounded like Roques: “As for the folio Bibles, I do not believe that I will be able to place them for a very long time, and I should be very happy if you disposed of them elsewhere.”  As in the case of Roques, the STN was reluctant to reclaim its Bibles and incur the costs of transporting them back to Neuchâtel. So it instructed Lagisse to lower their price, from 18 to 15 livres per copy, and urged him to persevere despite his poor success. Lagisse, however, doubted whether the folio would sell, even at a reduced price. Finally, on 12 October 1785, he announced an arrangement to transfer the four remaining folios to the bookseller Pierre-François Fauche in Hamburg.

* * * In the course of his correspondence with the STN, Lagisse sold forty-eight Bibles, eight times as many as Roques. Of those forty-eight, however, only twelve were copies of the STN’s own folio edition; all the rest were copies of the octavo. (See Appendix D.) How are we to account for so striking an imbalance in the demand for Bibles? And what did that imbalance signify?

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Lagisse was not the only one to indicate that Huguenots in Germany preferred small, cheap Bibles to large, expensive ones. Roques did not try to sell the octavo, but both he and Hestermann reported that would-be customers found the STN’s folio too dear. And Bosset had reached the same conclusion, even before Roques and Lagisse began peddling the STN’s Bibles, simply from his conversations with booksellers and pastors in western Germany: “I have been assured everywhere that people in Germany would have taken copies of the Bible d’Ostervald if it had been in octavo like the Basel edition, which is the only one in demand,” he informed his associates. When Bosset concluded that the STN’s edition of the Bible had been a “bad speculation,” he did not mean that it was bad to have speculated on the Bible, which could still yield profits, even in the age of Enlightenment: the mistake was to have published the Bible in a large and expensive format. Had the STN published its Bible in an octavo format, it would have been able to place nearly the whole pressrun at a single stroke, simply by selling it to the bookseller Friedrich Jacob Röder in Wesel, who offered to take no fewer than a thousand copies of the Bible provided the STN could supply an edition “with the same type, the same size and the same paper as those of the Basel edition.”  When the STN wrote back to Röder offering him its folio Bible instead, however, he demurred: “The [folio] Bible cannot serve me. It is more expensive than the Basel edition, and I wanted to have one that is not so expensive. There is no need for such beautiful paper and such a large format,” Röder explained. (“La Bible me ne peut pas servir, elle est plus chère que celle de Basle, et je souhaitais d’avoir telle quelle n’était pas si chère, il n’est pas besoin si beau papier et si grand format.”) No need for beautiful paper and a large format in an edition of the Bible? Despite Röder’s tenuous command of the French language, his assessment of the market for French Bibles could not have been any clearer nor any more devastating for the STN, whose entire commercial strategy rested on the belief that the best way to capture the Bible market was to outshine competitors rather than to underbid them. Among those competitors, one of the most important was Jean-Pierre Heubach of the Société Typographique de Lausanne, who had the reputation of cutting corners to economize on the costs of production and who published a quarto edition of the Bible in 1774. At that time, the STN’s first folio edition was almost sold out, and one of its correspondents in the south of France, the bookseller Isaac-Pierre Rigaud in Montpellier, had indicated that a quarto Bible would sell well in his region;

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so the STN agreed to purchase sixty copies of Heubach’s edition. Once it got a chance to inspect the paper in Heubach’s edition, however, the STN was practically scandalized. It told Heubach that the paper was deplorable, not nearly as white as that of the STN’s 1773 edition and that it was “absolutely lacking in size” (the gelatinous material that made the surface of paper relatively impermeable). The STN responded coolly, therefore, when Heubach published a folio edition of the Bible in 1777 and tried to persuade the STN to purchase copies of it. The STN informed Heubach that it might take a few copies, “on condition that it [the edition] is made with beautiful paper”; but behind Heubach’s back, it denounced him to its correspondents: “Such is the manner in which the Société Typographique de Lausanne prints works of devotion in large volumes so as to be able to sell them more profitably. This Société is now turning out an edition of the Bible in-folio bad paper,” the STN warned one of its retail customers, a merchant named Jean Ranson in the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle. Rather than take an interest in Heubach’s Bible, the STN decided to put him to shame and to spare no effort or expense in producing a typographical gem, one that would be even more brilliant and more costly than its own first edition, which had lacked illustrations and which had sold at a price of 12 livres per copy. With its 1779 edition, the STN set out to restore to the Bible d’Ostervald all the grandeur that work had embodied when it was first published in Neuchâtel in 1744, adorned by a portrait of the translator. After more than three decades and repeated use, the original copperplate engraving of the portrait was worn down. The STN decided, therefore, to commission a Parisian engraver to touch up the plate. Since the engraver would be doing the work in Paris, the STN could not supervise him directly. But it was determined not to leave anything to chance. The job of supervising the operation it delegated to a correspondent in Paris named Jean-Frédéric Perregaux, and it provided Perregaux with meticulous instructions about how to run off the copies of the portrait, insisting that the printing be done “with a rag in hand and very cleanly” (au chiffon et très proprement). It also provided him with precise guidelines about the kind of paper to be used for those copies. When its second edition finally left the press in 1779, the STN announced it to correspondents as the ultimate Bible, and, even allowing for the hyperbole of advertising, it seems clear that the STN was proud of its accomplishment: “This is assuredly the most beautiful edition that has ever been produced of this essential work, as much for the paper and the type as for its ornaments, since it

Figure 8a. The STN’s deluxe edition of the Bible d’Ostervald, title page. (Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel)

Figure 8b. The STN’s deluxe edition of the Bible d’Ostervald, allegorical frontispiece. (Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel)

Figure 8c. The STN’s deluxe edition of the Bible d’Ostervald, portrait of the translator. (Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel)

Figure 8d. The STN’s deluxe edition of the Bible d’Ostervald, map of the Holy Land. (Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel)

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contains at the beginning a retouched print of the translator, a new frontispiece vignette and a good map of the Holy Land, all of them engraved in Paris,” the STN boasted. By publishing such an extravagant edition, the STN was departing from its usual commercial strategy, which was to trim “typographical luxury” rather than enhance it. The Bible, however, was no usual book— or so it appeared to the STN, which assumed that the public would prefer a deluxe edition of the Bible to a plain and simple one. At least as far as the Huguenots in Germany were concerned, that assumption turned out to be wrong. Why? It is likely that the economic situation of the Hessian Huguenots had something to do with their reluctance to purchase so expensive and luxurious an edition of the Bible. Lagisse placed most of the Bibles during his summer inspection tours, which took him to the impoverished rural colonies outside of Cassel. Located on the sites of former villages abandoned during the demographic crises of the late Middle Ages and the Thirty Years’ War, those colonies faced a difficult struggle for survival in a hostile physical environment. Such arable land as existed was marginal at best, yielding only a bare subsistence, which the refugees were forced to supplement by such secondary manufacturing activities as brewing and wool carding. For a family of five, a single copy of the STN’s 1779 folio would have cost more than two weeks’ worth of bread. If the choice was between physical and spiritual nourishment, it was really no choice at all. But was that, in fact, the choice? Both Lagisse and Roques indicated that a great many Hessian Huguenots already owned folio Bibles. In the past, therefore, families of refugees had managed to scrape together the money to purchase an elegant edition of the one book that really mattered, even at the expense of physical hardship. And besides, Lagisse seems to have sold most of the Bibles to churches rather than to individual families. The churches made collective purchases. They could have purchased either a small quantity of an expensive edition or a large quantity of a cheap one. If they opted for the latter, as they seem to have done, it was not because poverty compelled them to do so. It was because they did not consider it absolutely essential that the Word of God be embodied in a grand and magnificent edition. Without discounting the importance of economic factors, therefore, it seems clear that more was at stake in the preference for small Bibles than poverty alone. According to Bosset, a preference for small formats applied not only to the Bible in Hesse-Cassel but indeed to all manner of literature in the late eighteenth century: “As everything is being simplified in this century, as

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people love whatever is in a small volume, so also do they prefer everywhere small Bibles.” Like any attempt to capture the literary culture of an entire century in one single sentence, Bosset’s glossed over details and ignored counter-examples. To say that in the eighteenth century “everything is being simplified” was itself a simplification. But that did not make it wrong. When Bosset described his as a century of simplification (by which presumably he meant popularization), he was offering a judgment firmly grounded in the actual experience of selling books, and not just any books but two of the most important books imaginable: the STN’s folio edition of the Bible, the most important book in the Protestant tradition, and its quarto edition of the Encyclopédie, the most important book of the Enlightenment, both of which Bosset was trying to promote during his journey through the Rhineland in the summer of 1779. The Encyclopédie provided a perfect illustration of Bosset’s claim about popularization. Like vernacular translations of the Bible during the Reformation, the Encyclopédie was, in its intellectual inspiration, an ouvrage de vulgarisation. By assigning to his fellow philosophes the task of compressing their ideas into articles, Diderot reduced the Enlightenment to bite-sized morsels and made it digestible to readers who were not philosophes. In sociological terms, however, the actual process of popularization did not begin until the text of the work was completed and it had materialized in print: first as folio editions, then as a quarto, and finally as an octavo published by a consortium of publishers (including Heubach) in Lausanne and Bern. Sandwiched between the folios and the octavo, both in terms of chronology and in terms of size, the STN’s quarto was at once the beneficiary and the victim of that process of popularization: the beneficiary in France, where the original folio edition had left the demand for Encyclopédies unsatisfied, and where the STN’s edition sold extremely well; the victim in Germany, where the octavo edition preempted the STN’s quarto. During his turn through the Rhineland, Bosset tried to drum up interest in the STN’s quarto by promoting it in conversations with customers and by distributing prospectuses, but the results were disappointing. In Düsseldorf, Bosset gave prospectuses of the STN’s quarto Encyclopédie to a private secretary of the Elector Palatine, Karl von Neorberg, who then sent the STN a very discouraging letter several months later: “Unfortunately, this edition [i.e., the STN’s], preferable to all others, has been preempted by the edition in-octavo. The latter has been disseminated in abundance in all of our German courts. Its low price is the reason that I find it even in the most modest libraries of the most ordinary

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individuals. The booksellers Le Roux and Fontaine, who travel from court to court as well as to the fairs, have solicited subscriptions everywhere, and the low price along with the convenience of the format have seduced a large number of subscriptions [sic] [i.e., subscribers],” Neorberg reported. The French-reading public in Germany wanted smaller and cheaper Encyclopédies, just as the Huguenots in Germany wanted smaller and cheaper Bibles. To scholars today, it might seem absurd even to mention the Encyclopédie and the Bible in the same breath, so different were those two works: the one a summa of enlightened knowledge grounded in a sensationalist epistemology derived from Bacon and Locke; the other a cosmic story of fall and redemption for whose veracity divine revelation was the sole guarantor. As embodied in the STN’s large-format editions, however, they shared a common material form. And Roques, who had initially agreed to sell both editions, had no more success with the one than he did with the other. In the same letter in which he informed the STN of his failed efforts on behalf of its folio Bible, he also told it that he had distributed prospectuses for the quarto Encyclopédie “to all of the highest ranking notables of the city,” and even so, had managed to gather not a single subscription: “Here too I found very little taste for Ornaments of the Mind [capitalized in the manuscript], people generally have taste only for what is fatuous. I am mortified, Messieurs, not to have succeeded any better, it is not my fault, it is the fault of the current bad century,” Roques said. The poor eighteenth century! Even before it had come to an end and decades before the German Romantics began castigating the Enlightenment as shallow and one-sided, the unflattering epithets were proliferating: bad century, frivolous century, century of simplification. From such global condemnations, one might have supposed that the cultural climate had become so polluted as to threaten readers with intellectual asphyxiation. Behind all the hazy generalizations about the eighteenth century, however, one fact stands out with clarity: the reading public preferred small books to large ones, and not only those members of the public who were too poor to have purchased large books in the first place. When Neorberg reported on the demand for Encyclopédies, he noted that the octavo was penetrating the world of the German courts—in other words, an elevated social milieu— and that its success owed as much to its convenient format as it did to its price. Roques was unable to gather any subscriptions for the STN’s quarto Encyclopédie, despite the fact that he distributed prospectuses to the “highest ranking notables of the city,” who could presumably have afforded the quarto if they had

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wished to purchase it. Far from being simply a function of popularization, therefore, the preference for small formats cut across class lines. It also cut across literary genres. According to Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a keen observer of the contemporary scene in Paris, “the mania for small formats” had produced not a change in reading matter so much as a change in the manner of reading: “Small formats are the only ones in demand, and all of our pretty poets have been reprinted accordingly. These small books have the advantage that one can tuck them away in one’s pocket. They can therefore provide diversion during a promenade and also ward off the boredom of travel. But one has to carry along a magnifying glass because the type is so small that it demands good eyes.” Did the manner of reading the Bible change too when folio editions gave way to octavos? Did reverence for the Word of God decline as the Bible shrank in size and its external appearance became less imposing? The evidence will not permit any definitive answers to such questions, least of all evidence about Parisian promeneurs, who belonged to a different social world from that of the plowmen, brewers, and carders in the Huguenot refugee colonies of Hesse. Perhaps it is stretching the evidence to draw any parallels between the uses of the Bible in Hesse and the broader currents of eighteenth-century literary culture. French Bibles, after all, were aimed at a highly specific and narrowly circumscribed public—so highly specific and narrowly circumscribed that most professional booksellers in Germany wanted nothing to do with them, and so it fell to pastors to do the job of selling them. But once they stepped into that job, pastors discovered that the demand for Bibles was subject to the same pressures that affected the literary market as a whole. For all of its peculiarities, therefore, the Bible trade did not, in fact, exist in a separate and isolated world, even in the remote rural corners of Hesse. After having been bedfellows at birth, the STN’s folio Bible and its quarto Encyclopédie went out into the world at the same time and became twin victims of the same tendency in the German literary market: the growing preference for small books over large ones.

chapter 6

Against the Current Translating the Aufklärung

Wir müssen also die Herren Franzosen sehr bitten, wann sie unsere Schriften übersestzen wollen, sie nicht bloss darum für schön zu halten, weil sie sie à la française gekleidet haben; sie würden alsdann nur sich selbst in uns bewundern. (If the French wish to translate our works, we must ask them not to regard those works as beautiful simply because they have dressed them up à la française. In that case, they would merely be admiring themselves in us.) —Friedrich Nicolai, Briefe über den jetzigen Zustand der schönen Wissenschaften (1755)

At this point, after having followed French books on so many different journeys across Germany—into the Hessian hinterland in the company of a Huguenot pastor, past the vigilant inspectors of the Bohemian censorship commission to Gerle’s bookshop in Prague, from Cassel to the courtiers at the baths of Hofgeismar, down the toll-clogged Rhine to just outside the city walls of Cologne, from Fauche’s entrepôt in Hanau to the narrow alleyways of the Frankfurt ghetto, from Fontaine’s shop in Mannheim to the Bavarian court in Munich, and from Bern and Basel to the bookstalls of the Leipzig fair: at this point—the reader of this book may well be wondering whether any literature moved back in the opposite direction, from Germany to France. The short answer to that question is not much. Very few of the French in the eighteenth century possessed a reading knowledge of German. For

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everyone else, the only access to German literature was through translations, and that access was extremely limited for the simple reason that so few translations from German were published, probably not more than ten per year as compared to the hundreds of German translations of French books turned out annually by the Übersetzungsmanufakturen (translating factories) in Leipzig. It is hard to think of any other large neighboring countries in the eighteenth century whose cultural relations were more lopsided than those of France and Germany. Lopsided, and yet not quite so lopsided as had been the case in the first half of the eighteenth century. As late as 1740, Eléazar Mauvillon had declared defiantly in his Lettres françaises et germaniques that the German Parnassus could boast not a single poet who had produced a work of his own imagination worthy of respect. Two decades later, French attitudes toward Germany began to shift, however slightly, when Michael Huber, an expatriate Bavarian living in Paris, published a series of translations of German works: three works by the Swiss German author Salomon Gessner—La Mort d’Abel (1759), Idylles et poèmes champêtres (1762), Daphnis et le premier navigateur (1764)— and an anthology, Choix de poésies allemandes (1766). Huber’s translations came out at the same time that the works of Rousseau were spreading the cult of Switzerland among the educated classes; and that cult seems to have created the opening in the wall of French prejudice through which Huber was able to get German literature into France. As selected and translated by Huber, “German” literature penetrated the French literary market dressed in Swiss pastoral garb. Following the publication of Huber’s translations, both the Journal étranger and the Année littéraire sang the praises of German literature, as did such influential philosophes as Diderot and Turgot, who were friends and supporters of Huber, and the popular poet and novelist Claude-Joseph Dorat, whose Idée de la poésie allemande (1768) contributed to the Swiss-tinged picture of Germany as a land of natural and uncorrupted virtues. In 1762, in his influential Correspondance littéraire, the Baron von Grimm (admittedly, a native German but one who kept his finger on the pulse of Parisian literary life) went so far as to predict a “revolution” in literary fashion: “German poetry and literature will become à la mode in Paris just as English literature has been for several years. . . . If one had spoken twelve years ago of a German poet, one would have appeared ridiculous. The times have certainly changed.” If Grimm’s comments are any indication, then the French hostility to German literature had already begun to soften even before the explosive international success of Goethe’s Werther in the mid-1770s and more than four

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decades before Mme. de Staël “discovered” the romantic paradise of “poets and thinkers.” By the autumn of 1769, when the STN set up shop, Frenchlanguage publishers had good reason to think they might be able to turn a profit by translating German works into French. The only problem was that very few French-language publishers had inhouse translators who could read German. The STN did. Jean-Elie Bertrand, one of the founders of the STN, read German without difficulty, and he was also a highly educated homme de lettres, an ordained Protestant pastor and professor of literature at the collège in Neuchâtel who could turn out elegant French prose. Thanks to Bertrand, the STN seemed ideally equipped to occupy the small German niche in the French literary market, far better equipped, in any case, than the vast majority of its competitors, who would have been obligated to hire outside translators if they wished to publish translations. And so, in order to distinguish itself from its competitors, the STN decided to go where its competitors would be unlikely to follow. In 1773, it launched a translation project, which it announced with great fanfare in numerous letters, like the following one that it sent to a bookseller in Rennes: “We believe that among the objects that might be of interest for your trade, German literature deserves some attention. It is recognized that the writers of that nation are distinguishing themselves today by the large number of works of taste and entertainment [ouvrages de goût et d’amusement] coming from their pens, and as we are equally familiar with both languages, we shall devote ourselves from now on to making known in our language all the best [works] that appear in that of our neighbors.” It was certainly an ambitious project. At the dawn of the Goethezeit, when nearly all the literary traffic between France and Germany was moving eastward, from France to Germany, the STN was proposing to play the part of a cultural intermediary and to transmit to French readers what it judged to be the best of contemporary German literature. It was one thing, however, to announce that project, quite another to implement it. How successful, in the end, did the STN’s translation project turn out to be? And what sort of obstacles stood in the way of its success?

* * * For most publishers in the late eighteenth century, the chief obstacle to translating German literature was economic: the tight labor market for translators. Whereas nearly every educated native German speaker read French, and

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so could translate from French into German, the opposite was not true of educated native French speakers. There were only a few scattered milieux in which publishers could hope to find native French speakers with the ability to translate from German: in the linguistic and cultural border areas of western Switzerland and Alsace, among the reformed Protestant pastors who ministered to the Huguenot refugee communities in Germany, and at the Prussian Academy in Berlin, which Frederick the Great had converted into a clubhouse for expatriate French philosophes and which included some descendants of Huguenot refugees. The few highly qualified French translators were in a sellers’ market, and so they demanded princely wages for their labor, from 12 to 18 livres per sheet of the original German, higher wages than publishers could afford to pay unless they raised the price of the final product— a step that most of them were loath to take since it would have made the translations more expensive than other editions of French books. Rather than raise their prices, Parisian publishers farmed out translating work to hacks. According to the abbé Rozier, one of the STN’s literary correspondents in the French capital during the early 1770s, “Our German and English translators are real bunglers who turn out copy by the yard.” And the resulting translations were deplorable: “If [Parisian booksellers] did not strangle the poor devils, their work would be better, or persons with ability would do the job with pleasure, but the booksellers pay discount wages—the work shows the effects,” Rozier told the STN. French bunglers, however, were at least French, and so were translating into their own language, unlike many of the translators in Germany. “Often German booksellers translate German works by employing translators on the cheap who do not know our language,” the STN observed to a correspondent in Paris. One such bookseller was Friedrich Varrentrap in Frankfurt, the same bookseller who had offered to serve as the STN’s commissioner in Germany. He published a French translation of Der goldene Spiegel (The Golden Mirror) by Christoph Martin Wieland; and the translation was a disaster— or so it appeared to the STN, which inspected a copy of the work and described it summarily as “German that is being passed off as French.” Would the French reading public ever stand for such inelegant translations? Not according to the STN, which was therefore quite pleased that its cost-conscious competitors were sacrificing the quality of their translations. “We are not the least bit disturbed that booksellers have acquired the habit of paying their translators so poorly. . . . We flatter ourselves that the work we are doing in

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that genre will win all the more favor,” the STN boasted to Rozier. With Bertrand doing the work of translating, the STN seemed perfectly placed to publish elegant translations at no additional cost, and so avoid the chief obstacle to the translating of German literature. The only problem was that Bertrand was a busy man, too busy to devote himself full-time to the job of translating. To complete his translation of the final two volumes of Friedrich Nicolai’s novel Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker (The Life and Opinions of Master Sebaldus Nothanker) in 1777, he removed himself to the countryside outside of Neuchâtel, where he was able to work undistracted by his other obligations. The STN, however, could not afford to do without Bertrand for long stretches of time on a regular basis. If it wished to publish more than just the occasional translation every couple of years, it could not rely on Bertrand exclusively: it would have to obtain the manuscripts from outside translators. And, if it did that, it would find itself under the same economic pressures as beset the other publishers whose cost-cutting measures it disparaged. Once word got out that the STN was planning to publish translations, would-be translators and their patrons besieged the STN with offers. Jean Turkheim, the member of a philanthropic society in Strasbourg, wrote to the STN on behalf of a retired army officer whom he introduced as a protégé of d’Alembert and whom he described as a “translator of several good works.” By purchasing the officer’s translations, Turkheim told the STN, it would be “procuring bread for an honest and rather unhappy family.” Jean-Pierre Bérenger, a Genevan historian living in exile in Lausanne, tried to intercede with the STN on behalf of someone named Estermann, “a decent and honest man little favored by fortune,” who had translated Lavater’s Geheimes Tagebuch, von einem Beobachter seiner selbst (Secret Diary, by an Observer of Himself). And Charles de Hirschberg, a language instructor from the university in Strasbourg, wrote to the STN on his own behalf, while taking care to cite the names of his patrons: “Obligated today to seek resources within myself, and your address, Messieurs, having been given to me by Monsieur Professor Koch, student of the late Monsieur Schoepflin, to whom I was recommended, I take the liberty of offering to you my ser vices for the translation of English, German, or Italian works.” As the number of offers multiplied, a pattern began to emerge: the would-be translators were an impecunious lot of struggling authors (“unhappy,” “little favored by fortune,” “obligated to seek resources within myself”), who were trying to feed themselves and their families

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by hiring themselves out to publishers. The STN, however, was not in the business of providing poor relief to struggling authors, a point that Bérenger noted with some bitterness in a subsequent letter to the STN: “I would have wished that he [i.e., Estermann] might have received some small recompense for his work without the sociétés [i.e., the STN and the sociétés typographiques of Bern and Lausanne] ceasing to perform their métier, which is that of making money,” Bérenger wrote. The recompense that Estermann had in mind, however, was 2 écus neufs (12 livres) per sheet of the original German, not so “small” as Bérenger implied and far more than the STN could afford to pay without abandoning its usual wholesale price of one sou per sheet. In the end, the STN never did pursue the offers of either Estermann or Hirschberg or the unnamed retired army officer. Nor did it pursue the overtures made to it by a man named Heinrich Wuest, a native of Zurich living in Lausanne, who seems to have been the most unlucky of all the would-be translators who hurled themselves at the STN— or, in any case, the most desperate, since he dogged the STN’s heels for more than seven years, undeterred by repeated snubs and a near total lack of encouragement. Wuest sent the STN more than twenty letters, most of which carried the recommendation of one or more German works that he claimed to have translated either in part or in whole—everything from treatises on metaphysics, ethics, theology, and natural science to novels, plays, travel literature, sermons, letters, and excerpts from German journals. He mentioned works by a wide range of prominent German and Swiss German authors— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Christoph Martin Wieland, Moses Mendelssohn, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Johann Joachim Spalding, Isaak Iselin, Johann Georg Jacobi, Johann Georg Sulzer, Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener, and August Friedrich Sack. And he let it be known that he was capable of translating anything else that the STN might be disposed to publish—not elegantly, to be sure (Wuest admitted with disarming candor that his prose lacked grace and that his translations would require stylistic revisions), but at least swiftly and punctually. It was as if Wuest were a one-man Übersetzungsmanufaktur. Or maybe not a one-man Übersetzungsmanufaktur. On several occasions, Wuest claimed that he had some kind of collaborative arrangement with a magistrate in Lausanne named Gabriel Seigneux de Correvon: while Correvon revised and polished the style, Wuest simply turned out translated copy as fast as he could. It was a good arrangement, Wuest explained, since he and his partner had different strengths: Correvon’s was elegant prose; his was speed. 

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And if Wuest is to be believed, he translated at an almost inhuman speed. On one occasion, when the STN let slip that it might be interested in publishing a French translation of a three-volume German translation of the English novel Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett, Wuest set to work immediately and barely a fortnight later, he announced that he had completed the job. Given the slightest encouragement, he was prepared to manufacture any translation of any length by any author in any space of time—but not at any price, which turned out to be the stumbling block to an agreement with the STN. In his early letters, Wuest avoided the subject of payment, no doubt because he knew it to be a delicate subject and because he hoped to snare a commission before addressing it. Eventually, however, the STN asked him what amount of payment he expected, and, when he replied that he would settle either for six Swiss francs per sheet of the original German or half the profits of the French translation, nothing more had to be said. The STN dropped its plan to publish a French edition of Humphry Clinker (which probably needed considerable revision anyway), and it gave no serious consideration to any of Wuest’s other proposals. All of his numerous translations were stillborn: an impressive range of embryonic projects that never saw the light of day. The financial demands of translators were a source of considerable frustration for the STN, especially in the late 1770s when the French government was tightening the screws against the import of pirated French editions from Switzerland. Suddenly, provincial booksellers in France began retracting their orders for the STN’s pirated editions, and the value of translations rose, not because the demand for them had risen, but simply because translations did not violate the privilèges of French publishers: “The Chambre Syndicale [the guild hall responsible for inspecting book shipments] does not oppose the entry of translations of German works,” the STN explained to a worried bookseller in Rouen. If there was any time when the STN was really desperate to increase its production of translations, it was in the late 1770s. In February 1779, however, just when the STN needed him most, Bertrand died, still a relatively young man at the age of forty-two. With his death, the STN became completely dependent on outside translators whose uncompromising financial demands made it impossible to increase the production of translations. “We ask nothing more,” it told Virchaux in 1780, “than to be able to undertake the translation of so many German works, but we had the mis-

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fortune to lose one of our associates who succeeded better than anyone else in this genre, and it will be difficult for us to replace him.” Bertrand’s death was a terrible blow to the STN’s translation project (and also to other aspects of the STN’s business, but that is a topic in its own right). At the very moment when the STN was most eager to publish translations, it found itself compelled to renounce one project after another: the translation of a work entitled Begriff der Reisen (The Concept of Travels), which it declared an interest in translating but only “if we can find at a modest price a translator who is able to do the job correctly”; Joachim Campe’s pedagogical work, Robinson der Jüngere, zur angenehmen und nützlichen Unterhaltung für Kinder (Robinson [Crusoe] the Younger, For the Agreeable and Useful Entertainment of Children), which it never seriously pursued because, as it remarked to Virchaux, “we have no good translators and they are exorbitantly expensive”; and, finally, Siegwart, eine Klostergeschichte (Siegwart, a Convent Story), a tearful sentimental novel by Johann Martin Miller that it had planned to translate in association with the Société Typographique de Berne. The failure of the Siegwart translation was particularly disappointing for the STN since the translator, a man named Delavaux, had already completed the translation, a sample of which the STN examined and considered to be “very well done.” Before giving up on that project, the STN appealed to Delavaux to moderate his demands, urging him to accept “a certain number of copies of the translation” in lieu of money. The appeal fell on deaf ears. When Delavaux continued to insist on 12 livres per sheet of the original German, roughly twice as much as the STN was prepared to pay, it concluded that Siegwart, too, would have to be consigned to the dustbin of unrealized translations: “The translator attaches a price to his translation that would prevent us from selling it at one sou per sheet,” the STN explained in a letter to Virchaux. Of course not all translators insisted that they be paid for their translations. Those who did not, however, were likely to have undertaken the translations on their own initiative for the sake of some cause, and usually it was the wrong kind of cause—wrong, that is, from the standpoint of the French literary market. A French language instructor from Dresden named Durichsel, for example, offered the STN his translation of a short work by a Lutheran theologian that attacked Rousseau’s “Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard.” Durichsel explained that his motive for doing the translation had been ideological: “to defend Revelation, so much depreciated in our day by our so-called esprits forts.” And even he admitted that the work of the Lutheran theologian lacked

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“the energy and the elegance of works by the author whom it refutes,” that his translation was somewhat “verbose,” and that readers of it would note the absence of “a French air,” which he could have given to it if he had not stuck so closely “to the letter [of the original].” Those were damning admissions. So damning that it seems doubtful whether the STN would ever have printed Durichsel’s translation unless he had commissioned it to do so for his own account. A plodding, wordy, clumsily written, German-sounding treatise by an orthodox Lutheran theologian was not the sort of thing to please French readers. So what was the answer? In Bertrand’s absence, the STN needed to find a translator who combined elements of Wuest, Delavaux, and Durichsel simultaneously— a translator, in other words, who was flexible about what he translated and who could execute the job in a timely fashion, whose translations were elegantly done, and who, at the same time, did not demand any money for them. The problem was that no such hybrid being existed. He was more like some figure out of publishing mythology, a literary centaur with the body of a hack, the head of a philosophe, and the soul of a dedicated clergyman. It took the STN several years to accept that it was chasing after a phantom. Little by little, however, the futility of its quest became inescapable. “We must pray to benevolent providence to bring forth some good translators from German to French,” it remarked to Virchaux in 1780. Seven years and many failed translations later, it declared categorically, “We are never in a position to translate anything at all.” In the end, the STN managed to publish a total of only seven translations: two that Bertrand had executed— a short polemical tract against monasticism, Les Réflexions d’un Suisse sur cette question: Serait-il avantageux aux cantons catholiques d’abolir les ordres réguliers, ou tout au moins de les diminuer (1769) by a Swiss author named Heinrich Heidegger, and the novel La Vie et les opinions de maître Sebaltus Nothanker (1774, 1777) by Nicolai; one that Bertrand had revised and corrected—the novel Le Miroir d’or (1774) by Wieland, which Varrentrap had originally published in Frankfurt; three pirated translations, all of which Huber had originally executed in the 1760s— a “prose poem” entitled Wilhelmine (1774) by a Saxon aristocrat named Moritz August von Thümmel, a collection of Gessner’s Oeuvres (1776), and La Mort d’Abel (1785) also by Gessner; and, finally, a translation that a translator named Henri Rieu had executed for the STN— a travel narrative, Voyage de Vienne à Belgrade (1780) by a German merchant named Ernst Kleemann. Of those

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seven translations, Voyage de Vienne à Belgrade was the only original translation that a translator other than Bertrand had executed. And somehow (it is not clear through what channels) the STN seems to have obtained the manuscript of that translation without paying any money for it. The work by Kleemann, therefore, was the exception that proved the rule. As a rule, the STN did not consider it economically feasible to publish original translations that an outside translator had executed. Admittedly, seven translations is not a large number, especially when judged in light of the STN’s initial promise, which was to acquaint the French public with the best of contemporary German literature. But the full significance of the STN’s activities as a translator cannot be assessed in quantitative terms alone. Even the STN’s many failed translation projects generated a large body of documentary evidence about the literary traffic from Germany to France: about how a French-language publishing firm of the late eighteenth century located German works suitable for translation, how it approached the task of translating them, and how it planned to market them. And that evidence can help illuminate the process of transmission in the case of translations that did, in fact, materialize: notably, the STN’s edition of Nicolai’s Sebaldus Nothanker, which was one of the best-selling German novels of the entire eighteenth century. Today, hardly anyone outside of a narrow circle of eighteenth-century German specialists has heard of Nicolai’s novel; in the early 1770s, hardly anyone in the German reading public could have failed to know about it. Not only was it reprinted and pirated on numerous occasions; it also spawned counterfeit spin-offs, “false Nothankers” that unscrupulous publishers tried to pass off as sequels but that Nicolai had not, in fact, written. The German public simply could not get enough of the “life and opinions” of Nicolai’s fictional character. The French public, however, was just as ignorant of Sebaldus Nothanker and its author in the early 1770s as are most scholars in the early twenty-first century. Had the STN published no other translation than that of Nicolai’s novel, it would still have played a significant role in transmitting German literature to a French-reading public. Later in this chapter, we will focus our attention exclusively on the STN’s edition of Sebaldus Nothanker, following the work through each stage in the process of its transmission, from Nicolai’s original German to Bertrand’s French translation to the printing and marketing of the translation, and, finally, its diffusion among readers all across Europe. Before we do that, however, we need to reconstruct how the STN ever got to Sebaldus Nothanker in the first place. The STN’s directors, after all, were not Germans. Where did they get their in-

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formation about German books? And how did they decide which ones were worthy of being translated into French?

* * * In selecting German works for translation, the STN was guided by one principle above all: “to choose works that . . . seem capable of pleasing the French.” Indeed, as a commercial publishing firm, it could scarcely have adopted any other principle. Its primary goal was to make money from translating, not to serve as a cultural ambassador of German letters; most of the potential customers for its translations were located in France; therefore, it tried to select German works that would please the French. The logic seemed unassailable. In practice, however, selecting German works was a rather more complicated business. As highly educated native French speakers, the directors of the STN had an intimate knowledge of the French literary scene, but they knew precious little about Germany. Had they been content merely to pirate the translations of other publishers, then their lack of knowledge about German literature would have been no great handicap. They could simply have observed which translations were selling well and then pirated them. And they did, as already noted, publish pirated editions of three translations, all of them done originally by Huber in the 1760s. The problem was that the STN also wished to publish original editions of its own translations. To do that, it had to acquire up-to-date information about contemporary German literature— a difficult challenge even for German booksellers given the rapid growth of German literary production, and all the more difficult for a foreign firm like the STN. Before they could hope to please the French, Ostervald and Bertrand had to take a crash course in German literature. The directors of the STN began their education in German literature if not from scratch then at some point very close to it, as we can see from a letter that Ostervald wrote in January 1774 to the abbé Fouchet, a royal censor in Paris whose opinion Ostervald was seeking about the likely reception of German literature in the French capital: “I have observed that for some time now German literature has been giving rise to a large number of publications and even several works of taste [ouvrages de goût]. . . . I would be grateful if you could tell us whether works of that genre are capable of being appreciated [goûtés] in Paris,” Ostervald wrote. Quite apart from the oddly circular nature of the question (if German literature really was giving rise to “ouvrages de goût,” then, presumably, those works were capable of being

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“goûtés”), the most striking thing about Ostervald’s letter was its sheer fuzziness. One would have expected Ostervald to provide something more than vague generalities if he wished Fouché to render an informed verdict on the likely reception of German literature in Paris. At that time, however, he had little more than vague generalities to provide. In the early 1770s, whenever the STN talked up its translating project in letters to its French correspondents, it would praise the merits of German literature, but it would never say anything very precise, only that German literature was becoming “interesting” or that it was yielding more and more “works of taste and entertainment” (ouvrages de goût et d’amusement). To say that German literature was becoming interesting was to say very little; to link what was interesting about it with goût and amusement was frankly bizarre. If anything was becoming “interesting” in the German literary scene of the 1770s, it was the Sturm und Drang, a rebellious movement of young authors that was mounting a sustained attack on the artifices of goût and amusement. The STN’s characterization of German literature fitted the literary scene of the previous decade far better than it did that of the 1770s. Above all, however, it fitted the works that Huber had translated. And it was almost certainly Huber’s translations that the STN had in mind when it referred to “ouvrages de goût et d’amusement.” Such information about German literature as the STN possessed seems to have come from already published French translations. And yet the STN was proposing to translate German works that had never before been translated. It was trapped in a narrow informational circle. To break out of that circle, the STN arranged to consult the Leipzig book fair cata logue. As the most important source of information about new publications in Germany, the cata logue was an indispensable tool for any bookseller conducting trade in Germany. It was also a rather unwieldy tool. As the volume of literary production grew (and it was growing by leaps and bounds in the last third of the eighteenth century), so too did the dimensions of the cata logue. In 1770, 1,287 publications in German were entered in the catalogue, organized alphabetically by title or author across more than seventy pages; ten years later, that figure had risen to 2,018. Such a mass of undigested information must have seemed overwhelming to the STN— even on the one occasion, in July 1774, when an obliging correspondent in Winterthur took the trouble of sending the STN an excerpt from the cata logue, a threepage handwritten list of what he considered to be “the most interesting new publications from the last fair.”  Too much information was scarcely better than no information at all.

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What the STN needed was something akin to the modern “talent scout,” a person or persons who provided specific recommendations of hot new works. But who would perform that function for a publisher in the book trade of the eighteenth century? The answer, as it turned out, was German booksellers. The STN wrote to its correspondents in Germany, asking them to recommend German works for translation into French; and, for the most part, its correspondents seemed happy enough to oblige. Of course, there was no guarantee that booksellers would discharge the function of talent scout in a disinterested way. Most of them are likely to have had their own subjective biases. And for that reason, Nicolas de Béguelin, a member of the Prussian Academy in Berlin, urged the STN to consult German literary journals instead: “the literary gazettes of Göttingen [i.e., Göttinger gelehrte Anzeigen], our universal German library from here [i.e., Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek] . . . and two or three others of the best journals.” According to Béguelin, the reviews and announcements in those journals were a more reliable guide to the best German works than the recommendations of an individual correspondent, “who at most will excel in one genre and who will perhaps have his own favorite authors.” But the STN did not regard journals and the recommendations of individual correspondents as mutually exclusive options. It subscribed to German literary journals, and, at the same time, it received regular reports of literary news from German booksellers, the most important of whom by far was Johann Conrad Deinet in Frankfurt. In an earlier chapter, we encountered Deinet in the dual role of booksellerprinter and imperial official. He was also, it should be recalled, a former theology student and the publisher of the influential Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, the main journalistic organ of the Sturm und Drang. He thus combined all the qualities required of a good literary scout: a high level of education, close relations to leading authors in the German republic of letters, and a successful and wide-ranging business of his own. He was ideally equipped to play the part of instructor to neophyte students of German literature like Ostervald and Bertrand. For roughly five years, from the early to late 1770s, Deinet did more than anyone else to color the STN’s picture of the German literary landscape. For the most part, it was a picture painted in shades of gray: “As regards original publications, German literature is as sterile as French [literature]; the better part of our new publications are periodicals and translations,” Deinet reported. But there were also a few bright spots in that otherwise somber

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picture: Sophiens Reise von Memel nach Sachsen (Sophie’s Journey from Memel to Saxony) by Johann Hermes, which Deinet said he intended to pirate; Siegwart by Johann Martin Miller, “which enjoys a great vogue in Germany”; Goethe’s Werther, “a little book [Büchlein],” of which “six editions have been published in four months,” and which “has created quite a stir and continues to do so”; and, above all, Nicolai’s Sebaldus Nothanker. Deinet was so taken with Sebaldus Nothanker, which he described as “an outstanding book” (ein herrliches Buch), and with Nicolai himself, whom he described as “that learned bookseller” (ce savant libraire), that he recommended the work twice, after the publication of the first volume in 1773 and then again after the publication of the second two years later. He sent the STN an unsolicited copy of the first volume in the autumn of 1773 so that the STN could commence translating it immediately; and he even talked up one of the “false Nothankers,” a spurious collection of Nothanker’s sermons that Nicolai disowned but that Deinet claimed was enjoying considerable popularity anyway. The works by Hermes, Miller, Goethe, and Nicolai were all novels. At the same time, Deinet also recommended two works belonging to other genres: a polemical work of ecclesiastical history on the Catholic doctrine of excommunication, Pragmatische Geschichte der so berufenen Bulle in Coena Domini und ihren fürchterlichen Folgen für den Staat und die Kirche (Pragmatic History of the So-Called Bull in Coena Domini and Its Frightful Consquences for State and Church) by Johann Friedrich Lebret, and a work whose title is somewhat difficult to read in Deinet’s letter but which appears to have been Reisen durch Deutschland, Böhmen, Ungarn, die Schweiz, Italien und Lothringen (Travels Through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Lorraine), a travel book by Johann Georg Keyssler. Both of those works “should make a fortune” in translation, Deinet assured the STN. The somewhat contradictory nature of Deinet’s comments—his dim view of German literature as a whole combined with his enthusiastic praise of individual works—made sense when set against the background of a rapidly growing book market. At the dawn of the Goethezeit, so many new publications were pouring onto the market every year that they all but swamped the small number of original and memorable works like Goethe’s Werther that Deinet recommended to the STN. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. The STN, however, only cared about what was best— or, in any case, marketable—because all it needed was a handful of recommendations of good and interesting works. As long as Deinet provided those recom-

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mendations, it could overlook the gloomy picture that he presented of German literature as a whole. The STN had good reason, then, to be content with its teacher in Frankfurt, the more so as he tailored his instruction to the needs of his pupil. At the beginning of its correspondence with Deinet, the STN indicated to him which genres of literature would be most likely to find favor with the French public: “the philosophic genre [genre philosophique], entertaining travel literature, novels, and even some pamphlets about the Jesuits.” And most of the works that Deinet recommended fell into one or another of those genres. Most of the works, though not all. It turned out, as we saw earlier, that Deinet was a fervent and devoted admirer of Johann Caspar Lavater, the maverick, charismatic, miracle-seeking pastor from Zurich. In his letters to the STN, he went to great lengths to promote Lavater’s works—first, a collection of Lavater’s sermons about the prophet Jonas; then his work on physiognomy; and, finally, a collection of sermons about the affair of the poisoned communion wine in Zurich— even though none of those works could by any stretch of the imagination be assimilated to the genres of literature that the STN had expressly requested. Béguelin’s warning, therefore, proved to be prescient: Deinet did, in fact, have a favorite author, and not just any author but one who had many bitter enemies, above all in the ranks of the Aufklärung. Deinet’s partiality toward Lavater was not so rigidly doctrinaire as to skew his other recommendations: Friedrich Nicolai was a leading figure of the Berlin Aufklärung and one of Lavater’s most public and outspoken critics. But even so, Deinet’s repeated recommendations of works by Lavater exposed an underlying problem that bedeviled the selection of German works for translation. In recommending Lavater’s works to the STN, Deinet called attention to the strong demand that those works enjoyed in the German literary market, and about the strong demand for those works in Germany he was absolutely right: in Germany, Lavater’s works sold very well indeed. Whether translations of those same works would sell well in France was another matter. The STN had grave doubts whether Lavater was capable of appealing to a French audience, doubts that it concealed from Deinet (probably because it did not wish to offend him) but that it expressed quite pointedly in its correspondence with other booksellers. When Jean-Pierre Bérenger of the Société Typographique de Lausanne proposed that the STN publish a French translation of Lavater’s Geheimes Tagebuch, von einem Beobachter seiner selbst,

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the STN responded that “the name of the author did not appear . . . to be a good augur for sales.” The problem, put simply, was that the Germans and the French liked different kinds of books. A German bookseller, even one as knowledgeable as Deinet, was ill suited therefore to judge whether a German work would be a commercial success in translation— and if he did venture such a judgment, he was apt to be mistaken, as Deinet seems to have been not just in the case of Lavater but in other cases, too. On one occasion, for example, Deinet offered the STN the translation of four comedies by the Austrian playwright the Baron von Gebler, which the translator was prepared to relinquish in exchange for just twenty-five printed copies of each of the plays. It was a good deal, Deinet explained: he would take five hundred copies for his own account, and the remainder of the pressrun would sell well “because the French delight in plays translated from German, if only to flatter their queen.” How Deinet came by his theory about the influence of Marie-Antoinette on the reception of German plays in France he did not say. The STN, however, was not convinced and, after inspecting the translation Deinet had sent to it, told him politely though unambiguously that the plays would stand little chance with the French public: “We must admit that the plays are not lacking in a sort of interest. They do not, however, contain anything either new or spicy. The genre itself is declining among the French.” Several years later, a new German play was performed in Paris, and David-Alphonse de Sandoz-Rollin, a Prussian diplomat in the French capital, reported to the STN on how the play had been received. His comments gave no support at all to Deinet’s theory about the French predilection for German plays: “The translation of a German play entitled Walton, ou la discipline militaire du Nord was performed recently at the Théâtre Français,” Sandoz informed the STN. “It was not appreciated [goûté]; it is in vain that one seeks to render German laughter into French laughter, German tears into French tears. Each language has its own spirit, joy, and sadness.” Because Deinet knew so little of what the French wanted to read (and what he imagined he knew was apt to be erroneous), his role in the process of selection was confined to identifying those German works that were selling well in Germany. That role he performed ably, and it seems likely that he was the STN’s original source of information about Sebaldus Nothanker. It seems highly doubtful, however, whether the STN would have translated that work on the strength of Deinet’s recommendation alone. Once Deinet had identi-

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fied a successful German work, it fell to the STN to decide whether that success could be replicated in France and, if so, how. What, then, were the kinds of German works that the STN judged capable of appealing to a French public? As already noted, the STN published two original translations, in addition to the one of Sebaldus Nothanker: Le Voyage de Vienne à Belgrade by Kleemann and Les Réflexions d’un Suisse sur cette question: Serait-il avantageux aux cantons catholiques d’abolir les ordres réguliers, ou tout au moins de les diminuer by Heidegger. It also published one partly original translation: Le Miroir d’or by Wieland, which Varrentrap in Frankfurt had been the first to publish but which the STN reprinted in a slightly corrected and amended form. Did the choice of those four works disclose any unifying principles of selection? Not at first sight. On closer inspection, however, the four works do reveal at least one common feature: all of them fell into one or another of the literary categories that the STN mentioned to Deinet—the two works by Nicolai and Wieland, which were novels; the work by Kleemann, which was a travel narrative; and the anti-monastic tract by Heidegger, which could be assimilated to what the STN called “le genre philosophique.” The STN mentioned those categories to Deinet so that he would know what to look for and also what not to look for— sermons, for example, or thick tomes of theological scholarship, which may have sold well in Germany but which would have failed utterly in France. At least in terms of genre, the STN’s translations resembled French works that sold well in France. With the exception of Sebaldus Nothanker, moreover, the STN’s translations also shared a second feature: they were bound only loosely, if at all, to specifically German or Swiss German referents. Les Réflexions d’un Suisse argued for the abolition of monasteries in the Catholic cantons of German Switzerland, but it rested that argument on universal principles—in part, on principles of utility (monks were useless and made no contributions to public welfare), and in part, on principles of natural law (confinement and vows of chastity violated man’s natural liberty)— so that the argument applied not just to German Switzerland but indeed to monasticism in general. In Le Voyage de Vienne à Belgrade, the author recounted the journey he had made from Vienna through the Balkans to the Black Sea coast, regaling readers with observations on the customs and mores of the various peoples—Hungarians, Bulgars, Turks—that he had encountered along the way. And, in terms of its ostensible subject matter, Wieland’s Miroir d’or had no connection to Germany

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at all. Its narrative frame, reminiscent of the Arabian Nights, consists of a series of story-telling evenings in which a philosopher and a princess take turns recounting the story of the kings of Schechian to a Persian emperor. None of those three translations required of their readers that they be familiar with, or even interested in, Germany. To be sure, Wieland’s novel was not really about the “Orient” any more than was Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes. Like Montesquieu’s work, Wieland’s used its oriental setting as a screen, projecting onto it a critique of European history and civilization. In the first half of the work, the narrators recount how the kingdom of Schechian founders on the rock of religious fanaticism, court and ministerial intrigues, fiscal wastefulness, and royal incompetence before sinking into the anarchy of civil war; in the second half, which reads like a brief for enlightened despotism, they recount the reverse process, describing how a wise and conscientious ruler mends the battered ship of state and steers it toward prosperity and social peace. The story does, in fact, contain thinly veiled references to German history and politics, to the carnage of the Thirty Years’ War, the enervating effects of Kleinstaaterei on trade, and above all, in the second half, the promise of enlightened reform embodied by Joesph II. Even French readers who knew little about Germany, however, would probably have been able to decipher those references. And, in any case, they would have been able to decipher the equally numerous references to French history and politics, to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the luxury and wastefulness of Versailles, the ruinous influence of royal mistresses like Maintenon and Pompadour, and the intrigues of the Jesuits at court. Wieland’s novel was a political roman à clef, easily unlocked and therefore readily accessible to French readers—more accessible than most German works and more accessible too than other works by Wieland himself. Several years after the publication of Le Miroir d’or, the STN and the Société Typographique de Berne gave brief consideration to translating Die Abderiten, a satirical novel by Wieland about small-town life in his native Biberach, which, according to the STN’s colleagues in Bern, had made “a great sensation” in Germany; but they decided against publishing that translation, “in light of the satirical features that concern only a few towns in Germany.” Le Miroir d’or had the distinct virtue that, unlike Die Abderiten, it did not overburden French readers with minute details of German life. And from the standpoint of French readers, Le Miroir d’or had one other virtue: the recognizably French writing style of its author. Nothing could have been more like the style of a French philosophe than the sparkling wit and biting

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irony that Wieland displayed—notably, in his treatment of religious intolerance, which he ridiculed by means of a story worthy of Voltaire: two sects in the kingdom of Schechian go to war because they cannot agree whether the monkey they both worship as divine is blue or yellow. Wieland had the reputation of being the German Voltaire, and Le Miroir d’or was well suited to confirm that reputation. In both style and content, it read like a conte philosophique. It is no wonder, then, that the STN elected to publish a translation of Wieland’s novel. Le Miroir d’or had just the right combination of ingredients to tickle a French palate: Enlightenment principles leavened with Voltairean esprit and spiced with a dash of exotic orientalism. The recipe seemed perfect— at least for those French readers who preferred a familiar to an unfamiliar genre of literature and who were not really interested in foreign literature at all. Nicolai’s Sebaldus Nothanker, however, had none of the same ingredients as Le Miroir d’or. That the STN elected to publish a novel like Nicolai’s may seem, at first sight, just a little surprising. Sebaldus Nothanker is a somewhat meandering novel with numerous subplots and multiple digressions on subjects ranging from the Leipzig book fairs to the devotional practices of German pietism, all loosely bound together by the themes announced in its title: the “life and opinions” (Leben und Meinungen) of its eponymous hero. A guileless, humane, and goodnatured Lutheran minister from a rural parish in Thuringia, Sebaldus would seem to have everything necessary for a happy life: a fi xed position in society, a charming wife, two daughters, and a son. The problem is that he also has a great many opinions, all of them sincerely held and none of them the least bit orthodox: he rejects the Lutheran doctrine of eternal damnation because he deems it presumptuous to set limits to the goodness of God; he considers it far more important to adapt his sermons to the moral needs of his rural congregation than to browbeat his parishioners over fine points of dogma; he believes that Christians of all denominations should love one another equally; he defends the virtue of Socrates, a pre- Christian pagan; and, strangest of all, he believes that the Book of Revelation is really a collection of prophecies about contemporary France—Babylon a reference to Paris, the number of the Beast a reference to the date for the expulsion of the Jesuits, and “the scroll . . . that will turn your stomach sour, though in your mouth it will taste sweet as honey” a reference to the “indecent, morally corrupting French duodecimo volumes.” In the encrusted, dogmatic Lutheran Church, a pastor with such heterodox views is bound to get into trouble. And so it happens. Sebaldus’s

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bigoted clerical superiors summon him to appear before the consistory and demand that he accept the doctrine of eternal damnation as set forth in the Symbolic Books of the Lutheran Church. When he refuses to do so, he is suspended from his ministry, and his entire family is turned out of the vicarage, setting in motion a series of calamitous events: his wife and one of his daughters die; his other daughter leaves home to find her own way in the world; and Sebaldus himself is condemned to a life of wandering. A vagabond buffeted by the winds of fate, he takes whatever employment he can find—as a proofreader with a bookseller in Leipzig, a musical scribe in Berlin, a preacher in Holstein, a tutor in Rotterdam, a translator in Amsterdam—and, along the way, he endures a great many hardships, from robbery at the hands of highwaymen, to shipwreck aboard a vessel bound for the Dutch East Indies, to imprisonment in a cellar by a naval press gang in Holland. It is enough to earn for him the epithet “poor Sebaldus.” And yet he endures his trials with Joblike fortitude, unshaken in his basic humanity and his tolerant view of religion. Whatever the personal cost to himself, he always remains faithful to his innermost convictions. So also, in her own way, does the “virtuous Marianne,” Sebaldus’s surviving daughter, whose story alternates with that of “poor Sebaldus.” To earn a living, Marianne is forced to take up a position as a French tutor to two young girls, the daughters of a snobbish bourgeois social climber appropriately named Frau von Hohenauf (“Madame Upward”) and her philistine husband, a country squire whose chief passions are hunting and drinking. Frau von Hohenauf hopes that her two daughters will one day be presented at court. She insists, therefore, that Marianne educate the girls with a view to realizing that goal, by speaking to them only in French and giving them only French books to read. Fortunately, Marianne does, in fact, know French, which she learned from her mother, who had been a chambermaid at a princely court before marrying Sebaldus. From her father, however, she has also imbibed strong middle-class values and a healthy aversion to the frivolity of French culture. So instead of giving instruction in the arts of coquetry and courtly manners, she tries to inspire in her pupils a sense of their moral and religious duties. Even worse, she gives them German books to read—an act of insubordination that inevitably brings her into bad odor with Frau von Hohenauf. When, on top of that, the nephew of Frau von Hohenauf, a dandyish, vain, and immature young man appropriately named Säugling (“Infant”), begins to court Marianne by composing for her a series of unbearably saccharine love poems, her fate is all but sealed. Rather than allow her nephew to contract a

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mésalliance, Frau von Hohenauf simply dismisses Marianne. Säugling, however, continues to hold a torch for her, and eventually, after many twists and turns of the plot, the two lovers are reunited, as are father and daughter, and the novel moves swiftly to a happy conclusion. Through the deus ex machina of a winning lottery ticket, Sebaldus becomes a wealthy man; Säugling’s family can no longer object to a marriage with Sebaldus’s daughter; and Sebaldus has the leisure to devote himself to his Francophobe interpretation of the Book of Revelation. All’s well that ends well. This sprawling novel had nothing at all to flatter the vanity of French readers and a good deal to offend it. But what made it seem especially unlikely as a candidate for translation was that it was so very German: in the setting of its action, the nature of its protagonists, and, above all, in its theological preoccupations and its attachment to Christianity. Theology mattered far more to the German Enlightenment (Aufklärung) than it did to the French Enlightenment, and Nicolai’s novel occupied the theological middle ground characteristic of the Aufklärung: between the irreligion of the philosophes on the one hand and the rigid dogmatism of Lutheran orthodoxy on the other. “Poor Sebaldus,” a virtuous Protestant minister whose conduct gives eloquent expression to the moral teachings of the Christian faith, was the perfect hero for an enlightened German public (notwithstanding Sebaldus’s bizarre infatuation with the Book of Revelation). It is no wonder, therefore, that German readers fell in love with him and that Nicolai’s novel became such a spectacular commercial success. Thanks to that success, it probably did more than any other German work to popularize the ideas of the Aufklärung in Germany. The translation of so quintessentially German a novel as Sebaldus Nothanker posed a general problem in an especially acute form. All candidates for translation, no matter what their genre, style, or subject matter, contained some element of foreignness, if only because they were written originally in a foreign language, and that foreignness had to be overcome before the translations could be marketed to the French reading public. The problem of how to overcome the foreignness of foreign literature inhered in the very act of translation. In the case of the other three translations, however, the STN mitigated that problem by selecting German works that were already in some way adapted to the horizons of French readers. In the case of Sebaldus Nothanker, the full weight of the problem was simply displaced onto the next stage in the process of transmission: onto Bertrand, who executed the translation, and onto the STN’s directors collectively, who devised the strategies for packaging and marketing Bertrand’s text.

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About Bertrand’s translation, and how the STN packaged and marketed it, more presently. First, however, some general observations about translation and how the STN conceived of it.

* * * There are, broadly speaking, two ways of approaching translation: by doing it or by discoursing about it. The STN, of course, was more interested in doing than in discoursing. Even the most theoretically unself-conscious translator, however, has to have at least some vague idea of what he is trying to accomplish. The practice of translation cannot be completely detached from the theory. And though it would be stretching the point to claim that the STN had a well-worked-out theory, it did have a fairly clear idea of the qualities that distinguished a good from a bad translation. It simply expressed that idea in its own way: not by composing a discourse on method, but rather by commenting on specific translation projects. From those comments, which lie scattered through the STN’s correspondence with booksellers, authors, and literary agents, it is possible to reconstruct what the STN considered the primary goal of translation to be and what methods it deemed suitable for achieving that goal. The primary goal of translation was the same one the STN pursued when selecting works for translation: simply put, to please the French. The French, however, were a notoriously prickly lot, easily offended by linguistic missteps and always on the lookout for violations of good taste and proper usage. To please the French, therefore, was a formidable challenge. In order not to give offense, a translation had to do more than just respect the rules of French grammar, orthography, and syntax; it had to do more than just employ and conjugate the imperfect subjunctive correctly, or observe the agreement in number and gender between nouns and adjectives, or insert the pleonastic ne after expressions of doubt, and so on. All of those things were necessary but not sufficient in themselves to ensure a favorable reception of a translation in France. The really decisive condition, in the view of the STN, was that the translation satisfy the French public in matters of style. References to the importance of style came up often in the STN’s comments about translation. When, for example, Deinet proposed the translation of the four comedies by the Baron von Gebler, the STN replied that it could not agree to publish them until it had examined the translation, “which alone can spoil sales in France”: “We do not doubt that they [the plays] are good in

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your language, but the French are of a singular delicacy [délicatesse singulière] in matters of style,” the STN wrote. Likewise, when the STN and the Société Typographique de Berne launched plans to publish a joint translation of Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Weltgeschichte (Textbook of General World History) by Johann Matthias Schröckh, the STN insisted that the printing be done in Neuchâtel rather than in Bern, since it considered itself better equipped than its German-speaking colleagues to perform “the necessary job . . . of giving to the translation the turn of phrase [tournure] that the French seek in relation to style.” Usually, as the foregoing examples indicate, the STN was confident of its ability to make accurate judgments in matters of style and to give its translations the requisite “tournure”: usually but not always. In the early 1770s, it contemplated publishing a translation of Geschichte der Bulle in Coena Domini (the same work on ecclesiastical history that Deinet would recommend to it several years later), and it got as far as translating the first several volumes when suddenly it grew worried and decided to seek the aid of one of its literary correspondents in Paris, a man named Lambergen. “The translation of the Bulle in Coena Domini is good and faithful, but it lacks the Parisian varnish [vernis à la parisienne] that you could give to it if we had the opportunity to send you the manuscript,” it told Lambergen. Even the STN, in other words, viewed the “delicacy” of the French public with some degree of trepidation. The directors of the STN, however, were educated native French speakers. If they were liable to doubt their stylistic judgment, then how much more did such doubts plague German-speaking booksellers who dared to publish French translations. Consider, for example, a Swiss German bookseller from Winterthur named Johann Heinrich Steiner who had translated a German work on entomology and was planning to publish it under the title Système des insectes. To assuage his concern about the style of his translation, he sent an excerpt of it to the STN: “We take the liberty to ask your opinion as regards the style and whether you believe that this translation can be read in France without repugnance,” Steiner wrote to the STN in a note that he sent to Neuchâtel along with the excerpt of the translation. “The author is content, as are we. But since you have filled us with fear by describing the excessive delicacy [délicatesse outrée] of the French, we hope that you will be so kind as to read this little morsel and tell us what you think of it.” Steiner’s translation, it should be noted, belonged to the genre of “natural science”— or so we would describe it today. In the eighteenth century, however, when a naturalist like Buffon or a mathematician like d’Alembert counted themselves as philosophes,

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modern distinctions between scientific and nonscientific, literary and nonliterary genres were meaningless. All translations, no matter the genre, had to satisfy the stylistic requirements of the French public, a harsh and unforgiving judge before whom publishers cowered as if before the magistrate of a sovereign court. If convicted of breaking the stylistic rules, the translations were doomed. Style, then, mattered enormously. But what exactly was it? To say, as the STN might have done, that it was a matter of the right “tournure” or the “vernis à la parisienne” may seem circular. In the culture of Old Regime France, however, style could hardly be defined otherwise than in a circular manner: those who formed the elite circle of Parisian high society—what the French of the eighteenth century called le monde— determined self-referentially what was the right “tournure” and how to apply the “vernis à la parisienne.” Style was their style, and it functioned therefore like a secret code: an ineffable je ne sais quoi that distinguished those who were inside from those who were outside. For an outsider like Steiner in Winterthur, the whole business was completely impenetrable, hence his panicky appeal to the STN. The associates of the STN, however, were not fully inside the circle either. They straddled its boundary: as highly literate French speakers, they were inside; as Swiss Protestants, outside. And so the STN turned to Paris when it sought assurances about its translations. In 1774, shortly before the publication of Le Miroir d’or, it wrote to the abbé Rozier, asking him his opinion of Wieland’s novel. Rozier’s reply, which must have been a little disappointing for the STN, is worth citing both for what it said and for what it did not say: “Le Miroir d’or: that is a title that will do damage to the work, because it is singular. A joke is capable of bringing down a work, because everything yields to ridicule and the name of the celebrated Wieland will not provide any protection.” What Rozier said— and said quite clearly—was that singularity was a defect, that it was better, in other words, to conform to stylistic norms than to deviate from them: because the title of Wieland’s novel was “singular,” it was self-evidently a problem. What Rozier did not say— and on this point his silence spoke very loudly indeed—was where exactly the problem lay. He simply assumed that the STN would know what was wrong. And the STN did know— or, at least, it thought it did: “We understand that Wieland’s work, however excellent it may be, might nevertheless be rejected in Paris because of the singularity of its title alone, but it is easy to give it another, less heteroclite, title,” the STN wrote in

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its reply to Rozier. In effect, the STN filled out the silence of Rozier’s letter by interpolating its own reading of what Rozier had meant: that the title of Wieland’s novel was “singular” because “heteroclite.” Since it did not, in the end, alter the title of Wieland’s novel, the STN must not have agreed with Rozier about the gravity of the problem. But neither did it ask him to explain himself. The exchange between the STN and its literary correspondent appears to have been a dialogue à demi-mot. But it may also have been a dialogue of the deaf. To say which of the two it was, we would need some way of determining whether the STN did, in fact, understand correctly what Rozier had meant; and there is no way of determining that. For anyone reared outside the charmed circle of eighteenth-century French culture (the present historian included), Rozier’s meaning is shrouded in mystery: in fact, it is difficult to see what all the fuss was about in the first place. Le Miroir d’or seems a perfectly fine title, neither “singular” nor “heteroclite.” The very difficulty of getting Rozier’s point, then, was precisely the point. One either grasped intuitively where the problem lay, or not; and, if not, one became the butt of humor, a victim of the all-powerful force that policed the culture of Old Regime France. In that culture, which was at once centralized and hierarchical, style and ridicule worked in tandem: stylistic errors called forth ridicule, and fear of ridicule enforced conformity to the dictates of style—in dress, deportment, speech, and, most important for our purposes, in literature. Ridicule could destroy any work of literature, as Rozier indicated, including, of course, works of French literature. But translations of German literature were all the more vulnerable to the destructive force of ridicule because style in the French sense of the word played only a minor role if any in the literary culture of Germany. Unlike French culture, German culture was decentralized. With no capital comparable to Paris, it also had no unified cultural elite with the power to define self-referentially what style was and to enforce adherence to that style by ridiculing infractions against it. German authors were dispersed all across Germany; they were drawn primarily from the middle classes; and, before the age of Weimar classicism, they had little access to the exclusive aristocratic society of the princely courts, most of which were outposts of L’Europe française. German literature did not have to take account of aristocratic sensibilities in matters of style because, for the most part, it would not have been hoff ähig anyway. So it was free to experiment in ways that would have been unthinkable in France.

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That freedom seemed a virtue to the generation of Stürmer und Dränger (as it did later to Mme. de Staël, who considered cultural decentralization to be a condition of artistic creativity). But it was a great impediment to the reception of German literature in France. Released from stylistic constraints, German literature would arrive in Paris like some provincial lad with long, flowing locks and loose-hanging trousers. Before it could gain entrance to le monde, it had to be fitted with the stylistic equivalent of a powdered wig and knee breeches, and the fit had to be just right or the effect would be as ridiculous as that of Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme. To preempt ridicule was the indispensable condition of a successful translation. The STN and its colleagues could not afford therefore to be shy about altering the German works that they proposed to translate. The Société Typographique de Berne, for example, took a nine-volume travel book about a scholarly expedition to Arabia written by the German cartographer Carsten Niebuhr and published an abridged French translation in two octavo volumes, observing, in a letter to the STN, that the “exorbitant” size of the original would have stood in the way of the work’s commercial success: “Since M. Niebuhr wrote in order to produce big [underlined in the manuscript] volumes, our abridged version is even more interesting.” And the STN came to a similar conclusion about Geschichte der Bulle in Coena Domini, which swelled from two volumes in the early 1770s to four several years later: “We believe that by completing the translation of this work and by shortening it a little on account of the prolixity common to Germans, we could render it interesting,” it wrote to an Italian bookseller in Bergamo. Both the STN and the Société Typographique de Berne believed, in other words, that they could, in some sense, improve German works by shortening them, and neither of them felt the least bit constrained by respect for the integrity of the original works. “The prolixity common to Germans” was just the sort of thing to elicit laughter from Parisian wits. Rather than burden Gallic esprit with Teutonic Gelehrsamkeit, it seemed preferable simply to jettison the scholarly ballast—and the STN was ready to pitch it overboard whenever it judged such a move to be necessary. About its planned translation of Siegwart, it declared summarily: “There are in the second part some passages that need to be removed and others that need to be abridged so that the work will please French readers.” But what of the German authors whose “prolixity” the STN set out to remedy? Did translations designed to please French readers please German authors too? For the STN, the answer to that question would have been: who

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cares? In the absence of international copyright agreements, publishers were free to translate any work they wished without either paying royalties to the author or consulting with him. The STN did, in fact, send letters to Wieland and to Nicolai, but not to solicit their opinions about the translations of their works. It sent them the letters after the translations had already left the press, simply as a courtesy. There was only one occasion when the STN corresponded with an author about a translation in progress, and that correspondence resulted from a misunderstanding. In 1770, the STN was under the mistaken impression that Johann Basedow, a prominent north German Aufklärer and pedagogue in Altona, wished to commission a translation of his textbook for children, Elementarbuch für die Jugend und für Ihre Lehrer und Freunde in gesitteten Ständen (Elementary Book for Young People and for Their Teachers and Friends in the Polite Orders [of society]), and that he would pay for the translation at a price of 12 livres per sheet, as well as purchase five hundred copies of the printed edition for his own account. It corresponded with Basedow until it became aware of its error; then it abandoned the translation, as well as its correspondence with the author. The consideration that it accorded Basedow was thus the exception that proved the rule: as a rule, the STN did not attach any importance whatsoever to whether its translations of German works pleased the authors of those works. The question, however, still stands: how did German authors feel about having their works “improved”? Nowadays, of course, most authors would be indignant: “Who do they think they are?” or “How dare they!” would be the reaction of most authors today on learning that a foreign publishing firm intended to improve their works by chopping them up and reassembling the pieces. But that was not necessarily how German authors reacted in the late eighteenth century—in any case, not Basedow, whose brief exchange of letters with the STN showed that he had a good deal of sympathy for the STN’s method of translation. Here, for example, is how Basedow described, in general terms, the relation of a French translation to an original work: “I know that sometimes the translation really improves the original but that sometimes it must also, through omissions, additions, and changes, both in things and, above all, in words, follow the new French taste [der neue französische Geschmack] insofar as the latter is irreproachable.” Basedow’s syntax was convoluted, to be sure (even more convoluted in the original German than in my English translation); and, about the infallibility of what he called the “new French taste,” he betrayed some doubts—notably, through his use of the conjunction “but”

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and the qualifying adverb “insofar.” Replying to Basedow in French, the STN straightened out the syntax and removed the qualifications: “There are without doubt many things [in the Elementarbuch] that will need to be accommodated to the taste and genius of the French nation,” it told him. Basically, however, Basedow agreed with the STN on the main point: that for good or ill, the translation had to be adapted to the demands of French taste. The only question was how to accomplish that goal. And Basedow addressed that question directly in connection with what he thought would be the most difficult section of the Elementarbuch for the translator to render into French: the final section of the first part, entitled “Angenehme Übungen im Lesen und Denken” (Agreeable Exercises in Reading and Thinking). In that section, Basedow had included some popular German verse tales—fables that were meant to illustrate such basic moral virtues as modesty, truthfulness, compassion, and charity. What to do with those verse tales in French? he wondered: “In translating the Elementarwerk, the greatest difficulty that needs to be removed is, above all, how to translate the pieces that are written in verse. One could . . . , to be sure, simply substitute French originals. In that case, however, either one would miss a very important goal of the Elementarwerk—namely, its didactic and especially moral uniformity (which to many readers will not be tangible from the end of the work)— or one would be unable to achieve that goal without unspeakable loss of time because the translator will not be present alongside the author.” Clearly, Basedow had some reservations about the wisdom of substituting French verse tales for the original German ones. And it is hardly surprising that an author would have harbored such reservations. Substitution, after all, marked the outermost limit of translation, the point at which translation ceased to be translation and became something more like adaptation instead. What is noteworthy is that the idea for such a replacement would have occurred to Basedow at all. It also occurred to the STN, which embraced it without any reservations: “As for the verses, we do not see any easy way of translating them, unless one could find a translator who was capable of rendering them with elegance,” the STN wrote in its reply to the author. “Furthermore, Monsieur, inasmuch as these morsels that you have chosen bear an analogy to the works of our best French poets, it is probable that all of the French will prefer to put . . . [those works] in the hands of their children and you yourself, Monsieur, feel the reasons for that preference.” Did Basedow “feel the reasons” why substituting French verses was the best option? Probably, or he would not have suggested such a move in the first

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place. But even if he had retained some doubts, he would have swallowed them without complaint, since he was prepared to defer to the STN’s superior judgment. “With total confidence I surrender the judgment of the work to the honorable typographical society,” he wrote to the publishers in Neuchâtel. Far from fighting to preserve the integrity of his work, Basedow granted the STN an all but free hand to do with the work as it saw fit. That the STN assigned absolute primacy to satisfying the demands and expectations of its target audience and that it showed relatively little concern about the integrity of the original texts—none of that was unusual for the time and place. Most French translators in the eighteenth century believed, like the STN, that the goal of translation was to domesticate foreign works, to make them, as it were, at home in France, so that they would read almost as if composed originally in French. That same goal, however, was also characteristic of a much older tradition stretching back to the Latin translations of Greek works in the age of the Roman Empire. It was a goal particularly well suited to the self-image of a cosmopolitan cultural empire. Indeed, one might call it an imperialist goal: translation as a form of literary conquest. When the STN said of Basedow’s work that it would have to be “accommodated to the taste and genius of the French nation,” it exhibited the supreme confidence and untroubled conscience of a victorious conqueror. It spoke as if there were simply no alternative to treating “the taste and genius of the French nation” as the arbiter of a literary work. The particular tradition of translation that the STN championed seemed to be the method of translation tout court. And yet there were alternatives. The late eighteenth century in particular saw a great deal of searching and critical reflection on the theory and practice of translation—notably, in Germany, among the philosophers and poets of early romanticism. At the root of that reflection lay a revaluation of the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. For Herder, one of the most influential German thinkers of the late eighteenth century, the original confusion of tongues was as much a blessing as it was a curse. Each language, he believed, had its own unique value, not as a mere vehicle for conveying ideas but rather as the integral expression of a people’s Spirit (Volksgeist), and that Spirit was all encompassing, alive in every aspect of a culture, from its myths and customs to its songs, fairy tales, and great works of literature. To imagine, as the ancient Roman and modern-day French translators did, that one could somehow improve the products of one culture by making them over in the image of another was a dangerous illusion. It was also to misunderstand the nature of culture and its relation to language. What a work of literature said and how

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it said it were inextricably bound up with the language in which that work was conceived: hence the impossibility of a perfect translation, as well as the enormity of the challenge confronting the translator who sought to capture something of the Spirit embodied in a foreign text. To meet such a challenge, the translator required imaginative powers as great as those of an original artist, or so it appeared to Herder’s contemporaries, who therefore elevated the activity of translation to the level of art—to a level, that is, where leading figures in the German republic of letters deemed that activity to be worthy of their talents: Voss, who translated Homer; August Wilhelm Schlegel, who translated Shakespeare; Goethe, who translated Diderot; and, most memorably for the theory of translation, Schleiermacher, who translated Plato. For Schleiermacher, there was only one way that a translator could honor the Spirit embodied in Plato’s Greek, and that was to invent a new language, an Übersetzungssprache (language of translation) that would mimic, in German, the rhythms and the syntax of the original text and so dispel any illusion of familiarity. The theory and practice of translation in late-eighteenth-century Germany is a vast subject in its own right, one that brings together nearly all the principal themes in the romantic revolt against Enlightenment universalism and that also points beyond the eighteenth century to some of the major methodological innovations of nineteenth-century scholarship—in linguistics, literary studies, and the historical sciences. None of those far-reaching issues, however, need detain us here. For one thing, it seems highly unlikely that the STN’s directors would have had any familiarity with Herder’s philosophy of language. And besides, the STN was a commercial publishing firm. An Übersetzungssprache was all very well in theory; commercially, it would have been a disaster. The STN wanted to make German literature speak French, both literally and figuratively, the better to sell it to French readers. Its method of translation was simply the one best adapted to making a profit. It was also, as we have seen, the one most congenial to an Aufklärer like Basedow. Unlike the romantics, Basedow does not seem to have cared about literature as an expression of Spirit—whether his own or that of the German Volk. Had he cared, he would almost certainly have objected more strenuously to the STN’s method of translation. His vision of literature, like his vision of Enlightenment, was utilitarian: he identified Enlightenment with useful knowledge, and he treated literature as a vehicle for the spread of Enlightenment. What preoccupied him in his correspondence with the STN was to broaden the diffusion of his Elementarbuch, to enhance its utility by widening

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the circle of its readers. And the STN would have been happy to oblige had Basedow been willing to bear the costs of the translation: “[We are] . . . delighted to be able to contribute by our work to making yours more universally useful to humanity,” the STN said to Basedow at the outset of their correspondence. The Aufklärer and his French publisher were related to one another like partners in a marriage of convenience: each had its own reason for entering into the alliance—the Aufklärer to spread Enlightenment, the publisher to make money—but they shared a common interest in promoting sales. Basedow, therefore, was able to wink at infidelity—indeed, not only wink at it but encourage it: he wanted the STN to woo French readers. For Basedow, as no doubt for other German authors, the benefit of reaching an international public through the medium of a French translation far outweighed whatever misgivings he may have felt about the manner in which the translation was to be executed. French, after all, was the European language par excellence. Such alterations as had to be made in a German work in order to satisfy “the taste and genius of the French nation” seemed a small price to pay for the possibility of addressing readers all across L’Europe française. But there was a price, and it was one that Friedrich Nicolai identified with elegant concision in a journal article some two decades before the STN undertook the translation of Sebaldus Nothanker: “If the French wish to translate our works, we must ask them not to regard those works as beautiful simply because they have dressed them up à la française. In that case, they would merely be admiring themselves in us.” For German authors of the late eighteenth century, French translations offered a kind of Faustian bargain: the promise of international fame in exchange for the forfeiture of their national Geist.

* * * So much, then, for theory: what about Sebaldus Nothanker? It should be said at the outset that Nicolai was rather ill placed to indict the domesticating method of translation. As bookseller and Aufklärer in personal union, he knew better than anyone just how important it was to please the public, both for the sake of realizing profits and for the sake of spreading Enlightenment. French translators who assigned priority to pleasing the public were doing nothing more than Nicolai himself did in his trade as a bookseller and nothing more than Nicolai expected of the German authors whose

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works he published. The same stylistic failings that the STN considered it important to remedy when translating German works into French—“prolixity,” for example, or an excess of scholarly thoroughness—were also of concern to Nicolai. Of such concern to him, in fact, that he built a criticism of those failings into the narrative of Sebaldus Nothanker: first through his mocking allusions to Sebaldus’s commentary on the Book of Revelation— a veritable monument to the self-indulgence of German Gelehrsamkeit— and then, most important, through a long conversation between Sebaldus and a German bookseller named Hieronymous, a character who serves in the novel as a mouthpiece and fictional alter ego of Nicolai. In response to the questions that Sebaldus puts to him about the nature of German literary life, Hieronymous establishes a contrast between French and German authors: between the French hommes de lettres, who write for a large reading public, and the German Gelehrten, who merely write for one another. The German public does not care what German scholars think, Hieronymous laments, because German scholars do not care about the public: the indifference is mutual and mutually harmful—for the public because it is cut off from a source of Enlightenment, for scholars because they are condemned to social isolation. The lament is intended to arouse concern in the reader, as it does in Sebaldus who listens to it. And it confers added significance on the enormous popularity that Nicolai’s novel enjoyed among German readers: at the same time that Nicolai bemoaned the breakdown of communication between authors and public in his novel, he restored that communication through his novel. The fit between the message and the medium was perfect, much like the fit between Nicolai’s roles as author and bookseller. From his long experience of selling books, Nicolai knew what books would sell. He also knew, therefore, how to package what he wrote so that it would catch the eye of the public. Sebaldus Nothanker, for example, Nicolai packaged as the sequel to another work published several years earlier, a short and highly popular “prose poem” entitled Wilhelmine oder der vermählte Pedant (Wilhelmine or the Newlywed Pedant). From that earlier work, Nicolai drew, superficially at least, two of the characters of his novel: Sebaldus’s wife, Wilhelmine, and Sebaldus himself. Otherwise, his novel bore scant resemblance to the earlier work. Anyone who purchased Sebaldus Nothanker in the expectation of acquiring Wilhelmine Part II would have been a victim of false advertising. By the time the victim became aware of that deception, however, he would already have fallen for it, and perhaps would no longer have cared, having grown to love

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Sebaldus Nothanker for what it was, a new and distinct work rather than the sequel to Wilhelmine. For Nicolai of all people to complain of French translators who rewrote German works in order to adapt them to the demand of the public was like the pot calling the kettle black. But Nicolai did not, in fact, complain of the STN’s translation of Sebaldus Nothanker— at least, not in his correspondence with the STN. After receiving the first volume of Bertrand’s translation, he wrote a gracious-sounding letter to the publishers in Neuchâtel: “I am flattered by the resolution that you have taken to have translated into a language spread throughout Europe a work that seemed capable of being read only in Germany. The translation seems very well done, apart from only a few passages where the meaning of the original is not precisely expressed. Connoisseurs of the French language assure [me] that it reads smoothly; so if the work does not please French readers, the fault will surely lie on my side,” Nicolai wrote to the STN. For all his reservations about the domesticating method of translation, Nicolai recognized that his novel would never be able to reach a broad international public unless translated into French. And, as we shall see, the STN’s translation did reach a broad international public, so broad, in fact, that readers of the translation were scattered all across the European continent. The sequence of rewritings that led from Wilhelmine to Sebaldus Nothanker and, from there, to the STN’s translation of Sebaldus Nothanker corresponded to a series of stages in a widening circle of literary diff usion. What was the nature of those rewritings?

* * * (1) From Wilhelmine oder der vermählte Pedant, ein prosäisches Gedicht to Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker The first of the rewritings that culminated in the STN’s translation was the one Nicolai performed on Wilhelmine. The author of that earlier work, Moritz August von Thümmel, drew his inspiration from Pope’s famous mock epic, The Rape of the Lock. Like Pope’s work, Thümmel’s has all the formal trappings of the epic genre: invocations to the muses, interventions by pagan deities, and, above all, an inflated and decorous style of language, the inspiration for which the narrator claims to have received from on high—from a “spiritual sunlight . . . a golden shaft that penetrated the world and that from among all of the thousands of poetic souls illuminated mine alone.” From

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such grandiloquent language, the reader is led to expect a correspondingly grand subject, an epic about the fall of Troy or the founding of Rome. The story that the work actually recounts is nothing if not prosaic. Sebaldus, a Lutheran pastor in a rural parish, falls in love with one of his parishioners, a girl named Wilhelmine, who is the daughter of a local farmer. Before he can summon the courage to ask for her hand in marriage, Wilhelmine is whisked off to the nearby princely residence, there to serve as the “chambermaid” (in actuality, the mistress) of a high-ranking court official, the Hofmarschall. For several years, Selbaldus pines for her inconsolably, until one night Cupid appears to him in a dream announcing that Wilhelmine will be returning to her native village on the following day for a visit to her father. Emboldened by his dream, Sebaldus goes to meet Wilhelmine at the house of her father. There he makes a declaration of his love for her, she consents to marry him, and her father gives his approval for the marriage, leaving only one obstacle standing in the way of Sebaldus’s happiness: before Sebaldus can marry Wilhelmine, the Hofmarschall has to consent to her departure from the court. That obstacle, however, proves no obstacle at all. Not only does the Hofmarschall readily consent to Wilhelmine’s departure; he promises to grace her wedding with his presence and that of his fellow courtiers. The stage is thus set for a hilarious dénouement, a wedding ceremony that unites the villagers of Sebaldus’s parish with the foppish aristocrats of the princely court. The ceremony goes off without a hitch. Indeed, it goes off so well that a second intervention by Cupid is required to drive out the revelers, who are so engrossed in their revelry that they fail to note the desire of the newlyweds to consummate their marriage in the privacy of their own bed. In the end, it seems a rather trivial story—but the triviality is precisely the point. The yawning gap between form and content, added to the erotic double entendres and the incongruous mixing of social classes, seems to have given to Wilhelmine an irresistible comic appeal. First published in 1764, Thümmel’s work went through four editions during the 1760s and also spawned a French translation, executed by Michael Huber, which the Leipzig press baron Philipp Erasmus Reich published in 1769 and which the STN pirated at the same time that it published the first volume of its translation of Sebaldus. Because of its impressive commercial success, Wilhelmine was well suited to serve as a source of publicity for Sebaldus Nothanker. Nicolai, however, did not make any real effort to integrate his work with Thümmel’s. Indeed, he explicitly warned his readers in the introduction to Sebaldus that they would search in vain “for the high flights of imagination that a poem must have.”

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Such continuity as exists between Wilhelmine and Sebaldus Nothanker is confined to the story line, which Nicolai picks up where Thümmel had left it off, at the point where the newly married couple settles down to a life together in Sebaldus’s rural parish. In nearly all other respects, the works are completely different. First of all, Sebaldus Nothanker displays nothing of the wide gap between form and content that provides the source of so much of the humor in Wilhelmine. Its subject may be prosaic, but so too is its language: clipped, crisp, and concise, in stark contrast to the ornate, mock-epic style of Wilhelmine. Second, the protagonists themselves undergo a dramatic transformation from one work to the next. When we encounter her in Sebaldus Nothanker, Wilhelmine shows few traces of her former life as a “chambermaid” at a princely court, apart from an enduring fondness for French novels, which does not prevent her being a dutiful mother and a trusty helpmeet; Sebaldus, who had appeared as an obtuse, orthodox pedant in Wilhelmine, emerges as a heterodox advocate of religious toleration. Save for their names, the protagonists of Sebaldus Nothanker retain little of their previous selves. Finally, and most important, the protagonists in Nicolai’s novel inhabit a moral universe completely different from that of Wilhelmine. In the earlier work, bad deeds do not produce bad outcomes. When aristocratic rakes seduce farmers’ daughters, it all seems like a bit of harmless fun— and not just fun but funny, at least for the aristocrats, who enjoy a good laugh at the expense of the girls’ fathers and would-be husbands. In Nicolai’s novel, the same behavior brings disastrous consequences in its train: thus the sad fate of an honorable Prussian major, one of Sebaldus’s best and most loyal friends, who loses his life after challenging an aristocratic seducer to a duel. The aristocrat, who has seduced the daughter of a poor and kindly schoolmaster, is too much of a coward to accept the challenge: instead, he stages a diversion while his valet fells the major with a single blow from behind. It is a dastardly deed, which throws into relief the iniquity of the original seduction and which does not leave any room for moral equivocation. What would have passed for innocent amusement in Wilhelmine stands condemned as evil in Sebaldus Nothanker. In denouncing the moral corruption of the courtier aristocracy, Nicolai did not pull his punches, any more than did Lessing in Emilia Galotti. And, in terms of its moral sensibility, Nicolai’s work is, in fact, much closer to the “bourgeois drama” of Lessing than it is to the comic prose poem of Thümmel. When one adds up all the differences between Nicolai’s work and Thümmel’s— differences in moral sensibility, the character of the protagonists, and the

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style of the writing— only one conclusion seems possible: apart from exploiting the popularity of Wilhelmine for commercial purposes, the principal use Nicolai made of the earlier work was negative. He employed it as a foil, the better to highlight his own distinctive concerns.

* * * (2) From Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker to La Vie et les opinions de maître Sebaltus Nothanker, traduit de l’allemand par un ami du héro From Nicolai’s rewriting of Thümmel we come then to Bertrand’s rewriting of Nicolai. As we would expect, Bertrand eliminated from Nicolai’s text those passages that he considered offensive to French taste or that were so tightly bound to specifically German referents as to be either uninteresting or unintelligible to French readers. He took the liberty, for example, of shortening a chapter whose principal object was to satirize the religious hypocrisy of German pietism, and eliminated entirely the verses of a pietist hymn that described in lurid detail all the torments of eternal damnation: In grosser Furcht und Schrecken, in finstrer Dunkelheit, wird die Verdammten decken, Angst, Grauen Trauerigkeit; Die Zähne werden klappen für Frost und grosser Hitz und werden blindlings tappen nach einem frischen Sitz. Sie werden ewig fallen ins Loch, das keinen Grund, und aufeinander prallen zusammen in den Schlund, sich bessen, fressen, nagen sich fluchen, lästern stets, der Tod wird sie recht plagen, ohn Ende: Seht, so geht’s! So geht es den Verfluchten in ihrem Höllenloch, den Schlemmern und Verruchten, ach, glaubet’s, glaubet’s doch.

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Wollt ihr daran noch zweifeln? So wahr ist’s, so wahr Gott, ihr fahret zu dem Teufeln, wo ihr das halt’t für Spott! (Amidst great dread and terror, in gloomy darkness, fear, horror, and sadness will envelop the damned; their teeth will chatter from frost and great heat and they will grope blindly for some cool place. They will fall eternally into a bottomless hole, and tumble together into the abyss, biting, clawing, and cursing one another, forever blaspheming, Death will torment them truly, without end: Behold, that’s how it goes! So it goes with the damned in their infernal hole, the gluttons and the reprobates, oh, believe it, believe it. Do you wish to doubt it? It’s as true as God. You will go to the Devil if you take it in jest.) In a lengthy footnote, Bertrand explained why he had decided to omit those verses: This hymn is cited in its entirety in the original German. I was unable to translate it in such a way as to make the reading of it tolerable in our language. The author indicates the work from which he has taken this morsel, and at the same time, he declaims with passion against the book of psalms and the hymns that are used in the churches of Brandenburg. It is not very important for French readers to know that bad verses are sung in the German states of his Prussian Majesty. Indeed, I think that the controversy which the author places in the mouth of his hero will appear to be of little interest. Still, I will not allow myself to makes changes in someone else’s work, and I would not even have eliminated this hymn had I been able to succeed in translating it to my satisfaction. Or, to take another example of such editing, consider how Bertrand handled a passage near the end of the work in which the narrator explains why Sebaldus’s friend, the bookseller Hieronymous, is unwilling to publish Sebaldus’s collection of commentaries on the Book of Revelation. In the original German, the passage goes on at some length. First, it notes that German scholars have called into question the authenticity of the Book of Revelation and that, for this reason, no one is interested any longer in reading

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commentaries about it. Then it proceeds to explain that this lack of interest extends even to Swabia, where the Book of Revelation had once been regarded as the “book of books,” and that there too the previously widespread preoccupation with the Book of Revelation has now given way to other intellectual pursuits like antiquarian book collecting and the interpreting of Arabic texts. It concludes by hailing the shift in intellectual pursuits: “a welcome change for theological scholarship” throughout the lands where “Neckar wine is drunk.” All the details of the passage are richly satirical: from the mocking reference to the cultural backwater of Swabia to the unflattering description of “theological scholarship”—a field of learning that fares all the better when scholars are not doing theological scholarship at all, at least in the traditional sense of hair-splitting biblical exegesis. To German readers, the passage must have seemed quite funny and also ironic, since Hieronymous’s refusal to publish Sebaldus’s commentaries does not really require any explanation at all: no bookseller in his right mind would agree to take on a collection of bizarre musings on the Book of Revelation. In his translation, Bertrand dropped the explanation of Hieronymous’s refusal. In so doing, he also lost the irony of the passage: Wirklich beschäftigt sich Sebaldus seit einiger Zeit mehr als jemals mit der Apokalypse und hat seinen Kommentar darüber beinahe völlig geendigt. Er hat auch schon seinem Freunde Hieronymous den Verlag desselben angetragen, welchen dieser aber, mit aller Schonung gegen einen Autor, der zugleich ein Freund ist, zu verbitten gewusst hat. Hieronymous mag freilich wohl einsehen, was Sebaldus noch nicht glauben will, dass seitdem Oeder und nach ihm Semler die Echtheit dieses Buches verdächtig gemacht haben, niemand mehr etwas über die Apokalypse lesen mag; sogar nicht einmal in Schwaben, wo jetzt, statt der vorherigen allgemeinen Beschäftigung mit diesem sonst für das Buch der Bücher geachteten Buche, durch eine für die theologischen Wissenschaften glückliche Veränderung, so weit man Neckarwein trinkt, das Variantensammeln und arabisch Exponieren eingetreten ist. (424) (For a while Sebaldus has really been occupying himself more than ever with the Apocalypse and has almost completed his commentary on it. He has also offered it for publication to his friend Hieronymous, but the latter knew how to refuse the offer without offending the author, who is also his friend. Admittedly, Hieronymous may

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well realize what Sebaldus does not wish to believe: namely, that since Oeder and after him Semler have called into doubt the authenticity of the book, no one wishes any longer to read anything about the Apocalypse, not even in Swabia, where now antiquarian book collecting and the interpreting of Arabic texts have replaced the once general preoccupation with what was regarded as the book of books— a happy change for theological scholarship in all the area where Neckar wine is drunk.) Depuis quelques tems, Sebaltus s’occupe plus que jamais de l’Apocalypse, sur laquelle son commentaire est presque achevé. Il l’a même offert à son ami Jérôme, pour qu’il le fît imprimer; et celui-ci l’a remercié avec tous les ménagements dus à son auteur et à son ami. (3: 151) (For a while, Sebaldus has been occupying himself more than ever with the Apocalypse, on which his commentary is almost complete. He even offered it to his friend Jerome so that he could have it printed; and the latter thanked him with all the consideration due to the author and to his friend.) The most striking thing about such editing, however, was not that Bertrand indulged in it but that he did so with comparative moderation. For its other planned translations, the STN seems to have envisaged something akin to radical surgery: the excising of whole chapters, even volumes. With Nicolai’s text, Bertrand did nothing of the sort. Sebaldus Nothanker was already a good read in its German incarnation. Despite the picaresque structure of its narrative, it flowed quite smoothly from one chapter to the next, carrying readers along at a brisk pace. “The prolixity common to Germans” did not affect Nicolai— or, at least, did not affect him to the same extent as it did other German authors— and his novel did not therefore need to be shorn of excess verbiage. The original Berlin edition of Sebaldus Nothanker comprised three volumes in-octavo of a little more than two hundred pages on average. So also did the STN’s French edition. And not only did Bertrand abstain from wholesale editing, he also elected, with one exception, to preserve the proper names of the protagonists. The exception, as we have already seen, was “Hieronymous,” which became “Jérôme” in the translation. All the other character names stayed the same, including

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those that were also characterizations, like the Frau von Hohenauf (“Upward”) and Säugling (“Infantile”), the meaning of which was almost certainly lost on French readers. For the most part, then, Bertrand avoided the kinds of obvious changes that one would have noticed immediately upon comparing his text to Nicolai’s. The principal changes he made were of a rather more subtle nature. Through the discreet addition of adjectives, superlatives, and epithets, Bertrand effected what we can best describe as a heightening of the rhetorical tone— above all, in that section of the novel that concerned Marianne, her employment in the house of the Frau von Hohenauf, and her unlikely romance with Säugling. Here, “Freundschaft” (friendship) (133) becomes “la plus tendre amitié” (the most tender friendship) (1: 203); “Elend” (misery) (135) changes to “la misère la plus affreuse” (the most frightful misery) (1: 206); and “Säugling . . . seufzete” (Säugling . . . sighed) (145) is rendered as “Saugling . . . poussa un profond soupir” (Saugling . . . breathed a deep sigh) (1: 220). The Frau von Hohenauf, Marianne’s chief nemesis, becomes “la baronne redoubtable” (the redoubtable baroness) (1: 217); Marianne herself becomes “la trop sevère Marianne” (the too harsh Marianne) when she appears to be repulsing Säugling’s romantic advances (1: 231); and, later in the novel, when she becomes the victim of a kidnapping, she is designated simply as “la belle prisonière” (the beautiful captive) (2: 195). Another one of Marianne’s suitors, a man considerably less scrupulous and more sinister than Säugling, loses his proper name in favor of “le galant” (the gallant one) (3: 100). This rhetorical inflation works to embellish the prose of the translation, giving to it a slightly more elevated and decorous tone than that of the original German. Most important, however, it places Marianne’s romance with Säugling in a new light. Consider, for example, the scene in which Säugling approaches Marianne in order to make a somewhat awkward declaration of his feelings for her. Marianne’s modesty and innocence prevent her from suspecting his intentions; so she derides him jokingly for being so strangely out of sorts, until his confession of love causes the scales to fall from her eyes, thus producing an embarrassed expression of contrition: “Sie haben mich für meinen kleinen Scherz doppelt bezahlt; ich werde mich hüten müssen, wieder zu scherzen” (146). (“You have paid me back twice over for my little joke, I’ll have to be careful not to joke again.”) In Bertrand’s translation, by contrast, Marianne appears to regret not just her ill-considered joking but also the inappropriateness of her joking with so dangerous a suitor as Säugling: “Vous avez payé au double une petite raillerie. Cela m’apprendra à ne plus jouer à l’avenir avec un

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si redoutable adversaire” (1: 221). (“You have paid me back twice over for my little mocking remark. That will teach me not to play with so redoubtable an adversary in the future.”) Säugling, a redoubtable adversary? To the readers of Nicolai’s original text, such a description would have seemed preposterous. Through the character of Säugling, whose very name, as we have said, means “infantile,” Nicolai was satirizing the popular Anacreontic poet Georg Jacobi. The reference to Jacobi, like the meaning of Säugling’s name, probably got lost in translation. But even in the translation, Säugling comes across as a thoroughly laughable character, a self-styled poet utterly devoid of talent whose cloying love poems seem all the more grotesque when one considers whom he composed them for—not an upper-class woman of the world but rather the stern daughter of an austere Lutheran minister. To readers of the translation, no less than to readers of the original German, there would have been no mistaking the type: Säugling is a belle âme, a “beautiful soul” for whom courtship is merely the reenactment of literary conventions. At once childish, dandyish, and selfimportant, he cuts a ridiculous figure. And no amount of rhetorical inflation could have converted him into a dangerous seducer. Bertrand’s translation does not, therefore, intensify the drama of the romance between Säugling and Marianne; it accentuates the humor, and it does so through the same device that Thümmel had used in his mock epic, by driving a wedge between form and content. Would the readers of the STN’s French edition have had any idea of what Bertrand was doing? Obviously not if they were unfamiliar with Wilhelmine. The STN, however, made sure that they would be familiar with it, by joining together in a single volume both its pirated edition of Huber’s translation of Wilhelmine and the first installment of Bertrand’s translation of Sebaldus Nothanker. When packaged in that way, Huber’s and Bertrand’s translations could easily have been mistaken for two parts of a single work by the same German author. And that was, in fact, how the STN wanted its customers to view the two translations. Thus the following misleading announcement that it sent to the bookseller Jean-Jacques Cramer in Orbe in the autumn of 1773, roughly six months before the first volume of its translation left the press: “In a few days [sic], we shall have Wilhelmine, an erotic poem, with the new sequel.” Or the equally misleading announcement that it sent to the bookseller P. Machuel in Rouen: “It is uncontestable that the advantage goes to those who can supply works that are new and that strike at the right spot, like several of the works that we have indicated to you and to which you

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can add Wilhelmine, reprinted from the translation of M. Huber, with the sequel that just appeared in German and that we have had translated hot [off the press].” Or the following announcement to the bookseller Périsse in Lyon, which was more than just misleading—it was positively mendacious: “Next week we are going to press with another translation, this one the sequel to Wilhelmine, a pretty little trifle [jolie bagatelle] that was translated into French two years ago. The sequel from the same hand and in the same taste [la suite de la même main et dans le même goût].” From what the STN said in those announcements, its correspondents would not have had any way of knowing that the sequel to Wilhelmine came from the pen of an author named Friedrich Nicolai and that it was so profoundly different from the earlier work. Nor would they have been able to glean that information from the STN’s catalogue or the title page of Bertrand’s translation: both the entry for Sebaldus Nothanker in the STN’s catalogue and the title page of its edition omitted Nicolai’s name. Why the deception? Probably because the STN thought that Wilhelmine would already be known to the French public through Huber’s translation and that not many people in France would have had any idea who Nicolai was. Wieland, one of the few German authors of the period whose name was widely known in France, received a very different treatment from the STN. His name appeared both in the cata logue entry for Le Miroir d’or and on the title page of the STN’s edition. To twenty-first-century sensibilities, the STN’s treatment of Nicolai’s novel may have a faint whiff of the scandalous about it. But it was not the least bit scandalous in the eighteenth century, not in an age when anonymous publication was rampant and there was no such thing as a truth-in-advertising law. Neither the omission of Nicolai’s name from the title page nor the misleading and mendacious announcements about the translation of his work were remarkable in themselves. The remarkable thing was how well they fitted into a coherent marketing strategy. The deceptive advertising, the anonymous publication, the placement of Bertrand’s translation after Huber’s in a single volume— all of those moves dovetailed perfectly; and, when combined with the nature of Bertrand’s translation itself, they worked to create the impression that Sebaldus Nothanker, a major work of the Berlin Aufklärung, was merely the next installment of what the STN variously described as a “pretty little trifle” or an “erotic poem.” To the abbé Rozier in Paris, whom the STN consulted in early 1774 several months before the first volume of its edition left the press, the marketing

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strategy made eminently good sense. “Your burlesque poem will succeed,” he told the STN. “Today people wish to read in order to kill time—to amuse themselves rather than to derive instruction.” No doubt comforted by Rozier’s favorable verdict, the STN launched its rewritten version of Nicolai’s novel onto the market, and then waited to see whether readers would find it amusing. How well did it sell?

* * * (3) From La Vie et les opinions de maître Sebaltus Nothanker to L’Intolérance ecclésiastique, ou les malheurs d’un hétérodoxe To determine how well the STN’s edition sold, we need to begin by sorting out the different printings and pressruns— admittedly, a rather technical and tedious business but necessary before we can reach any conclusions about the success or failure of the STN’s marketing strategy. What follows may prove tough going for readers who have little patience for bibliographic details. The significance of the details, however, will be clear soon enough. The STN printed its edition of Sebaldus Nothanker in two different formats: a three-volume octavo, which appeared in two installments—volume one in 1774, volumes two and three in 1777— and a two-volume duodecimo, which appeared all at once in 1777. Volume 1 of the octavo was printed at a pressrun of roughly 1,100 copies. Three years later, 312 copies remained unsold—not an encouraging sign, to be sure, but one that could be explained away on the quite reasonable assumption that booksellers had simply been reluctant to purchase a single volume of a multivolume work. Despite the lukewarm response to Volume 1, therefore, the STN decided to print roughly 1,000 copies of the two-volume duodecimo, as well as roughly 500 copies of Volumes 2 and 3 of the octavo. In October 1777, when the last sheets of its translation had left the press, its storerooms in Neuchâtel contained 312 full sets of the three-volume octavo, 1,031 full sets of the two-volume duodecimo, and approximately 200 loose copies of Volumes 2 and 3 in-octavo for those customers who had purchased Volume 1 between 1774 and 1777 and who now wished to complete their earlier purchase. Over the next several years, most of the loose copies of Volumes 2 and 3 were sold off. By late 1779, however, the STN was still saddled with roughly 775 complete sets of the duodecimo and about 200 complete sets of the octavo. Its calculation of demand, though reasonable, had proved inflated.

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The STN’s marketing strategy, then, did not meet with great success. And more than five years after the release of Volume 1, the chances of reversing that trend seemed slight at best. The longer the copies of its translation went unsold, the more difficult it would be to sell them. Something drastic had to be done, or the financial losses would be considerable. But what options were available to the STN? The solution that the STN devised was to give its translation a new title. Accordingly, on 6 November 1779, two pressmen in the printing shop in Neuchâtel (one named Albert, the other Meyer) turned out 1,500 copies of a new title page for the duodecimo format, 750 for each of the two volumes. Whereas the old title page had borne the false imprint, “Londres,” and the title, La Vie et les opinions de maître Sebaltus Nothanker (The Life and Opinions of Master Sebaltus Nothanker), the new one carried the correct imprint, “Neuchâtel,” and the title, L’Intolérance ecclésiastique, ou les malheurs d’un hétérodoxe (Clerical Intolerance or the Misfortunes of a Religious Dissenter). The STN kept the old title for the remaining copies of the octavo, and, in the end, it decided to keep it for some 200 copies of the duodecimo. But the other copies of the duodecimo, totaling about 575, received the title of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique and were thus re-launched onto the market as a new publication, with a separate entry in the STN’s printed cata logue. A second phase in the marketing of the translation had begun. The most striking thing about the STN’s new marketing strategy was that it elicited hardly any protest. No fewer than twenty-seven booksellers ended up purchasing copies of the STN’s edition under both the original and the new titles, and only one of them seemed to mind, a dealer in Yverdon named Dupuget: “L’Intolérance ecclésiastique is a book I received from you under another title and which I imagined to be a new book,” Dupuget complained to the STN. None of the other booksellers said anything at all, either because they did not notice what the STN had done or because they did not care. And why should they have cared? To dress up an old work as a new one was a venial sin, not much worse than false imprints or deceptive advertising. In the summer of 1779, several months before the STN printed the title page for L’Intolérance ecclésiastique, Bosset de Luze wrote to the home office from the Rhineland suggesting that the STN adopt a similar measure for another one of its editions, and he made that suggestion with such an air of nonchalance and matter-of-factness as to make it sound both unremarkable and unobjectionable: “Here are 1,600 copies of Essai sur le plaisir that we have on our hands, and what are we to do with them unless we

Figure 9a. The title page of one of the STN’s two French translations of the novel Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker by Friedrich Nicolai: La Vie et les opinions de maître Sebaltus Nothanker. (Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel)

Figure 9b. The title page of one of the STN’s two French translations of the novel Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker by Friedrich Nicolai: L’Intolérance ecclésiastique, ou les malheurs d’un hétérodoxe. (Bibliothèque de la Ville de la Chaux-de-Fonds)

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change the title and announce it as a nouveauté?” In the book trade of the eighteenth century, such ruses were all in a day’s work. And yet there was more to the new title of Nicolai’s novel than simply a ruse for passing off an old work as a new one. To accomplish that goal, any change in title would have been enough. Just as important as the STN’s decision to adopt a new title was the kind of title that it chose. To French ears, L’Intolérance ecclésiastique, ou les malheurs d’un hétérodoxe would have had a particular resonance, especially in 1779, one year after Voltaire’s triumphant return to Paris and his death shortly afterward. Paris was abuzz with talk of Voltaire— of his apotheosis at the Comédie Française, his un-Christian, unrepentant death, his burial in unconsecrated ground— and the STN’s title echoed that buzz because it sounded exactly like the title of a roman philosophique from the pen of Voltaire. It was as if the great enemy of religious bigotry had fired off one last salvo against l’ infâme from beyond the grave. Sebaldus Nothanker, the hero of a roman philosophique? Admittedly, it was an unlikely role for a Protestant minister who believed that the Book of Revelation was a collection of prophecies about contemporary France. Booksellers, however, did not know what they were getting when they ordered L’Intolérance ecclésiastique. They judged the book by its title, and so assumed that it was an anti-religious book of the kind the authorities would be likely to confiscate. Take, for example, the bookseller Antoine-Adolphe Tyrberg in Stockholm, who ordered copies of the STN’s translation with both the old and the new titles in the very same letter: while Tyrberg underlined the title of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique (a bookseller’s shorthand for prohibited books), he gave no indication that La Vie et les opinions required any special treatment. Or the booksellers Laurent and Giovine Giraud in Turin, who had ordered a copy of the first volume of La Vie et les opinions in 1774 without indicating the need for any special precautions: eight years later, those same booksellers ordered a copy of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique and instructed the STN to hide that work between the sheets of an innocuous work on Roman history so that L’Intolérance ecclésiastique would escape detection. Or, finally, the bookseller Bergeret in Bordeaux, who placed an order for four copies of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique along with twelve of the abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique and twenty-five of Mercier’s Tableau de Paris, and who accompanied his order with precise instructions about the precautions that the STN would have to take: “Please be so good as to make the shipment port-free as far as Lyon while taking care to avoid the inspection by the Chambre Syndicale of that city.” Across widely scattered regions of the European

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book trade, in Sweden, Italy, and France, the reaction of booksellers was the same: they viewed L’Intolérance ecclésiastique as a dangerous book. Simply by altering the title, therefore, the STN gave to Bertrand’s translation the aroma of forbidden fruit. It also steered it into the literary underground, toward dealers who specialized in prohibited books. In France, L’Intolérance ecclésiastique attracted orders from an assortment of shadowy underground characters: a colporteur in Paris named Cugnet, who peddled prohibited books from a small boutique in the Louvre and who ordered two copies; a would-be philosophe and anticlerical abbé in Paris named Lesenne, who served as a purchasing agent for other anticlerical clergymen of his acquaintance, and who ordered ten copies; and a provincial dealer named Bruzard de Mauvelain in Troyes, who received a large number of prohibited books from the STN before going bankrupt and decamping for Paris, and whose customers exhibited such a keen interest in L’Intolérance ecclésiastique that it seems to have taken him by surprise. To keep up with the demand, Mauvelain had to send in four separate orders, first for one copy, then another, then four more, and, finally, four more. If the orders of Mauvelain, Lesenne, and Cugnet were any indication, then the STN had good reason to hope that it would be able to disseminate Bertrand’s translation through the networks of the clandestine French book trade. But how many copies of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique did it, in fact, sell to its customers in France? Not as many as the STN had been led to expect by one of its literary agents in Paris, a man named Quandet de Lachenal, whom it had hired on the recommendation of the abbé Lesenne. In December 1780, barely a year after the adoption of the new title, Quandet went over the STN’s cata logue and then sent the STN his assessment of which books were marketable, assigning to them scores such as “rather good” (assez bon débit), “good” (bon débit), and “excellent” (excellent débit). There were only two titles to which he gave the score of “excellent”: L’Intolérance ecclésiastique and the Oeuvres of Voltaire. Unfortunately for the STN, however, Quandet was mistaken. Altogether the STN sold about 59 copies of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique to customers inside the French kingdom— a respectable enough figure when one considers that the work was not really a new publication at all, but hardly enough to qualify as an “excellent” seller. Where L’Intolérance ecclésiastique really did enjoy a remarkably strong demand was on the other side of the European continent, at the court of Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg. There, in the summer of 1780, the bookseller J. J. Weitbrecht received six copies, including one for the empress

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herself, who found the book delightful: “Along with other nouveautés I presented to our sovereign a copy of L’Intolérance [ecclésiastique]. It made her laugh a lot, and that was the reason why the book became fashionable,” Weitbrecht informed the STN in the spring of 1781. Once the empress had given the work her stamp of approval, the orders from Saint Petersburg began pouring in. In just one year, from the summer of 1780 to the summer of 1781, the STN sent sixty-seven copies of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique on the long journey down the Rhine and across the North Sea and the Baltic to booksellers in the Russian capital: sixty to Weitbrecht, three to Johann Zachariah Logan, and four to Karl Wilhelm Müller. Those were very impressive sales figures for the small world of Saint Petersburg society. In that city, after all, there hardly was any ville beyond the cour—in any case, as far as the reading public was concerned: hence the enormous influence of the empress, and hence the trickledown pattern of diffusion. Instead of welling up from the underground, the vogue for L’Intolérance ecclésiastique descended from the throne, spread through the court, and then moved on, not to the provincial hinterland but rather to Moscow, the only other city in all of Russia with any kind of established book trade, where the bookseller Christian Rüdigger received thirteen copies of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique in the summer of 1781. So what to conclude? Clearly, the title change succeeded in jump-starting the sales of Bertrand’s translation, which had stalled almost completely by the autumn of 1779. In the years following, the number of copies of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique in the STN’s storerooms went down at a fairly steady rate, from roughly 575 in November 1779 to 496 in January 1781, to 347 in May 1782, to 262 in March 1784. Then, however, sales stalled once again. The STN’s stock inventories reveal that only eleven copies were sold from March 1784 to June 1786 and only four in the year after that. As late as June 1787, the STN still had 247 unsold copies of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique, plus 150 of La Vie et les opinions in-duodecimo and 69 of the three-volume octavo. How many of those copies were eventually sold cannot be determined (June 1787 is the last date for which the STN’s stock inventories have survived), but the prospects for selling them except at a very steep discount were unquestionably bleak. Bertrand’s translation had already lived two lives: one as the sequel to a “pretty little trifle,” the other as a roman philosophique. To resurrect it yet again would have been nothing less than miraculous. Barring miracles, then, the final verdict on the success of the STN’s translation seems mixed. In strictly quantitative terms, the diff usion of the translation did not even begin to approach that of the original German, a

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work that was reprinted and pirated on numerous occasions. By June 1787, the STN had managed to place only about 1,050 complete sets of the two formats, in addition to nearly 500 loose copies of Volume 1 in octavo. The German editions, however, are unlikely to have reached more than a handful of readers beyond the frontiers of German-speaking Europe. In geographic terms, therefore, the diff usion of the STN’s translation was incomparably wider than that of the original German, as we can see from the map in Figure 10, which indicates the destinations of 845 complete sets sold during the period covered by the Livres de commissions. To interpret the map correctly, we need to recall that most of the STN’s Swiss and Dutch correspondents were wholesalers whose trade was oriented toward export rather than local markets. Many of the copies those correspondents received from Neuchâtel would have traveled on to other destinations—to the British Isles or France from Maastricht and The Hague, to Italy and France from Lausanne and Geneva. It is all but certain, therefore, that the French market absorbed more copies than the map would appear to indicate. But even so, France was just one of many markets. At least a few copies were sold in nearly every region of Europe, from Dublin to Moscow; and some were sold even in Germany, seventy-one directly from Neuchâtel and probably a few dozen more from Bern and Basel. A best-selling German novel, in other words, was re-exported to its country of origin in the form of a French translation. What to make of that remarkable phenomenon? It is possible that a few Germans may have wished to test their knowledge of French by comparing the French and German versions of Nicolai’s novel. But they can hardly have been so numerous as to account for all the copies of the STN’s translation sold in Germany. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the German demand for the French edition of Nicolai’s novel reflected cultural attitudes within the German reading public. Just like the fictional character of the Frau von Hohenauf, whom Nicolai held up to ridicule in Sebaldus Nothanker, some Germans were such Francophile snobs and harbored such a strong antiGerman prejudice that they preferred French books to German ones: in fact, they preferred the French translation of a German book to the German original. It is not hard to guess who those Germans were. The STN sold copies of its translation to Charles and Matthias Fontaine, who supplied books to the court of the Palatine elector in Mannheim and the Bavarian court in Munich; to Jean-Frédéric Hemmerde, who supplied them to the Hessian

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Figure 10. Diff usion of Sebaldus Nothanker in French translation. For a detailed breakdown of the orders for the STN’s translation of Sebaldus, including the orders for individual volumes, see Appendix E.

court at the baths of Hofgeismar; and to Jean-Gérard Bruère, who supplied them to the tiny princely court of Hesse-Homburg near Frankfurt. The aristocrats at princely courts would have turned up their noses at so quintessentially German a novel as Nicolai’s had the STN not conferred upon it the literary equivalent of lettres de noblesse. The French translation, therefore, did more than just broaden the geographic diff usion of Nicolai’s novel. When re-exported as a French product, his novel was able to penetrate the most exclusive milieux of German society. And how Nicolai must have relished the irony of that situation: Francophile German snobs reading in French translation a German book that satirized Francophile German snobs. That, however, was only one of the many ironies in the literary transformations of “poor Sebaldus,” who went from being the butt of aristocratic jokes as the suitor of Wilhelmine, to a hero of the Aufklärung, to a fighter

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against l’ infâme in the image of Voltaire. With each rewriting of the story, its meaning changed, and so too did the public. Once he had learned to speak French, the eponymous hero of Nicolai’s novel became fréquentable in Paris, hoff ähig in Germany, and the toast of Saint Petersburg society. No mean feat for an ungainly and hapless Lutheran pastor from a village in Thuringia!

* * * With all of its surprising twists and turns, the publishing history of the French translation of Sebaldus Nothanker is a good story in its own right, and it is a story worth telling because Nicolai’s novel was such an important work of the Aufklärung. Still, it was just one work. What general conclusions can we draw from the translation of a single book? One conclusion certainly is that translating from German to French was a hard thing to get right. In fact, it was a hard thing to do at all. The STN was able to steer its edition of Sebaldus Nothanker through to completion. The vast majority of its translation projects, however, never got past the planning stage. The shortage of qualified translators, the vast difference between the sorts of works that appealed to the Germans and the sorts of works that appealed to the French, the notorious “delicacy” of French readers in matters of style—all of those factors stood in the way of translating German works into French. They were like so many reefs on which translation projects could run aground, and usually those projects foundered long before the STN had an opportunity to launch them onto the market. To translate from German into French at a time when nearly all the literary traffic moved in the opposite direction was like sailing against the current: whether German works actually made it onto the international French literary market depended, to a considerable extent, on the navigational skill of the publisher. To succeed commercially in publishing French translations of German works, a publisher had to know how to select German works with commercial potential, how to translate them into elegant French, and how to edit them so as to correct for the “prolixity common to Germans.” Above all, however, he had to know how to market them so that they would catch the eye of the public. Sebaldus Nothanker was a best-selling novel in German; Bertrand’s translation of it was elegant and stylish— and still the French edition sold slowly. When it did, finally, acquire a certain popularity, that was only because the STN had the wisdom to shift its marketing course in midstream and relaunch its edition as a roman philosophique. The publisher, therefore, formed

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a crucial link in the process of cross-cultural communication, not merely as a commercial intermediary, but also as a creative agent in its own right. Today, “creative intermediary” may sound to some people like an oxymoron, but only because we have become habituated to a way of thinking that has come down to us from the romantics and that locates creativity at its supposed point of origin, in the mind of the author. In the eighteenth century, the author as a legal subject endowed with rights hardly existed. The STN, therefore, enjoyed a far greater degree of freedom than do publishers today, who can no longer treat their authors with cavalier disregard, let alone erase them entirely, as the STN did by eliminating Nicolai’s name from the title pages of its translation and from the entries in its cata logue. In the case of Sebaldus Nothanker, the production of literary meaning was a process involving many different agents: Nicolai, who wrote the German text of the novel; Bertrand, who translated it; the STN’s directors collectively, who devised the marketing strategies for Bertrand’s translation; and also the two pressmen, Albert and Meyer, who printed the title pages of L’Intolérance ecclésiastique— a job that they were able to dispatch in a single day but whose impact on the reception of the STN’s edition made itself felt for several years afterward. To try to sort out who was the creator and who the mediator would be pointless. Everybody was, to varying degrees, both creator and mediator simultaneously, including Nicolai, whose “original” text was not fully his own but rather an adaptation of Thümmel’s.

chapter 7

From Europe Française to Europe Révolutionnaire The Career of Jean-Guillaume Virchaux

Nos ennemis avaient fait de la langue française la langue des cours; ils l’avaient avilie. C’est à nous d’en faire la langue des peuples, et elle sera honorée. (Our enemies had made the French language into the language of courts; they had debased it. It is up to us to make it into the language of peoples, and it will be held in honor.) —Bertrand Barère, report on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, 8 pluviôse l’an II

While the fictional hero of Nicolai’s novel was regaling readers from Paris to Petersburg, real-life Europeans were traveling too. Aristocrats on their Grand Tours, expatriate philosophes in search of patrons, insolvent debtors in flight from their creditors, fortune hunters, adventurers, and a great many other footloose Europeans journeyed across the continent, and they did so, moreover, without having to carry a passport. For anyone traveling or living abroad in the eighteenth century, the most important thing to have at the ready was a strong command of French, which functioned like a passe-partout, opening the doors of polite society at all of the many scattered outposts of L’Europe française. Like Nicolai’s novel in its French incarnations, Europeans who spoke elegant and stylish French were able to move across the frontiers of nations and reinvent themselves in foreign lands.

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Consider, for example, the Hamburg bookseller Jean-Guillaume Virchaux, the STN’s most important trading partner in Germany. Born in 1739 in Saint Blaise, a village belonging to the principality of Neuchâtel, Virchaux settled at the age of thirty-two in the free imperial city of Hamburg, where he supported himself first as a private tutor of French, then as a bookseller and printer. For a while, everything seemed to be going swimmingly for him in his adopted home. He married a native Hamburg woman, who bore him several children, and he and his wife cut an attractive figure in Hamburg society— so attractive that their house in the Grosse Beckerstrasse became a magnet for the Hamburg elite: “a rendezvous for all that the city of Hamburg possessed in the way of men with talent and distinguished persons from all walks of life,” to quote one contemporary observer. In 1785, however, Virchaux’s trade collapsed in bankruptcy, and soon after, he came under suspicion of having published some libels against the king of Prussia. Forced to abandon his home in Hamburg, he spent the next several years wandering across the northern tier of the European continent, visiting friends, hawking books and manuscripts, and confronting delinquent debtors. He voyaged eastward along the Baltic littoral to Königsberg and Saint Petersburg, then westward across the North Sea to London. Eventually, he landed in Paris, and there he took his life in a completely new direction by hurling himself into revolutionary politics. In July 1791, he was among the republican demonstrators on the Champ de Mars fired on by the troops of Lafayette; he was arrested and imprisoned for over a month in the roundup of left-wing agitators that followed the massacre of the Champ de Mars; and, after his release in September of that year, he frequented the Paris Jacobin club, where he fell foul of Robespierre by openly proclaiming his support for war against the foreign enemies of the Revolution. It was a remarkably variegated life. Virchaux traversed the European continent from one end to the other, and he rubbed shoulders with members of many different social classes. But wherever he went, he seems to have demonstrated the cultural equivalent of perfect pitch, striking just the right tone in his letters and his social interactions so that he was able to win either the confidence or the admiration or the loyalty of a truly astonishing range of historical figures: the revolutionary leader Jean-Pierre Brissot, whose works Virchaux printed when Brissot was an obscure Grub Street philosophe living in London, and whom he later supported against Robespierre in the Jacobin Club in Paris; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, the most famous poet in all of Germany, who was a frequent guest at Virchaux’s home in Hamburg; the

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mystic anti-rationalist philosopher Johann Georg Hamann, “the Magus of the North,” whom Virchaux visited in Königsberg and who found Virchaux to be “a very entertaining man”; one of the wealthiest bankers in Hamburg, in whose eyes Virchaux appeared “as sensible and orderly”; and, most amazingly of all, a poorly educated expatriate Swiss wine merchant in Paris, a militant, fire-breathing member of the Club des Cordeliers named Roullier, who put his own safety at risk in the days following Virchaux’s arrest to address a petition in Virchaux’s behalf to the members of the National Assembly. By adapting to his surroundings, Virchaux became all things to all people. In his letters to the STN, he appeared in the guise of a compatriot, peppering his letters with local patois and striking a tone of wistful longing for his native soil; and that tone, too, seems to have worked its charms since the STN imprudently allowed Virchaux to run up a very large debt. But he was not really a Neuchâtelois either. He was a citizen of Europe. Equally at home in Paris and Hamburg, among salt-of-the-earth Parisian workers and the most ethereal Dichter und Denker, he embodied the cosmopolitan ideal as a way of life. As one would expect of so itinerant a life as Virchaux’s, the evidence for it comes from a range of widely dispersed sources—from the archives of Hamburg and Paris, the memoirs and letters of Virchaux’s acquaintances, the announcements he placed in printed journals, and above all his dossier in Neuchâtel. The documents in that dossier reveal a detailed picture of Virchaux during his years as a bookseller in Hamburg— a much more detailed picture than it is possible to compile of him as a radical Jacobin in Paris. The Parisian chapter of his life, however, cannot be detached from the Hamburg chapter without distorting the overall shape of his life story; and that story deserves to be told in its entirety, not only because it is such a good story but also because it dramatizes a transition of epoch-making significance, from the cultural cosmopolitanism of L’Europe française to the political internationalism of L’Europe révolutionnaire.

* * * Of Virchaux’s early years, only scant evidence has survived. We know from documents in the Neuchâtel archives that he was born in 1739, at a time when the principality of Neuchâtel was about to enter a period of rapid demographic growth. Unable to find employment at home, many young men of Virchaux’s generation were forced to seek their fortunes abroad. So it is not surprising that Virchaux decided to leave Neuchâtel. But we do not know

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when he left, only that by 1765 he was in the north German city of Kiel, where he married a native Hessian (probably a descendant of Huguenot refugees) in the French Reformed Church. We also know, from documents in the Hamburg archives, that Virchaux’s Hessian bride died two years later in Hamburg; that, in 1771, Virchaux contracted a second marriage, this time to a native Hamburg Lutheran named Maria Catharina Flindt; and that, at the time of his second marriage, his position in Hamburg was still rather precarious: he was then eking out a living as a private tutor of French and occupied the lowest rung in the carefully graded legal hierarchy of the Hamburg population, that of “protected foreigner” (Schutzverwandter) without independent means. Such fragments of information are not enough to determine how Virchaux came to settle on the banks of the Elbe. As to why Hamburg would have been an attractive destination for someone like Virchaux—the reasons for that are easy to guess. In the first place, Hamburg was one of the most prosperous commercial cities in all of Germany. Unlike the imperial cities of Upper Germany, whose economic significance had dwindled when the center of European commerce shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic in the sixteenth century, Hamburg was fully integrated into the booming Atlantic economy. By the 1780s, its population was approaching 100,000, and roughly half of that population consisted of immigrants. A bustling and open center of international trade, rather than a sleepy, inward-looking German “home town,” Hamburg was a magnet for foreigners—above all, for foreign book dealers, according to the information contained in a town guide published in 1783. Also, and most important for Virchaux, Hamburg had long been a magnet for the members of minority religious faiths—notably, Huguenots, who had settled in Hamburg following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Though only a tiny minority in Lutheran Hamburg, the Huguenots there were extremely wealthy, and their presence would undoubtedly have enhanced the appeal of Hamburg for a French-speaking Swiss Calvinist like Virchaux. By settling in Hamburg, Virchaux was able to attach himself to a community of wealthy coreligionists. I emphasize the wealth rather than the religious ties of the Huguenot community because Virchaux does not seem to have cared much about his ancestral religious faith. Had he cared about it, he would not have married a Lutheran. And, in his letters to the STN, he showed more Voltairean esprit than Calvinist zèle. In one letter, for example, he asked the STN to keep on the lookout for some good pornographic works: “If you should come upon

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something lewd and very spicy, especially with certain edifying illustrations, you would do me a great favor by informing me of it,” he wrote. Edifying indeed! In Virchaux, as in many of his coreligionists, the fires of religious zeal had burnt themselves out by the late eighteenth century. But even then the French Protestant diaspora (like the Jewish diaspora) continued to function as a network of business and commercial relations. Other things being equal, French-speaking Calvinists were more likely to extend credit to their own coreligionists than they were to members of other religious denominations; and Virchaux needed credit, first to launch his business and later to keep it afloat since he had no independent means of his own. It seems all but certain, therefore, that he received financial backing from some of his wealthy coreligionists, like the Huguenot banker Pierre Boué, who gave Virchaux a ringing endorsement in response to inquiries about him from the STN: “We know the Sieur Virchaux personally. . . . He is a . . . man whose conduct is beyond reproach.” Of course, even Hamburg placed certain obstacles in the way of foreigners and members of religious minorities. For all its vaunted tolerance, it remained a Lutheran city-state, its ecclesiastical establishment dominated by bigoted orthodox pastors, like the infamous chief pastor Johann Melchior Goeze, the antagonist of Lessing. As a Calvinist in Hamburg, Virchaux was debarred from direct participation in political affairs even after he had acquired the legal status of an “inhabitant” (Einwohner) in 1780. But he was not debarred from participating in the republic of letters, the literary public sphere in which the formal distinctions of civil society were held in abeyance. In Hamburg, this unofficial public sphere was especially vigorous and dynamic. It spawned the first Freemasons’ Lodge in Germany, coffeehouses, reading societies, clubs, and informal groupings; it included, at various times, such literary luminaries as Lessing, Klopstock, Johann Basedow, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, and Joachim Heinrich Campe; and it was dominated by a wealthy and highly educated economic elite, merchants whose international commercial ties— especially to France and England—predisposed them to view educated foreigners in a tolerant and cosmopolitan spirit. The literary luminaries and economic elites in Hamburg did not mind in the slightest that Virchaux was a French-speaking Swiss Calvinist rather than a Germanspeaking Lutheran. Had they minded, they would not have flocked to his house in the Grosse Beckerstrasse, which, as already noted, served as a meeting ground for the flower of Hamburg society. And some of them may well have embraced Virchaux all the more warmly precisely because the household

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he had established with his Hamburg wife represented such a sharp break with conventional domestic arrangements: a bilingual (French-German) and interdenominational (Calvinist-Lutheran) ménage whose very existence testified to the values of enlightened cosmopolitanism. For Virchaux, then, Hamburg was an ideal home away from home. But that does not mean he severed all ties to his country of origin. His ties to Neuchâtel were visceral—truly, since he felt homesickness in his stomach. As an antidote, he asked the STN to send him parcels of Swiss cheese, which he requested with a great deal of precise detail: the cheese had to come from Les Verrières in the Val de Travers, it had to be aged for two to three years, and it had to be “fatty and runny” ( gras et pleureux). When, at last, the much-coveted and long-awaited parcels arrived in Hamburg from Neuchâtel, Virchaux wrote back to the STN describing how much he had “savored” its “good provisions.” Even with the passage of time, Virchaux remained bound to Neuchâtel by his taste for Swiss cheese. He also remained bound to it by his personal relations. He maintained close connections to various people in Neuchâtel: to a cousin named Colin, who approached the STN on his behalf in 1777; to Samuel Fauche, the STN’s erstwhile associate and frequent competitor, whose son Louis Fauche-Borel traveled from Neuchâtel to Hamburg to perform his apprenticeship in Virchaux’s shop. And, despite his long absence from Neuchâtel, Virchaux could still sound like a Neuchâtelois, at least in his letters to the STN, which were sometimes written à demi-mot, as if to indicate that two Neuchâtelois understood one another implicitly. In one letter, for example, Virchaux complained to the STN of Parisian booksellers. They were an insufferable lot, Virchaux said: “lazy,” “negligent,” “tardy,” and “distrustful.” What he did not bother to say was that each of those French vices stood opposed to a corresponding Swiss virtue: laziness to hard work, negligence to conscientiousness, tardiness to punctuality, and distrust to that good-natured ingenuousness which the Neuchâtelois of the eighteenth century liked to call “la rondeur helvétique.” He did not have to say it because the directors of the STN would have understood it without any explanation. Virchaux’s unflattering remark about Parisians functioned, therefore, like a conspiratorial wink: it signaled to his compatriots that he was one of them and that he had not renounced the values on which he had been raised. He had not renounced the dream of returning to Neuchâtel either. It was his hope, Virchaux told the STN repeatedly, that he would one day be able to see his “patrie” once again. That day looked quite remote at the time of Virchaux’s correspondence with the STN (and so far as we can tell, it never arrived). In the meantime,

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therefore, Virchaux dedicated himself to building a new life in Hamburg. It was there, on the banks of the Elbe, that opportunity beckoned, and, to all appearances, he made the best of the opportunity. To have risen from being a poor French-language teacher to the host of an elegant Hamburg salon may not have been quite the same thing as conquering le Tout-Paris. Still, it was an impressive feat of social climbing, and Virchaux accomplished it so quickly, in less than a decade, that the elevated social altitude seems to have gone to his head. By the early 1780s, a tone of parvenu snobbery had crept into the correspondence of the erstwhile villager from Saint Blaise, as when Virchaux complained to the STN of some moldy cheese that had arrived from Neuchâtel. The cheese was fit to be tossed on the dung heap, he remarked sniffily: “Not even the domestics wish to eat it.”

* * * At the same time that the doors of Hamburg society were opening before him, Virchaux threw himself with abandon into his new career. Already thirty-eight when he established himself as a book dealer in 1777, he was somewhat old to be setting out on a new career path. But his letters to the STN exuded the eagerness and the brash self-confidence of a young man-onthe-make. He told the STN that he desired nothing so much as to perform a kind of bookseller’s alchemy, “to convert Swiss paper into shiny metals,” as he put it. And he boasted of his spectacular commercial success, claiming that the number of his customers was increasing daily and that no one wanted to purchase books from anyone other than himself: “If this continues, I presume that in the end, I’ll be receiving orders for birds’ nests from China.” Virchaux never did sell birds’ nests, from China or anywhere else, but he would almost certainly have done so had there been any demand for them since he sold nearly everything else: subscriptions to all of the leading Frenchlanguage journals of the late eighteenth century; maps; prints; calendars; almanacs; sheet music; New Year’s greeting cards; note paper; knives for sharpening quills and scraping away ink blots; a children’s game for teaching spelling and reading; a cleaning fluid designed to remove stains and kill fleas and their eggs in woolen and fur garments; Scottish plaster for foot corns; a home remedy for lung, chest, and stomach ailments; partridge pâté; grape jelly; dried fruits; and an assortment of Swiss cheeses, including Emmenthaler, Gruyère, Motiers, and Travers. Virchaux announced all of those many incongruous items alongside his books in the “supplement” (Beylage) of the

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Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten (the HC ), the most widely disseminated newspaper in all of Germany, praising simultaneously the typographical quality of his editions, the efficacy of his home remedies, and the deliciousness of his Swiss cheese. Reading through those announcements in the HC, one gets the impression that Virchaux’s shop must have resembled a cabinet of curiosities: whatever his customers wanted, Virchaux was prepared to sell it. Above all, however, he sold books— an astonishingly broad selection of books, to judge from the Catalogue des livres de fonds et d’assortemens [sic] which he published in 1782. The cata logue was enormous: 226 pages comprising roughly 4,000 titles. French works from the entire eighteenth century were represented, including the most hard-hitting and incendiary of livres philosophiques. Since the French book trade in Hamburg does not appear to have been subject to much censorship, Virchaux did not need to take the same precautions as the STN, which listed its livres philosophiques in a separate handwritten catalogue. In Virchaux’s catalogue, books of every imaginable genre and ideological stripe appeared together, listed by title in alphabetical order. As one would expect of such an enormous cata logue, it contained more “assortiment” than it did “fonds.” In fact, it read like a geographic inventory of the eighteenth-century French-language publishing industry. The editions it listed came from all of the major centers of French publishing: Paris, western Switzerland, London, and the Low Countries—above all, London and the Low Countries. Of course, we cannot be certain whether Virchaux obtained all of those editions at their source: where they were published and where Virchaux got them need not have coincided. But he probably did get a lot of books from London and the Low Countries. Shipments from there could travel to Hamburg swiftly and cheaply by the maritime route across the North Sea—more swiftly and more cheaply certainly than shipments from Neuchâtel, which went either from Basel down the Rhine to the Low Countries and thence across the North Sea to the mouth of the Elbe or from Basel to Frankfurt and thence overland to Hamburg. It seems highly unlikely, therefore, that the STN was Virchaux’s principal supplier. In fact, the STN may not even have been Virchaux’s principal supplier in Neuchâtel. In the period between November 1777 and July 1783, the STN made twenty-nine shipments to Virchaux containing 4,366 copies of 176 works. But during that same period, Virchaux also maintained close relations with Samuel Fauche and with Fauche’s son, Jonas Fauche, both of whom sent Virchaux large quantities of their editions—most notably, their editions of

Figure 11. The bookseller’s cata logue of Jean-Guillaume Virchaux, title page and page 63. Note how the cata logue brings together on the same page the lachrymose novels of Baculard d’Arnaud, Les Epoux malheureux and Les Epreuves du sentiment, with works that would have passed for livres philosophiques in France—the mystical

eff usions of Saint Martin, Des Erreurs et de la vérité, the libelous work of Ange Goudar, L’Espion chinois, and the notorious materialist treatise of Helvétius, De l’Esprit. (Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen)

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Mirabeau’s Des Lettres de cachet and Mercier’s Tableau de Paris. For both of those best-selling works, Virchaux appears to have been the exclusive distributor in “Germany and other countries of the North,” to quote the standard formula from Virchaux’s announcements in the HC. He also claimed to be the exclusive distributor in Germany and the North for the English editions of the Annales littéraires and the Mémoires sur la Bastille by Henri Linguet, the maverick, expatriate anti-philosophe publicist in London. And his announcements in the HC indicated that he received regular shipments of new publications from Paris. Compared with the large number of books and journals that Virchaux obtained from his suppliers in Paris, London, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, his own publications did not amount to much. From the available evidence, it would appear that Virchaux’s printing shop produced a few pirated editions of best-selling French works, of Necker’s Compte rendu, Rousseau’s Confessions, Saint-Martin’s Des Erreurs et de la vérité, and the abbé Mably’s Observations sur le gouvernement des Etats-Unis; a reprint of the Mercure de France, which appeared in weekly installments for about a year, from early 1782 to early 1783; the French translation of a Robinson Crusoe adaptation for children (Le Nouveau Robinson) by the German pedagogical writer Joachim Heinrich Campe; and a periodical work by Jean-Pierre Brissot, Correspondance universelle sur ce qui intéresse le bonheur de l’ homme et de la société, which Virchaux printed on commission for the author. His printing shop also seems to have produced the occasional work in German. But it never turned out any large multivolume editions. So it must have been a rather modest establishment—probably not more than two or three presses. Whatever the precise scale of his printing operation, there can be little doubt that Virchaux was more a distributor of other people’s books than a producer of his own. In order to distribute hundreds of copies of a single work, Virchaux did the same thing as every other bookseller in Germany: he transported those copies to Leipzig and marketed them there to other booksellers at the fairs. Nearly all of Virchaux’s own editions were entered in the Leipzig fair catalogues, and so too were those works of which he claimed to be the exclusive distributor for Germany and the North. In his letters to the STN, however, Virchaux said that he was more of a retailer than a wholesaler, and the enormous size of his cata logue lends credence to that claim. The question, then, is where Virchaux’s retail customers were located and who they were. Virchaux told the STN that he supplied books to retail customers across the northern tier of the European continent, in “Germany and the countries

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of the North.” And he stressed repeatedly that his customers were drawn from the uppermost ranks of society. Indeed, he stressed that point so often that it stood out as one of the most prominent themes in his correspondence. He drew attention to his illustrious customers in Saint Petersburg: the empress Catherine II herself, who subscribed with him for the Kehl edition of the Oeuvres de Voltaire; a “grand seigneur,” who placed a subscription for the STN’s edition of the Arts et métiers; and “aristocrats at court, of whom one is responsible for the library of the Grand Duke.” He spoke with pride of his trade in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, Warsaw, and Mitau, where his customers consisted exclusively of “seigneurs” and “the most distinguished society” (tout ce qu’ il y a de plus distingué). He boasted that there were “more than ten princes” among those who had subscribed with him for the Kehl edition of Voltaire’s Oeuvres, and that of the twelve copies of the Supplément aux oeuvres de Rousseau he had ordered from the STN, “most are intended for sovereign princes.” And when he transmitted an order for subscriptions to the STN’s edition of the Conquêtes de Gustave Adolphe, he went so far as to list some of the subscribers by name: “M. le Comte de Schwerin, Chevalier de l’ordre militaire de l’Epée à Stralsund,” “M. le Baron de Düring, colonel au ser vice de S.M. danoise,” “M. de Horn, Lieutenant colonel au ser vice de S.M. suédoise,” and “M. de Hardenberg Réventlow, Conseiller privé dans la chambre des finances de S.M. Brittanique.” The list was impressive. But it was meant to be impressive. When he discussed his customers, Virchaux dropped names, titles, and ranks like a social climber in a salon. Was he telling the truth or just trying to dazzle the STN? Probably a little of both. Located on the Elbe, with easy access to both the North Sea and the Baltic, Hamburg certainly was an ideal site from which to transport books to customers in northern Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia. And Virchaux’s customers must have been scattered far afield, since the public for French books in Hamburg was too small to account for the large volume of his trade. At remote outposts of L’Europe française like the czarist court in Saint Petersburg, it is hard to imagine to whom he could have supplied French books if not to princes and courtiers. On the other hand, he was undoubtedly exaggerating when he claimed on one occasion that all of his customers without exception were “sovereign princes of the North and the most high-ranking aristocrats” (les souverains du Nord et les plus grands seigneurs). Evidence from a variety of sources indicates that Virchaux also supplied books to some educated middle-class customers in towns without princely courts: the writer Matthias Claudius in Hamburg, the philosophy

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professor Johann Georg Hamann in Königsberg, and the journalist August Ludwig von Schlözer in Göttingen. He simply did not bother to mention Claudius, Hamann, and Schlözer to the STN, probably because their names did not have the same cachet as that of Catherine II. He did not mention any of his customers among the economic and political elites of Hamburg either. And yet it seems all but certain that he would have sold books to some of the wealthy book collectors at the apex of Hamburg society: the mayor Albrecht von Sienen, the syndic Garlieb Sillem, the senator Johann Arnold Günther, and the merchants Capar Voght and Georg Heinrich Sieveking, all of whom owned large private libraries that included works of contemporary French literature. Virchaux’s name-, title-, and rank-dropping was not mendacious so much as it was selective. The selection, however, was always slanted in the same direction, toward the most illustrious of Virchaux’s foreign customers, probably because Virchaux wanted to make a favorable impression and so appear worthy of the STN’s credit. And if that was his goal, then the strategy succeeded, for the STN extended credit to Virchaux as if he were the Panckoucke or the Trattner of the North. In reality, he was not anything of the sort. His finances were too precarious to support his far-flung trade. When his financial situation began to erode, therefore, his trade came crashing down in ruins— and so too did his elegant life in the Grosse Beckerstrasse in Hamburg.

* * * About Virchaux’s professional and personal tragedies, more later. First, however, we would do well to take a somewhat closer look at Virchaux’s correspondence with the STN during the brief period when his trade seemed to be flourishing. At that time, his shop in Hamburg lay at the commercial crossroads of the northern European French book trade, between his suppliers to the west and his customers to the east, and Virchaux was directing the flow of books and periodicals like a modern traffic cop, steering Parisian, London, Dutch, and Swiss editions up the Elbe to Saxony, eastward along the Baltic to Prussia and Russia, and northward into Scandinavia. It is hard to imagine anyone better situated than Virchaux to survey the market for French books across the northern tier of the European continent. How did he depict the market in his letters to the STN? And what did he reveal about the tastes and preferences of his far-flung clientele?

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Virchaux was eager for the STN to publish works that would sell well in his “countries.” Whenever the STN floated the idea for a new edition, therefore, he would weigh in, either for or against it. He was for the publication of a work entitled L’Art de faire les garçons, “excellent for sovereigns who are applying themselves to increasing the size of their armies.” And he was equally enthusiastic about the STN’s plan to publish an edition of the multivolume Cours complet d’agriculture by François Rozier, especially since the work contained a chapter on techniques for fertilizing heaths: “It is good, Messieurs, that you are devoting a lengthy treatment to the section regarding heaths, which render barren nearly all of the North. . . . It will be essential to mention [this point] in your prospectus in order to encourage the public to subscribe.” Virchaux was also convinced (wrongly, as it turned out) that the STN’s edition of the abbé Mably’s Du gouvernement et des lois de la Pologne was a surefire best-seller. In fact, the very idea of Mably’s work inspired him so much that he waxed poetic when the STN’s edition was slow to leave the press: “Ne mettez point dans l’oubli, ces chers Mablis” (“Do not consign to oblivion those dear Mablis”). On the other hand, he did not approve of an edition of the Vie privée de Louis XV, since that work had already been printed in multiple editions and was widely disseminated: “It does not seem to me that the reprinting of this work will be a good investment for you.” Nor did he approve of the STN’s plan to publish an edition of the collected works of Marmontel—at least not in 1781 when the STN announced the plan: “This author [Marmontel] is still alive and will probably publish many more things [before he dies]. . . . People will say the same thing as they did about Voltaire several years ago—‘a few more years of patience, we shall outlive him perhaps, and then we shall have a complete and magnificent edition of his works.’ ” Virchaux loosed upon the STN such a flood of advice that it must have been difficult for the STN to absorb all of it. He said that the public in his countries wanted works to be “spicy” (piquant), “controversial” ( fort bruyant), and “biting” (mordant); that it was keen on “necromancy,” indeed anything connected to the “hermetic” or “occult” sciences; and that it had “a pronounced taste for good works on politics, natural history, medicine, mathematics, warfare, agronomy, and some excellent novels but not many.”  In the giving of advice, as in everything else, Virchaux opted for more rather than less. He tossed out recommendations one after the other, and did so with such alacrity that he often had to retract them. He told the STN that its large multivolume edition of the Arts et métiers would be well received, only to decide later that

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such large works sold very poorly “in the countries of the North.”  He maintained that Germany was awash in Encyclopédies, so that he could see little hope of being able to place the STN’s quarto edition but ended up taking several copies of it anyway. He tried to dissuade the STN from publishing Le Traité des pêches (the short work about fishing excerpted from the Arts et métiers) on the grounds that the public for such a work would prefer to await the German translation; later, he came to the conclusion that “the work could not but be well received in all of Germany and the countries of the North, where one sees nothing but ponds and lakes, and where the landed gentry [seigneurs propriétaires] do a great business from fishing.” He first urged the STN to pirate the abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique, despite the multitude of other editions in circulation, then advised it to postpone its edition precisely because “Europe is inundated [with the work].” The more Virchaux tried to clarify the conditions in the literary market, the murkier the picture became. In his attempts to depict the literary market, Virchaux was like a portraitist whose model appears at every sitting in a slightly different suit of clothes. He would make a preliminary sketch, only to discover that he had got some of the details wrong; then he would make a new sketch, and the same thing would happen. It was impossible for him to get beyond the preliminary stage because a definitive picture of the literary market was an elusive goal: the details were constantly changing. One thing, however, did not change. Throughout his correspondence with the STN, Virchaux insisted on the enormous importance that his customers attached to the material components of books—paper, for example, which made up roughly 50 percent of a book’s cost of production in the eighteenth century and which was always an object of great concern to Virchaux. “I would prefer that you obtained more beautiful paper for your editions,” he remarked to the STN. “The kind that you use is yellow. I beseech you to consider the editions of M. de Félice—for example, his Ezour-Vedan—and the paper that M. Gessner uses: That is, in part, what causes [books] to sell. For as I supply only sovereign princes of the North and the most highranking nobles . . . you can well imagine that it is not suitable for me to have unattractive editions [les éditions peu riantes]. Could you not procure paper from Périgord? It is so beautiful and also inexpensive.” If the STN’s editions contained yellow paper, Virchaux was certain to remark upon it. But he was also capable of praising the STN if it used high-quality paper, as it seems to have done for its quarto edition of the Encyclopédie, which impressed Virchaux so much that he reversed his initial judgment of its commercial prospects.

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When the STN first announced its Encyclopédie to him, he rejected it, explaining that he was already saddled with two copies of a rival Encyclopédie published by Félice in Yverdon, “which are a great burden to us.” Then he saw a copy of the STN’s edition and promptly changed his mind: “Several days ago, by chance, we saw your edition of the Encyclopédie, which we found much superior to the Yverdon edition as regards the paper and typography; and we do not doubt that the plates, too, are better executed. We desire with all our heart to be able to rid ourselves soon of the two copies that we have of the previous edition so that we can order yours; and though it will delay the sales of our edition [i.e., the Yverdon edition?], we would gladly take one copy en commission,” Virchaux told the STN. For the aristocratic and princely bibliophiles at the courts of northern Europe, what books were made of mattered no less than what they were about. That was the principal message Virchaux conveyed to the STN, and he conveyed it so often and in such approving tones, one gets the impression that he shared the outlook of his customers. It would be a mistake therefore to imagine that Virchaux examined books in the same manner as readers do today, by simply scanning the lines of text on the surface of the page. His relation to books was sensory as well as intellectual— as sensory in its own way as his relation to cheese. Cheese? To the twenty-first-century readers of this book, it may seem absurd, if not downright impertinent, to mention books in the same breath as cheese. Virchaux, however, did not give any indication that he was embarrassed to be selling both books and cheese, which he announced side by side in the pages of the HC; and his letters to the STN give the impression that he brought a similar, highly refined aesthetic sensibility to the appraisal of books and cheese alike—that he was equally attentive to the fattiness and runniness of a good Môtiers from the Val de Travers and the texture, weight, and color of high-quality paper from Périgord. As bookseller and cheese monger in personal union, he symbolized the close affinities between the bibliophile and the gastronome—affinities that were much closer in the eighteenth century than they are today, when the relation of readers to texts is mainly ocular and when texts themselves appear more and more frequently as disembodied electronic images on a computer screen. In the eighteenth century, if the French wished to indicate that a book had met with a favorable reception, they would say that it had been savored: goûté. What, then, were the ingredients that Virchaux expected to find in a well-made book? Certainly not the same ingredients in every case. Virchaux’s

Figure 12. Supplement to the Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten, 8 January 1782. The page contains two advertisements placed by Virchaux: one for books, which appears at the bottom of the first column, printed in Roman characters; the other for cheeses, grape jelly, and dried fruits from Switzerland, which appears at the top of the second column, printed in Fraktur. (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg)

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letters to the STN never mentioned anything like an all-purpose recipe for the perfect book. The important thing, in Virchaux’s view, was that the material qualities of the book be right for its particular subject and genre. He would therefore recommend one kind of paper, format, type font, and illustrations for one kind of book, another for another, and so on. About Les Contes de fées, a collection of fairy tales that the STN was planning to publish, Virchaux declared: “You cannot fail to succeed, above all if you use the pretty format of the Bibliothèque amusante that is printed in Paris. You’ll need [to use] the same paper and type and the same pretty illustrations.” For the STN’s edition of the classic novel Gil Blas by Lesage, Virchaux told the STN that it should try to obtain illustrations “a little more elegant than those in previous editions.” And for an edition of La Philosophie de la nature, an important work of materialist philosophy by Delisle de Sales, he said that the STN would do well to use “the same paper and type” as it had used for its edition of the Conquêtes de Gustave Adolphe, and that it should include “illustrations as beautiful as those of the original edition.” By contrast, a work of truly grand dimensions such as the Oeuvres of Marmontel required “superb paper, such as that of the new edition of Voltaire in-octavo [i.e., the Kehl edition of Voltaire’s Oeuvres] . . . and magnificent engravings by Moreau or Marillier.” The ingredients that went into the making of a book differed according to the nature of the book, and they had to be combined in just the right way. The slightest imperfection was enough to spoil the overall effect and attract Virchaux’s censure—yellow paper, clumsy illustrations, the wrong type font and format, even missed accent marks. Above all, missed accent marks. Virchaux could not bear to see a good book disfigured by faulty accentuation. It disturbed him so deeply that he took it upon himself to instruct the STN on the importance of correct accentuation: “People are complaining, and with good reason, of the little care that was given to . . . [the edition] of the Théâtre de Mme. de Genlis [one of the STN’s publications]; and just between us, there has been a great deal of murmuring about the numerous errors in the Oeuvres de M. Bonnet published by M. Fauche. In general, we observe that the whole matter of accent marks is treated lightly in Switzerland. It is, however, an essential matter. If an é ends a syllable and it isn’t silent, it must absolutely be accented in the printed copy.” When, despite Virchaux’s admonitions, the STN bungled the accent marks in its prospectus for the Oeuvres de Marmontel, Virchaux subjected it to a lecture so schoolmasterly in its tone, he sounded as if he were speaking to one of his former pupils in Hamburg: “Examine the said prospectus at the

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words complete, matiere, piece, théatre, caracteres, words where the â and the penultimate è must absolutely be accented in conformity with the rules of the Académie Française and all good grammars, as well as the Dictionnaire grammaticale, which must be regarded as the tribunal of the language.” To such a lecture, the STN had to make some kind of reply. So it decided to confront the foreman in its printing shop, who defended himself by arguing that the general tendency in the French printing industry was to reduce the number of accent marks. But Virchaux would hear nothing of it: “Why then does he [i.e., the STN’s foreman] not eliminate the accent aigu of the closed é as well? He can allege nothing in favor [of eliminating] the accent grave that does not apply equally to the accent aigu. Furthermore, Messieurs, you will not find that this omission or elimination of accents has taken place in France.” The longer it went on, the funnier it began to seem—Virchaux’s highminded lecturing on the subject of accent marks, which he pursued as if he were on some kind of one-man crusade, a printing-industry Don Quixote tilting at the typographical foes of the French language. In fact, it began to seem funny to Virchaux himself, who was not so quixotic as to be blind to his own folly. He saw quite clearly just how incongruous it was for a villager from Switzerland to don the shield and armor of the Académie Française. And so, in a moment of self-mockery, he knocked himself off his own high horse: “From today we renounce the profession of inspector [métier de contrôleur], which doesn’t in the least suit a Frenchman from Saint Blaise,” he told the STN. While Virchaux filled his letters with comments about accent marks, he was silent on another crucial aspect of the book: bindings. How books were bound did not concern him directly because, in the eighteenth century, binding usually belonged to the last stage in the process of literary transmission; most retail customers would purchase books unbound and then take them to a binder to have them bound according to their specifications. Nearly all the books Virchaux received from the STN reached him in the form of loose sheets, and that was usually how they would have been displayed in his shop: as loose sheets piled one on top of the other rather than as stitched and bound volumes arranged horizontally on a shelf. What became of them after they left his shop was not his business. His business was simply to sell the books. From the standpoint of selling books, however, there was one disadvantage to piling up loose sheets in a bookshop: it discouraged browsing. In Virchaux’s case, it was only a small disadvantage, since most of his customers did not reside in Hamburg and so could not have browsed the books in his shop anyway. But it may well have impeded sales to local customers— especially,

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sales of elegant editions like the STN’s Encyclopédie whose material qualities were among their chief selling points. Virchaux wanted those editions to catch the eyes of customers who had wandered into his shop, and that was unlikely to happen if the editions lay buried beneath a pile of loose sheets. He made an exception, therefore, when he ordered the Encyclopédie: “It would be best if it [the Encyclopédie] were stitched so that it can be placed prominently on our shelves. That is the only way to attract customers,” he explained. Unfortunately, the STN did a bad job of stitching, or so Virchaux implied when he ordered a second copy of the Encyclopédie in a subsequent letter and asked the STN to send the work to him in the form of loose sheets. He had found his own method of stitching, “more seductive for customers” (plus séduisante pour les amateurs), he told the STN. And soon afterward, an amateur did, in fact, fall victim to the seduction: “a very great and very rich nobleman,” who purchased a copy of the Encyclopédie that had been on display in Virchaux’s shop. What did seductive stitching look like? For us, it is hard to imagine— hard to imagine, in fact, how the stitching of a book could be seductive at all. That Virchaux would even talk about stitching in that way is significant, one further indication of the difference between his relation to the book and our own. As an object of skilled artisanal labor rather than industrial massproduction, the book in all of its material qualities could be a source of sensory— even sensual—pleasure to readers of the eighteenth century. It could also be quite expensive, especially a multivolume book like the Encyclopédie. With its thirty-nine volumes of text and plates, the STN’s quarto edition of the Encyclopédie cost 384 livres, more than six times as much as a skilled artisan would have earned in an entire month. Virchaux, however, never mentioned cost as an obstacle to the sale of books. On one occasion, when discussing the market for the abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique, he mentioned that he had purchased copies of a cheap Genevan duodecimo edition of Raynal’s work and had regretted that purchase afterward: “People are complaining of the small and too cluttered type,” he explained. Eventually, in order to satisfy the demand of his customers for Raynal’s work, he decided to purchase a stock of “the most beautiful editions” instead. “In these countries, people do not care about cheap prices; they want magnificence in their editions,” he declared. In Virchaux’s remark about “magnificence,” one can detect the same hint of boastful pride that sounded through his comments about the lofty social standing of his aristocratic and princely customers. Contrary to what

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one might have supposed, however, Virchaux did not mean to imply that his customers wanted the largest editions. The Genevan edition of the Histoire philosophique was also available in a large four-volume quarto format, but the edition that Virchaux purchased to replace the duodecimo was a tenvolume London octavo. And in every case when the same work was available as both a quarto and an octavo, Virchaux found a preference for the smaller format: in the case of Philosophie de la nature by Delisle de Sales, of which Virchaux ordered forty-eight copies in-octavo and only two lone copies in-quarto; Discours politiques of the comte d’Albon, which the STN had originally planned to publish in a quarto format but which Virchaux urged it to publish in an octavo format instead; and, most remarkably of all, the mammoth Kehl edition of Voltaire’s Oeuvres. “We already have more than forty subscriptions for the Oeuvres de Voltaire in-octavo and not a single one for the in-quarto. There are, however, more than ten princes among the subscribers,” Virchaux informed the STN. Why “however”? Presumably, because Virchaux found it noteworthy that even princes would prefer the smaller format. In the past, princely book collectors had tended to fill their libraries with stately folios and quartos, monumental editions whose physical size symbolized the status of their owners; and, if any work of the late eighteenth century seemed to call for a truly monumental edition, it was the Oeuvres of Voltaire, the prince of the philosophes. Virchaux’s customers did not see it that way. For them, bigger was not necessarily better. The grand goût of the princely book collector had ceased to be a goût for grandeur. When Virchaux spoke of “magnificence,” he was referring not to size but rather to quality, to those aspects of the book, such as illustrations, frontispieces, or vignettes, which the STN for its part was apt to describe and thereby castigate as “typographical luxury.” Unlike “magnificence,” “typographical luxury” carried pejorative connotations: it signified excess, a kind of sensual (and feminine) self-indulgence that diverted attention from the utilitarian function of the book. And, in most cases, the STN strove to reduce the price of its editions by trimming “typographical luxury.” The STN, however, conducted the lion’s share of its trade in France. For the princes and aristocrats whom Virchaux supplied from his shop in Hamburg, price was no object. His customers wanted the most magnificent books, regardless of what those books cost. Why? The first explanation that springs to mind is that magnificent editions were useful as objects of display and markers of social distinction. By the

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eighteenth century, ownership of a rich personal library had become an important symbol of prestige, not only or even mainly for scholars, whose libraries served their professional needs, but also for those members of the public who were not scholars at all: the scions of old noble families, courtiers at princely courts, tax farmers, and even wealthy international merchants in north German Protestant cities like Hamburg or Bremen. For such people, a library was not merely utilitarian. In fact, the less utilitarian it was, the greater its prestige value. And magnificent editions were nothing if not a repudiation of mere utility; so they were ideally suited to represent the status of their owners. To Virchaux’s customers, the representational value of Raynal’s Histoire philosophique may have mattered more than its denunciation of slavery. Indeed, some of those who purchased the book may have had no interest in reading it at all. Or so it would appear from an anonymous satirical work of 1783 entitled Kleine Charakteristik von Hamburg, which mocked the vain pretensions of Hamburg’s merchants: “Some of the rich merchants maintain large, attractive, well-chosen private libraries—for rats and mice. They themselves barely know how to spell the titles.” If the Kleine Charakteristik is to be believed, then books in Hamburg really did end up at the same place in the food chain as cheese, not as food for thought but as food for rodents. Such accounts of rich, illiterate book collectors should be treated with some skepticism, however. To denounce the wastefulness of large libraries belonging to uneducated book collectors was nothing new. It derived from a well-established rhetorical tradition whose origins went back to the first half of the seventeenth century and whose function was to validate the vocation of the scholar by establishing a set of invidious binary distinctions: between the ascetic and serious reader and the ostentatious and frivolous collector, between the book as a source of knowledge and the book as an object of display. When such distinctions recur in documents of the late eighteenth century, it demonstrates the durability of the rhetorical tradition: whether it also provides reliable testimony about contemporary cultural practices is open to question—the more so as anyone who invoked those distinctions always ranged himself on the positive side of the rhetorical opposition, with the serious readers against the frivolous collectors. Take, for example, a Zurich burgher named Hans Konrad Heidegger, who lamented, in a letter to the STN, that “bibliomanes who form libraries out of luxury and ostentation far outnumber true scholars”; or Jean-Henri-Samuel Formey, a French Protestant author in Berlin, who published an advice manual for would-be book collectors entitled Conseils pour former une bibliothèque peu nombreuse mais

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choisie, and who defined the ideal public for his Conseils by contrasting it to the ostentatious book collector: “If a seigneur desires a library only for reasons of ostentation, and to furnish his apartments, then he needs no guidance. He has only to purchase books in bulk quantities, employ a binder, and have his book cabinet decorated with some suitable ornaments. That is all. He has already attained his goal. But a seigneur or a lady who has wit, taste, and knowledge and who wishes to enjoy those delicious moments that reading can afford must set about it in a completely different way.” Admittedly, Formey made some modifications to the traditional rhetorical opposition between readers and bibliomanes, not the least of which was that he placed women on the side of the readers and broadened the legitimate functions of reading to include “those delicious moments that reading can afford”—in other words, pleasure. Those were very significant modifications indeed. But even so, Formey retained the figure of the ostentatious book collector as a rhetorical foil. Should we conclude, then, that the ostentatious book collector was nothing more than a rhetorical foil and that he never existed in reality? Certainly not. There is reliable evidence that some wealthy book collectors of the late eighteenth century did, in fact, purchase books without any intention of reading them, simply to display on the shelves of their cabinets curieux. Most of those books, however, were rare—in other words, old editions of the kind that one would have obtained at auctions rather than new publications, such as Virchaux received from the STN. And besides, the same book collectors who purchased rare books for display in cabinets curieux often maintained bibliothèques choisies for those books that they read or lent out to friends. They did not therefore fit squarely into either of the rigidly opposed roles that the rhetoric of Formey, Heidegger, or the Kleine Charakteristik von Hamburg allowed for. To ask whether Virchaux’s customers wanted magnificent editions for reading or for representation, as if the two options were mutually exclusive, would be to fall into the trap of what the French call a question mal posée. In order to avoid that trap, we need to take a step back and begin by ridding ourselves of two closely linked and equally mistaken assumptions: first, that the material aspects of the book were mere ornamentation, and, second, that as a carrier of ideas, the book was reducible to a message encoded in the letters of the printed page—that it was possible, in other words, to detach an immaterial, autonomous text from its material supports and that the text alone did the work of signification. For readers today, who no longer have a highly developed typographical consciousness, the text may, in fact, have acquired a certain measure of autonomy—but certainly not for Virchaux and

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his customers among the elites of L’Europe française. For them, the book embodied a multiplicity of languages, including but not limited to the text. The text could not be separated from its material embodiment and remain the same text any more than a picture could be separated from its frame and remain the same picture: the frame was part of the picture. And it would be erroneous, in any case, to speak of “the” text of any of the classic works of the French Enlightenment. Eighteenth-century publishers had little regard for the integrity of an original text, as little regard as the philosophes themselves, who were constantly reworking their texts at the behest of their publishers. The texts were constantly changing as they became embodied in new editions. The abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique, the work that prompted Virchaux’s comment about “magnificence,” grew and mutated so dramatically as it passed through dozens of editions that those “editions” could practically be described as separate works— or, if not as separate works, then as discrete stages in an ongoing process of textual transmission. Virchaux’s interest in Raynal’s work came at a relatively late stage in that process, more than twelve years after the publication of the first edition, at a time when the STN was preparing to pirate the Genevan edition that had been published in 1780. And as was his wont, Virchaux offered the STN extensive advice on how to execute its edition. His advice did not in any way imply a separation between the aesthetic qualities of the edition on the one hand and the ideological content of the text on the other. On the contrary: it underscored just how closely those two things were linked. To begin with, Virchaux reminded the STN of the public’s dissatisfaction with the Genevan duodecimo, whose tiny format and cluttered type made the text hard to read. If nothing else, a well-executed edition of Raynal’s work needed to be legible. Above all, however, it needed to be based on the best and the most authoritative text, which, in Virchaux’s view, was the one contained in the Liège edition. That edition “was produced under his [i.e., Raynal’s] eyes in the shop of M. Plomteux, his friend and with whom he lodged during the whole of his stay in that city [i.e., Liège]. It is on that edition that I advise you to base your own, while striving at the same time to surpass it in all respects,” Virchaux wrote. In order to surpass Plomteux’s edition, the STN’s would have to incorporate a number of features, Virchaux then went on to explain: “It would be desirable that you employ, for the atlas, a good geographer in Paris, like M. Fortin or Lattré, and that you have the maps illuminated, or at least a few copies of them, on the basis of which you can then illuminate [the other copies] more cheaply in Neuchâtel. Copies [of

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maps] that I illuminate here I sell for as much as one Louis more.” Illuminated maps were precisely the kind of thing that the STN would have described as “typographical luxury,” but they were not mere decoration— certainly not in a work devoted to the relations of European states with distant continents. Instead, they filled a documentary function, supplementing the text in much the same way as did the plates of Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Nor was it a mere decorative flourish that Virchaux had in mind for the all-important frontispiece: “For the portrait of M. l’abbé,” he told the STN, “you would need to have it painted anew in Berlin, [with the author] guarded by the Prussian eagle, or the eagle pouncing on Fanaticism personified, or something of that sort.” Virchaux’s imagined frontispiece was a portrait in the form of an allegory; and its function was to provide a pictorial gloss on the meaning of Raynal’s text, much like the famous frontispiece engraved by Cochin for the Encyclopédie. If it took the form of Raynal guarded by the Prussian eagle, it would have signified the protection given by Frederick II to the French philosophes— and, above all, to Raynal himself, who had taken refuge in Berlin following the condemnation of his work by the Parlement of Paris in 1781. If it took the form of the eagle pouncing on Fanaticism, it would have represented the Prussian monarchy as an instrument of Enlightenment, and so evoked the ideology of enlightened absolutism. In either case, Virchaux’s imagined frontispiece would have placed a royalist and Prussian construction on Raynal’s machine de guerre, an interpretative strategy that Virchaux probably envisaged as a way to increase sales at the Prussian court in Potsdam and other princely courts in the North. According to historians of the French book, the allegorical frontispiece enjoyed its heyday in the first half of the seventeenth century, roughly 150 years before Virchaux’s correspondence with the STN. At that time, the abstract pictorial language of the allegorical frontispiece carried a heavy weight of metaphysical significance since it embodied the philosophical dream of a universal language. Whether it still carried such a heavy weight of significance in the late eighteenth century is hard to say, but it certainly retained its appeal— at least for Virchaux’s customers. To satisfy the demand for allegorical engravings, Virchaux often sold them separately as prints, including, for example, an allegory of Rousseau’s Emile, which he took the trouble to explicate, at considerable length, in an advertisement that he placed in the HC: It [the picture] represents allegorically the principles of education contained in the book of Emile, which attempts to destroy the bar-

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barous abuses of scholastic education. . . . A large chain stretches across the pedestal [where Emile and his tutor are depicted] and binds the child to nature. It is the chain of necessity by which he [the tutor] keeps the child dependent on things alone so that he [the child] will never encounter any other than physical obstacles and so that the only bridle that restrains him is force and not authority. In front of the pedestal Opinion is represented raising up her Throne in the middle of the Heavens, the Earth, and the Sea. The tutor is pulling his pupil away from her [Opinion] while saying, “Opinion is the tomb of virtue among men.” The print culture whose spread Virchaux promoted in his role as bookseller was a culture of images as well as words, and it was unified by a typographical aesthetic that viewed the book as an expressive totality. It was also a culture whose days were numbered. With the advent of the Revolution, magnificent editions shared the fate of the powdered wig, the harpsichord, and the learned academy, all of them swept away by a sans-culottisme that revolutionized culture in both form and content. Reading through Virchaux’s letters to the STN, one can scarcely imagine anyone less likely than him to have taken part in such a cultural revolution. Those letters, however, predated the great turning point of his adult life: the collapse of his trade in 1785 and his flight from Hamburg a year later.

* * * Until now, no one has bothered to investigate the story of Virchaux’s financial collapse. In fact, no one has bothered about any aspect of Virchaux’s career, with the exception of one brief episode: Virchaux’s association with a native Silesian bookseller named Gottlob Hoffmann. That association lasted no longer than sixteen months, from December 1779 to April 1780 at the latest, and it ended acrimoniously. Afterward, Hoffmann went on to found his own firm, the forerunner of the Hamburg publishing house of HoffmannCampe, which became famous as the publisher of Heinrich Heine and other authors of Junges Deutschland in the first half of the nineteenth century. To historians of the German book trade, Hoff mann is a major figure; Virchaux a footnote to Hoffmann’s illustrious career. Had Virchaux’s life not intersected Hoffmann’s on the banks of the Elbe, it is quite likely that no historian would have taken any notice of it at all.

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And yet Virchaux seemed to have so much going for him: a charming personality, drive, ambition, a broad literary culture, a wide network of correspondents. What went wrong? Why did Virchaux fall into bankruptcy while Hoffmann rose to fame and fortune? One thing that went wrong was that the competition proved to be much stiffer than Virchaux had bargained for. At the outset of his career, Virchaux appears to have been the only book dealer in Hamburg to trade primarily in French books. By 1783, that was no longer the case. In that year, a Frenchman named Ambroise Daclin announced the establishment in Hamburg of a French book shop as well as a French reading cabinet, where subscribers could have access, for a fixed annual membership fee, to nearly all of the same Frenchlanguage journals that Virchaux had been selling. Almost overnight the competition between Virchaux and Daclin escalated into open warfare. In the pages of the HC, where Daclin too placed advertisements for his books, he fired broadsides at Virchaux, blasting his competitor for false advertising or sloppy printing.And he accompanied those attacks by sniping at Virchaux in letters to Virchaux’s creditors. In a letter to the STN, he spoke of “the precarious state of the affairs of the Sieur Virchaux” and offered to replace Virchaux as the STN’s correspondent in Hamburg, “in the event of a bankruptcy, of which rumors are circulating here.” Such sniping could do serious damage to the financial reputation of a bookseller. And reputation was a bookseller’s most important asset. Virchaux, therefore, had his hands full just trying to parry Daclin’s attacks. Then, sometime in 1784, a third French bookseller entered the fray: a native Neuchâtelois named Pierre-François Fauche, who was the son of Samuel Fauche, the STN’s former associate, and the younger brother of Virchaux’s own apprentice. It was too much. Three French booksellers were more than the market could support, even in a prosperous commercial city like Hamburg with its easy access to other cities along the Baltic and North Sea littorals. According to the Huguenot merchant Pierre Boué, who kept the STN abreast of events in Hamburg, the three booksellers were lowering their prices “so as to snatch business from one another,” with the predictable and disastrous consequence that the profits of all three of them were shrinking. Such a war could not go on indefinitely. Sooner or later one of the combatants was bound to go under. To keep afloat, Virchaux required access to a source of short-term credit, and Boué reported that some “friends” had, in fact, advanced Virchaux the funds he needed to meet some pressing obligations in 1783. Boué also indicated, however, that Virchaux had less “protection” than his two competitors

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and that the support of local “houses” (i.e., merchant and banking houses) stood firmly behind Daclin. In the three-way battle for the French book trade in Hamburg, Virchaux was the odd man out. To raise funds, therefore, Virchaux was obliged to sell off large quantities of his vast stock of books, which he did by staging a series of public sales, at intervals of three months, beginning in late 1783. That was not a happy solution since books sold in that way fetched much less than their retail value— as much as 60 to 80 percent less, if Virchaux’s own comments are to believed. But what else could he have done? Squeezed by the competition, harried by creditors, and forsaken by lenders, Virchaux had very little room to maneuver. To wriggle out of such a tight financial spot, he would have had to secure prompt payment on the large debts his own customers owed to him, and that proved impossible for reasons that had to do with the very nature of Virchaux’s trade. By supplying books to retail customers in distant locations, Virchaux inevitably became entangled with persons whom he did not know and whose creditworthiness he was unable to assess. When those customers defaulted on their payments, he was powerless to do anything about it. “Had they been in the city, I would have quickly seized them by the collar,” he told the STN. Instead of confronting his customers directly, as he would have done had they lived in Hamburg, Virchaux placed an announcement in the HC summoning delinquent debtors to meet their obligations; none of them seems to have taken any notice. Little by little, the unpaid debts mounted, until, in January 1784, Virchaux informed the STN that his customers were in debt to him for the staggering sum of 30,000 livres (a figure whose accuracy was more or less confirmed the following year when the syndics of the Hamburg Senate evaluated Virchaux’s assets in the wake of his bankruptcy). Only a bookseller who sold a large volume of books could accumulate a large volume of bad debt. So Virchaux’s financial headaches were an ironic tribute to his commercial accomplishments. He had wanted to construct a vast trade stretching across the northern tier of the European continent, and he had succeeded in doing so— succeeded a little too well for his own good since he lacked the financial resources to withstand the occasional disruptions in cash flow that were bound to accompany so vast a trade. In short, he was a victim of his own success. He was also a victim of his immoderate ambition, for any bookseller who was not blinded by ambition would have seen that under conditions of financial hardship the most sensible policy was retrenchment. Virchaux’s policy was exactly the opposite. In November 1783, he told the STN that he was mounting two additional presses in his printing shop in Hamburg and had

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hired two new foremen as well as three “talented compositors.” Around the same time, he also established a new book shop in Copenhagen, which he stocked with books from his storeroom in Hamburg and for which he engaged the ser vices of a commissioner in the Danish capital, a bookseller named J. C. Cléricourt. And, finally, in late 1784, with creditors barking at his heels, he announced the most ambitious, and the most chimerical, publishing enterprise of his entire career: a two hundred–volume miniature edition of the Oeuvres de Voltaire in-18! At the very moment, in other words, when the situation demanded prudent cost-cutting measures, Virchaux withdrew into a fantasy world of grandiose dreams. He was like a once-powerful general whose armies have been decimated and who passes his days holed up in his field tent poring over maps and planning fresh conquests in distant lands with phantom battalions. Virchaux was so much in thrall to his immoderate ambition that he lost touch with reality. The story of Virchaux’s rise and fall could be read, therefore, as a parable of commercial hubris: by reaching for the stars, Virchaux landed on his head. Virchaux, however, was not the least bit inclined to draw morals from his own story. Instead of seeking the source of his ills in his own mismanagement, he went in search of a scapegoat and found one in the person of Samuel Fauche. It was bad enough, Virchaux told the STN, that the elder Fauche had taken the liberty of sending him crate upon crate of worthless books, “which contained hardly anything other than manure”; to crown the infamy, he had planted his son, Louis Fauche-Borel, as an apprentice in Virchaux’s shop so that the younger Fauche would be able to relay Virchaux’s editions to his father for pirating in Neuchâtel. It sounded like a devious plot, and members of the Fauche family were certainly capable of it since they were an exceptionally unscrupulous clan even by the lax moral standards of the eighteenthcentury book trade. By the autumn of 1784, however, when Virchaux told the STN of his suspicions about Fauche’s machinations, the younger Fauche was no longer in Hamburg: he had gone back to Neuchâtel three years earlier to collaborate with his father. And besides, Virchaux published very few original editions of his own, so it is unlikely he would have possessed any books worth stealing. More likely, the whole business of a Fauche conspiracy was just a paranoid fantasy, an idée fixe that took root in Virchaux’s mind at a moment when he had reason to believe that everyone was in league against him. It was the last phase of his career in Hamburg. As the end drew near, the once brash and boastful denizen of the Grosse Beckerstrasse was reduced to the pitiable condition of begging his creditors for mercy.

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With the STN, Virchaux’s begging took the form of an appeal to local patriotism: “If you attach the same meaning to the term compatriot as I too often have had the misfortune to do, then you will accommodate yourself this time to the circumstances in which I find myself and which prevent me paying you during the course of this year. I should be very grateful if you would grant me 6, 9, and 12 months to settle the debt that I owe to you,” he wrote in November 1783. That was an unlikely sort of appeal to impress the directors of the STN, especially in late 1783 and early 1784 when they were traversing their own serious financial crisis. For them, as for most commercial booksellers, the cash nexus was stronger than the ties of blood and soil. On the other hand, no bookseller wished to see his debtor land in bankruptcy court, where assets were divided up among rival creditors and no single creditor was likely to receive the full value of his debt. To preserve its own financial interests, the STN indicated that it was amenable to compromise. And so began a cycle of negotiation that stretched from the spring of 1784 until Virchaux’s bankruptcy one year later. Virchaux’s opening gambit was to offer the STN a choice of two proposals: either payment in the form of books, some of which came from the shipments the STN had originally made to him, or the rescheduling of his debt—in other words, books now or money in the future. According to Boué, on whom the STN conferred its power-ofattorney, the choice was not felicitous: “Cash would be better.” Cash, however, was not an option. So Boué thought that the STN had better resign itself to accepting one of the two proposals. Time, he confided candidly, was fast running out: “We are beginning to believe, entre nous S.V.P., that you would do well to reach some accommodation. . . . Do not delay, therefore, in telling us how you wish to settle with him.” The STN seems to have left the choice of a settlement to its debtor. By the autumn of 1784, however, Virchaux was at wits’ end, so frantic that he could no longer make up his mind what he wanted to do. “He entertained us in the most incredible manner,” Boué told the STN. “At one moment, he wanted to return to you all of the books that you had sent to him; the next moment he wanted to keep them and gave the appearance that he was awaiting an opportunity to place them.” At length, Virchaux decided to keep the books and to reschedule his debt by issuing new bills of exchange. Thus, on 20 November 1784, Boué sent the STN three new bills, whose dates of maturity were staggered over the next year and a half: one for 446 livres, 14 sous, 3 deniers, due in March 1785; another for 800 livres, due the following October; and a final one, also for 800 livres, due in March 1786. Six months later, when Virchaux finally declared himself insolvent, all

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of those new bills became meaningless. And, in the meantime, the STN had also lost the opportunity to recover the books Virchaux had offered to it as an alternative settlement the previous year: “After we had trailed M. Virchaux for a long time in order to learn which books from your shipments to him he still had in his shop, he finally declared to us a few weeks before his bankruptcy that he no longer had any of them, that he had sold them all,” Boué reported. Following Virchaux’s bankruptcy, the syndics of the Hamburg Senate set to work to devise a plan for satisfying his creditors. It turned out to be a mammoth task. Virchaux’s papers were in such a state of disorder, Boué informed the STN, that the syndics had enormous difficulty sorting them out. It was not until late September 1785 that they were able to draw up a plan and circulate it among Virchaux’s creditors. The plan disclosed the sorry state of Virchaux’s finances: 60,600 Hamburg Mark (HM) worth of debts, as against only 45,900 HM worth of assets—in other words, a deficit of 14,700 HM, which was the equivalent of 22,050 livres tournois at an exchange rate of 4 livres, 10 sous, to 3 HM. More than half the large sum of debts that Virchaux’s customers owed to him the syndics discounted as either “dubious and subject to dispute” or “bad and entirely lost.” So most of Virchaux’s assets consisted of books, which the syndics proposed to distribute directly to Virchaux’s creditors by means of a lottery. They also proposed that Virchaux be allowed to resume his trade— a course of action that they urged his creditors to approve out of regard for his family: “We dare to flatter ourselves that consideration of the good which will result for the family of the Debtor from seeing its Head restored to the condition of being able to work effectively for the maintenance and recovery of its wellbeing will not fail to make an impression on the minds of his Creditors; the more so as we can testify that the failure of his business is the result, not of dissipation or indolence, but rather . . . of too great an ambition to extend his trade, which drew him into enterprises beyond his capacity.” So far as we can tell, the STN and the other creditors consented to the plan of the Hamburg Senate. And, in the autumn of 1785, Virchaux did, in fact, resume his trade in the Grosse Beckerstrasse—but not for long.

* * * With the conclusion of Virchaux’s bankruptcy proceeding, the documents about him in Neuchâtel come to an end; and, for his subsequent career, we

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do not possess a source of evidence as rich as that of his correspondence with the STN. Traces of his subsequent career have survived, however—notably, in the archives of Hamburg and Paris, in the letters of contemporaries, and in newspapers. By connecting those scattered bits of evidence and by filling in the documentary holes through a work of imaginative reconstruction, it is possible to produce a rough sketch of Virchaux’s life as it unfolded in the years following his bankruptcy. In the autumn of 1785, around the same time that the syndics of the Hamburg Senate were deliberating in his bankruptcy trial, Virchaux came under suspicion of having published some highly inflammatory political libels against the Prussian king Frederick the Great. As a free imperial city, Hamburg was not directly subject to Prussian jurisdiction. Still, the Hamburg Senate had to consider the sensitivities of its powerful neighbor. So, on 7 October 1785, it summoned Virchaux to be interrogated under oath on the subject of the libels. Virchaux defended himself in his testimony before the Hamburg Senate, but he also wrote a letter directly to the Prussian cabinet in Berlin— a move that the Prussian ambassador in Hamburg found to be “very disagreeable,” presumably because it represented a breach of diplomatic protocol. It was certainly a tactless move, the more so as the Prussian ambassador served as a kind of protector for members of the French Reformed Church in Hamburg, who did not have their own church building and who conducted their religious ser vices at the residence of the Prussian ambassador. Earlier in his career, when everything seemed to be going well for him, Virchaux had tried to curry favor with the Prussian ambassador by presenting him with gifts of dried fruit. Now, at the very moment that he was struggling to resurrect his fallen trade, he had managed to poison his relations with his foreign protector. It was an inauspicious beginning to his second attempt at mounting a trade in Hamburg. And the second attempt was bound to be more difficult than the first, because Virchaux’s financial reputation had suffered such a terrible battering from his widely publicized bankruptcy. Had he simply re-launched his trade under his own name after all the bad publicity, it would have been like sailing under a red flag: all of his potential suppliers would have stayed away from him. What was an insolvent bookseller to do? Instead of announcing books under his own name, Virchaux concealed his identity behind an elaborately wrought commercial façade. He formed some kind of association with a bookseller named Chaidron, who fronted for him by lending his name to announcements in the HC; and, at the same

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time, Virchaux created a new company: La Société Typographique-Littéraire du Nord. Announcements for that new typographical literary society usually appeared with the name of Chaidron at the bottom, until December 1785, when Chaidron published an announcement in German declaring that he had established his own trade under the name of “Chaidron & Comp.” At that point, the announcements on behalf of the Société Typographique-Littéraire du Nord ceased to mention the name of any bookseller; they mentioned only the name of the firm, and readers of the HC would not have had any idea whom to connect the firm to—unless they recognized the address, which was none other than Virchaux’s house in the Grosse Beckerstrasse. It would have taken careful detective work to find Virchaux behind so many layers of mystery and obfuscation. It is by no means clear, therefore, what kind of plan Virchaux had in mind for the portentous-sounding Société Typographique-Littéraire du Nord. According to an announcement in the HC of 4 March 1786, a musée, affiliated with the musée de Paris, was to be established in Hamburg under the auspices of the new typographical literary society, its members elected from among sçavans and amateurs both in and outside of Hamburg; and it was to convene in a salon (presumably, in Virchaux’s house), which would be open to the general public during those hours when the musée was not in session. There was also to be some kind of connection between the new typographical literary society and a maison de commerce in Paris, with the latter serving as a source of new publications, so that “customers would not be kept waiting for [the delivery of] their orders.” Every aspect of the plan was obscure—the musée and its elections, the salon for the general public, the maison de commerce in Paris— so obscure that one wonders whether Virchaux himself had thought through what the plan entailed. The most one can surmise is that he was desperately hatching projects to salvage his life in Hamburg and that he had some vague notion of combining his trade as a bookseller with a reconstituted version of the intellectual salon he and his wife had hosted in their house in the Grosse Beckerstrasse. Unfortunately for Virchaux, those projects do not seem to have got any farther than his unrealized two hundred-volume miniature edition of the Oeuvres de Voltaire. The last announcement for the Société Typographique-Littéraire du Nord appeared in the HC of 14 April 1786. Sometime thereafter, Virchaux abruptly took flight, either because the combined enmity of the Prussian ambassador and the Hamburg authorities had made him fear for his safety in Hamburg or because he was short of funds and had decided finally to confront his delinquent debtors outside of Hamburg.

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Even after his flight from Hamburg, Virchaux may very well have retained a financial interest in some kind of bookselling operation there, and, if so, it was probably through an association with Chaidron, who stayed in Hamburg and conducted his trade out of Virchaux’s house in the Grosse Beckerstrasse. Virchaux’s wife also stayed in Hamburg (where she died, more than three decades later, in 1817). So Virchaux was separated from his family at the same time that he was driven from his adopted city. It must have been a wrenching personal experience, but how exactly it affected him we have no way of knowing. About the tragic turn of Virchaux’s personal life, the records of the Hamburg Senate for 1786 contained only the following laconic observation: “It is reported that the insolvent Virchaux has departed from here.” Departed for where? Apparently, for Saint Petersburg, where Virchaux had once conducted a vigorous trade and where he had even sold books to Catherine the Great. By traveling to Russia in 1786, he probably hoped to extract payment from some of his former customers. If he thought that he would be able to “seize them by the collar,” however, he was in for a rude awakening. In Saint Petersburg and the North, as Virchaux had always stressed with considerable pride, nearly all of his customers belonged to the highest ranks of the nobility, a class notorious for its cavalier attitude toward the payment of debts. It is easy to imagine, therefore, with what disdain they would have treated a Swiss bookseller from Hamburg who turned up at their doorsteps demanding an audience. It seems doubtful whether Virchaux would even have been able to get a foot inside the gates of the Winter Palace or an elegant townhouse near the banks of the Neva. But if he did get inside, he would have met with a frosty reception. After he had cooled his heels for several hours in a draughty antechamber, a lackey of the household would have appeared to inform him that His Eminence was not, in fact, at home, or not disposed to see him, and that Virchaux would have to return the following week. And after returning the following week, Virchaux would eventually have got the message. Chastened by his experience, he might also have begun to rethink his admiration for the fancy-sounding titles of his noble customers. After his stay in Saint Petersburg, Virchaux reversed direction and headed back west. In early 1787, he arrived in Königsberg, where he met with the philosopher Johann Georg Hamann, and from there he traveled on to Berlin. At the time of Virchaux’s passage through Berlin, the presses of the Prussian capital were turning out the volumes of the most hotly coveted publication of the late 1780s: the Oeuvres posthumes of the Prussian king Frederick the Great, who had died in 1786, leaving behind a treasure trove of unpublished

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manuscripts. The Prussian government had awarded that treasure to the Berlin book dealers Georg Jacob Decker and Christian Voss, but some manuscripts of the late king were thought to have eluded Decker and Voss’s grasp, and those became the object of intense speculation. Always alert to the main chance, Virchaux acquired a bundle of manuscripts—mainly poems and letters—purportedly from Frederick’s pen; then he set out for London (perhaps passing through Hamburg en route), where he tried to sell the manuscripts to English publishers “in whatever way possible,” as one contemporary observer described it in a letter from the British capital. But it is unclear whether Virchaux had any success and equally unclear whether the manuscripts were genuine. Sometime after his attempts to peddle the manuscripts in London, Virchaux left the British capital, crossed the Channel, and, by the first half of 1791 at the very latest, he was settled in Paris. Why Paris? The most likely explanation is that Virchaux wanted to establish some kind of conduit for supplying French books, pamphlets, and journals to his business associates in Hamburg. Following the outbreak of the Revolution, the German public was clamoring for political literature from France, and Parisian presses were turning out vast quantities of it, unconstrained by the monopolistic booksellers’ guild, the system of exclusive book “privileges,” and prepublication censorship, all of which had collapsed in 1789. It would have been an ideal moment for a French-speaking bookseller from Germany to set himself up as a commercial intermediary between Pa risian publishers and German distributors. About the precise nature of Virchaux’s commercial activities in the French capital, however, the sources are silent. Such evidence as exists bears on his political rather than his commercial activities. Virchaux’s initiation into revolutionary politics appears to have occurred through the Club Helvétique, a small circle of Swiss expatriates living in Paris, most of them exiles from the abortive 1781 revolt in the canton of Fribourg, who met periodically from June 1790 to August 1791 and who dedicated themselves to recruiting new members from among the Swiss Guards at the Tuileries Palace. In its social composition and its cultural tone, it belonged to an utterly different world from the one in which Virchaux had moved during his days in Hamburg. The ringleader of the Club Helvétique was a rough-hewn, poorly educated wine merchant named François Roullier, who lived with his wife and four children in a small one-room flat on the rue du Regard in the sixth ar-

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rondissement and whose political activities made him the object of relentless police surveillance. In the summer of 1791, a police spy paid Roullier a visit and described the scene of his household: the cramped quarters and Spartan furnishings; his wife scribbling figures in an account book; his eldest son, who was on leave from the army, and who had come home to see his parents before returning the following day to his regiment; and Roullier himself, who at six o’clock in the evening promptly got dressed and headed off to the Club des Cordeliers. In the report of the police spy, Roullier came across as trusting and guileless, for he did not seem to have had any suspicions about the identity of his uninvited visitor, who managed to coax him into sharing a bottle of beer. His tongue loosened by the beer, Roullier let fly with invectives against the new president of the National Assembly, whom he denounced as “a scoundrel and a villain”; then he sang the praises of the Club des Cordeliers, and, while speaking of the Club des Cordeliers, he worked himself up to a high pitch of revolutionary fervor: “We would do everything, we would do everything, there’s only one way to do it!” The report did not bother to spell out whose “way” Roullier had in mind, probably because it was unnecessary to do so. Roullier was a recognizable type. Though he was a native of Switzerland, everything else about him placed him squarely in the ranks of the Parisian Sans-Culottes: his franc parler, his tight-knit family, his political allegiance to the Club des Cordeliers, and, above all, his Manichean worldview. To Roullier, the whole field of political conflict seemed to be divided into two starkly opposing camps: the “aristocrats,” whom he described as an “arrogant sect” and whom he blamed for all the ills besetting the French and Swiss “nations,” and the “patriots,” who “had made the Revolution.” It is hard to imagine why a man like Roullier would have befriended Virchaux, the erstwhile purveyor of “magnificent” editions to the princes and aristocrats of L’Europe française; but befriend him he did, and not only that, he stood by Virchaux in his moment of dire need during the long and difficult months of the summer of 1791. In the early history of the Revolution, the summer of 1791 stands out as one of the most crucial moments. Just when the new constitution was nearing completion in June of that year, the king nearly scuttled it by his failed attempt to flee the kingdom. Conservative partisans of the constitutional monarchy under the leadership of Lafayette tried to patch things up by inventing the fiction that the king had been abducted, but the left wing of the revolutionary movement would have none of it. Republican sentiment was on

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the rise in the revolutionary clubs, and it burst into the open on 17 July when some 50,000 republican demonstrators, including Virchaux, gathered on the Champ de Mars, nearly one year to the day after the Fête de la Fédération, the supreme symbol of national unity, which had been held on the very same spot. The political consensus of the early Revolution had come unraveled. Soldiers of the National Guard under the command of Lafayette opened fire on the demonstrators killing perhaps fifty of them, and, in the days that followed, the forces of order rounded up and imprisoned roughly two hundred members of the popular movement. Virchaux escaped the massacre on 17 July but not the subsequent roundup. Sometime in mid-July (the precise date is unclear), a police agent arrested him on orders of the National Assembly and transferred him, without trial or the presentation of formal charges, to the prisons of L’Abbaye Saint Germain. Informed of Virchaux’s imprisonment, Roullier and other members of the Club Helvétique promptly sprang to his defense. They addressed a collective petition to the National Assembly protesting the violation of the hospitality due to a foreign resident in France, the lack of any formal charges against him, and the suffering inflicted on a “sexagenarian” [sic], which they described as an act of cruelty reminiscent of “the foul deeds of Le Noir and Sartine” (police lieutenants under the Old Regime). To remedy the injustice perpetrated against Virchaux, they demanded that his accusers present their charges publicly; and they concluded with an ominous warning about “the enemies of your liberty,” who deliberately committed illegal acts so that the peuple would come “to regret [the passing] of the Ancien Régime.” The collective petition of Roullier and his compatriots did not mince words, and it made its argument forcefully; but it was too polished to have been the work of Roullier alone, who also submitted to the National Assembly two letters without the signatures of his compatriots in defense of the man whom he called “le Sieur Vuichot.” With their execrable spelling and faulty grammar, Roullier’s letters made for difficult reading, and Roullier anticipated the difficulty by explaining that he had not wanted “to borrow a strange pen” (emprunter de plume étrange): “I thought that the truth is only one, however it is presented” (de tel manière quel fut presentés). Roullier presented “the truth” after his own fashion, in the manner of a man who wielded a pike with greater dexterity than he did a pen and who wielded a pen as if it were a pike. He raged against vile slanderers “who served the vengeance of aristocrats” by sowing division among the

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people; he bristled with indignation at the imputation of wrongdoing to foreigners like Virchaux, who “have nothing to reproach themselves for other than to have cherished your revolution and sought to propagate it beyond the Alps”; he affirmed with militant pride that “no French citizen has made such great sacrifices for the Revolution as myself”; and he concluded his final letter with a ringing exhortation to his brothers-in-arms: “May Heaven turn away the storm that threatens us, may it make of 24 million Frenchmen a family of brothers, and may the scene on the Champ-de-Mars remove the blindfold from their eyes.” To modern ears, the rhetoric sounds overblown and formulaic, but there can be little doubt that Roullier meant it sincerely. For him, the ideal of fraternity— of the nation as a “family of brothers”—was not an empty abstraction. He honored that ideal in his deeds, even at the risk of his own personal safety, which was considerable in the summer of 1791 when the republican Left was in disarray and most of its leaders had gone either into hiding or into exile. Instead of lying low until the repression had lessened, he seized the moment to speak his “truth” to the men in power, and he did so, at least in part, for the benefit of “le Sieur Vuichot,” a “brother” whose name he could not even spell. Virchaux was not alone, therefore, in the period following his arrest. But from inside the prison of L’Abbaye, his situation during the summer of 1791 must have looked bleak. It was the low point of his life, lower even than the period preceding his financial collapse when he had been reduced to begging the indulgence of his creditors. Now he was reduced to begging his jailers for his most precious possessions of all, his life and liberty. He was fifty-four years old—not yet a “sexagenarian,” as his compatriots had erroneously claimed (probably to make his situation seem all the more pitiable) but, by the standards of the eighteenth century, an old man all the same. The petty sensitivities of a Prussian diplomat had combined with his financial woes to drive him from his home and his family; the haughty indifference of his aristocratic customers had left him penniless; and, in Paris of all places, the capital of revolutionary France, he had been arrested without trial in direct violation of the rights that the Revolution proclaimed. It was enough to melt a heart of stone. Or so Virchaux must have hoped when he described his sorrowful condition in a letter of 2 August to the National Assembly: I have had the honor to write to you several times in order to appeal to your [sense] of justice and humanity. In accordance with the idea

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that I had formed of your principles, I believed also that I could appeal to the sacred right of nations [le Droit sacré des Gens], which I consider to be inalienable. Finally, I set before you my very old age, my suff erings, my infirmities, and the inexpressible need of a family of which I am the head to be kept informed of the commercial transactions [underlined in the manuscript] with which it entrusted me as well as of the funds that it confided in me. You paid no heed to my appeals, and your silence tells me that I, too, must impose an eternal silence upon myself. Compared to Roullier’s letter, Virchaux’s sounded restrained. It did not rail at villains and scoundrels or thunder imprecations against nefarious aristocrats. Its allusions to Virchaux’s age, ill health, and needy family belonged to the conventional rhetoric that clandestine booksellers under the Old Regime had used to plead for mercy when they had been imprisoned in the Bastille for selling prohibited books. Even its appeal to the “right of nations”—i.e., international law—was hardly revolutionary. International law was not a revolutionary doctrine, in contrast to the “rights of man.” And, although he was not a French citizen, Virchaux could, in principle, have appealed to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which stipulated in article 7, “No man may be accused, arrested, or detained except in cases determined by the law and according to the forms it has prescribed.” His letter represented a prudent compromise, between an old-fashioned appeal for mercy on the one hand and a revolutionary appeal for justice on the other. Whether it did anything to help shorten his term of imprisonment is another question. When Virchaux was finally released from prison on 1 September (almost one year to the day before the Abbaye became infamous as the site of the September Massacres), he emerged into a world quite different from the one he had left in mid-July. The Assembly had completed its work on the constitution, which the king was to sign, with great and pomp and circumstance, two weeks later. Elections to a new Legislative Assembly, limited to “active” citizens as prescribed in the constitution, had been held in late August, and, when the new Assembly convened at the beginning of October, three times as many of its deputies joined the conservative Feuillants (a club that had split off from the Jacobin club in July) as joined the Jacobins. To all appearances, the Right had got matters firmly in its control. Virchaux, however, did not swim with the conservative tide. Instead, he drifted toward the Jacobins, who were now all the more radical because they

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had shed their Feuillants members; and, in the Jacobin club, he threw himself headlong into the most contentious debate of the autumn of 1791: the debate over the war. At the time, war seemed to many in the Jacobin club to provide the solution to France’s two most pressing challenges: the saberrattling émigrés in the Rhineland, who were threatening, with the support of Austria, to launch a counter-revolutionary war against France from without; and the non-juror priests (those who had refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy), who were undermining the unity of the country from within. Partisans of the war argued that it would remove both threats simultaneously, driving away France’s external enemies and unmasking its internal ones, and that it would have the additional virtue of carrying the Revolution to other nations of Europe, which would welcome the French armies as liberators from their own kings and aristocrats. Not everyone, to be sure, supported the war. Robespierre did not, and he sternly reproved his countrymen for the folly of their enthusiasm. But the enthusiasm was contagious. It infected the galleries of the Jacobin club, which gave thunderous applause to pro-war orators like Brissot, Robespierre’s chief antagonist. It also took hold of Virchaux. In the battle between Robespierre and Brissot, the first of many that would lead ultimately to Brissot’s execution during the Terror, Virchaux sided unambiguously with the former Grub Street philosophe whose works he had printed when Brissot was living the life of an expatriate in London. At the height of the war enthusiasm on 12 December, Virchaux staged a symbolic act in support of Brissot as eloquent in its use of nonverbal language as an allegorical frontispiece: he delivered to the Jacobin club a sword of Damascus steel, accompanied by a letter explaining that the sword was intended “for the first French general who would strike down an enemy of the Revolution.” After the secretary of the Jacobin club had read Virchaux’s letter from the tribune, a spontaneous reaction set in. Isnard, a deputy in the Legislative Assembly from Provence, seized the sword and while brandishing it overhead, he proclaimed: “Here it is, Messieurs, this sword shall always be victorious. The French people will let out a great cry, and all other peoples will respond to its voice. The earth will fill with soldiers, and all the enemies of liberty will be erased from the list of free men.” Only Robespierre, true to form, objected, exhorting “the assembly to curtail all such flights of eloquence capable of carrying away opinion at a moment when it needs to be led by calm discussion.” With its perfect sense of drama and timing, Virchaux’s intervention on 12 December was a brilliant coup d’ éclat, the effect of which was to illuminate

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the central division in the Jacobin club on the eve of the war. It is also the last trace of Virchaux’s existence that can be found in the archives. After 12 December 1791, his trail goes cold. And so the story of Virchaux’s life ends in medias res— or perhaps not quite in medias res since in 1791 Virchaux was almost certainly nearer to the end of his life than he was to the middle. Robespierre had a long memory. It seems unlikely that he would have forgotten Virchaux and his sword of Damascus steel, delivered to the Jacobin club at a moment when Brissot’s star was in the ascendant and Robespierre’s in temporary eclipse. Later, during the Terror, anyone associated with Brissot was in serious danger of being arrested and dispatched to the guillotine, and the danger would have been all the greater for a foreigner like Virchaux because the Terror was accompanied by a rise in xenophobia. Even if Virchaux did not succumb to his “infirmities,” his prospects of surviving to become a sexagenarian were not good. But all of that is mere speculation. Only two things about the final phase of Virchaux’s life seem reasonably certain: he did not die alongside his wife in his adopted city of Hamburg, and neither did he die in Neuchâtel, the country of his birth, to which he had dreamed of returning. He died, as he had lived, a wanderer in Europe.

* * * The journey of Virchuax’s life led in many different directions, through some fascinating historical byways and across personal peaks and valleys. But it leads the historian to an enigma: how are we to reconcile the Virchaux of the Grosse Beckerstrasse in Hamburg, bibliophilic connoisseur of magnificent editions, supplier of French books to princes and high-ranking nobles, and host of an elegant salon, with the Virchaux of Paris, friend of Roullier, republican demonstrator on the Champ de Mars, and partisan of revolutionary war in the Jacobin club? One solution would be to dismiss the whole question as misconceived. To search for Virchaux’s underlying identity is to assume that he must have had one. But why make that kind of essentialist assumption? Rather than trying to reconcile the different aspects of Virchaux’s protean character, we could simply say that he changed during the course of his life and leave it at that. And, of course, he did change. How could he not have done so? When his trade went under, his world collapsed. He tried to pick up the pieces, but he was unable to do so. And when, after several years of futile wandering, he arrived in

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Paris, he was confronted with a range of possibilities that he could not have envisaged beforehand. No one, in fact, could have envisaged those possibilities. Until it happened, the Revolution was unthinkable. Looking back from the standpoint of 1789, revolutionaries may have tried to narrate the story of their lives so that the Revolution would appear as the culmination of what went before. But such retrospective narratives were based on an illusion, on what historians would call a teleological fallacy. Roullier himself reproduced that fallacy in one of the letters he wrote to the National Assembly when he claimed that his attachment to “the revolution” went back to the uprising in Fribourg in 1781. In reality, nobody associated with the uprising in Fribourg was thinking, “today Switzerland, tomorrow France, then the world.” It only appeared that way afterward. In trying to make sense of Virchaux’s life, therefore, we certainly need to avoid the pitfalls of essentialism (the assumption of a core unchanging identity) and teleology (the illusion born of reading history backward). But that does not mean we need to go to the opposite extreme, which would entail rejecting entirely the unity of Virchaux’s life and dividing it into two incommensurable halves separated by the chasm of a total personal transformation. Such accounts of personal change belong to the tradition of religious biography: Paul on the road to Damascus, Augustine in the garden, Luther in the tower. Perhaps a few rare individuals have undergone change of that sort, but most mere mortals do not. Instead of being reborn suddenly in a moment of epiphany, they remake themselves piecemeal. They interpret fresh experiences in light of old ones and cobble together new identities in the present from the elements bequeathed to them from the past. It is quite possible to accept that the Virchaux of Hamburg was different from the Virchaux of Paris and that the latter did not emerge naturally from the former like a moth from a cocoon, and also maintain, at the same time, that his life possessed some kind of meaningful unity. The question is what kind of unity. To answer that question, let us turn our attention once again to Virchaux’s career in Hamburg and to the type of print culture whose spread he promoted in his role as a book dealer. Above all, it was a cosmopolitan culture. Unlike German books, whose “Gothic” type expressed the separateness of the German national tradition, “magnificent” editions of French books were vehicles of cross-cultural communication. All of their formal properties elevated them above the level of national particularity: the Roman type fonts in which they were printed, the classical harmony of their material components, the interplay of text and image, and, most important, the language in which they were

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written. French was the nearest thing to a common idiom that Europeans possessed in the eighteenth century, and Virchaux was deeply concerned to prevent its fragmentation into regional variants, to ensure that it remained uniform all across Europe— hence his admonitions to the STN to honor the rules laid down by the Académie Française regarding accent marks. Books printed in standard Parisian French embodied an aspiration to universality, just like allegorical frontispieces, which transcended the Babel of national tongues in their own way, by conveying their messages in pictorial language. Of course, the cosmopolitan print culture whose spread Virchaux promoted in his role as a book dealer was the opposite of democratic. It connected the scattered elites of the European continent while excluding people like Roullier, who had not mastered the spelling of standard French or the distinction between the accent grave and the accent aigu, and who could not have afforded “magnificent” editions anyway. It was undemocratic—and yet it shared a close affinity with the political stance that Virchaux adopted in revolutionary Paris. Virchaux stood with the Club des Cordeliers against Lafayette in the matter of deposing the king; he stood with Brissot against Robespierre in the matter of the war. His vision of the Revolution was that of a radical republican committed to spreading the Revolution beyond the frontiers of France. It was the vision that led to the 1792 decree pledging “aid and fraternity” to all peoples striving to recover their liberty, that was embodied in the slogan “war upon the castles, peace upon the huts” and to which Virchaux gave trenchant expression—literally—with his sword of Damascus steel: in short, the vision of the revolution as a universal crusade to spread the gospel of liberty. In both the culture Virchaux disseminated as a bookseller and the politics he embraced as a revolutionary, one can discern a common aspiration to universality. Now, “the aspiration to universality” may sound a trifle pretentious as the unifying theme of a life that has lain buried in near total obscurity for over two centuries. To some skeptical readers of this book, it may also seem just a little too tidy, an elegant interpretation imposed by the historian on the messy contingencies of an individual life. And, of course, it is just an interpretation. But it is not one that denies the importance of contingency. I am quite willing to admit that things could have turned out otherwise. Had Virchaux not gone bankrupt and had he not run afoul of the Prussian ambassador, he would have stayed in Hamburg; and, in that case, he would almost certainly have sold French books to the many émigrés who began pouring into Hamburg during the 1790s. He could have become a bookseller to the enemies of

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the Revolution just as easily as he became a radical republican. External events had an undeniable impact on the direction of Virchaux’s life. Blown off course like a wind-tossed ship on the high seas, Virchaux simply navigated as best he could, by adjusting to constantly changing circumstances. His life was a long series of adjustments, to German-speaking Lutheran Hamburg, to the cutthroat competition of the French book trade in his adopted city, to the rigors of life on the road, and, finally, to the utterly unprecedented circumstances of revolutionary politics in Paris. How did he make that final adjustment? He did so by recasting the aspiration to universality: in other words, by politicizing and democratizing it. At once extraordinary and exemplary, the journey of Virchaux’s life shows how the cosmopolitan values of L’Europe française could be infused with new meaning in the context of the French Revolution.

Conclusion What Were French Books Good For?

The revolutionary war that Virchaux had called for in the Jacobin club finally broke out in April 1792; and it raged, with brief interruptions, for more than two decades, inaugurating “a new era of world history,” to quote Goethe’s memorable words following the battle of Valmy. After that decisive battle, French troops poured out beyond the frontiers of the newly proclaimed republic, occupying and, in many cases, annexing the lands that had been home to the extraterritorial French publishing firms. Most of those firms, already badly battered by the pre-revolutionary crisis in the French book trade, went out of business entirely; a few survived by catering to the needs of local administrators, but they did not any longer supply French books to the princes and aristocrats at the small princely courts of western Germany, many of whom had taken flight before the advancing French armies. By the time the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was formally abolished in 1806, the political map of Old Regime Germany had been altered beyond recognition; and the Restoration did not restore it. The small German courts that had purchased French books, as well as the extraterritorial firms that had published them, were gone forever. How to understand the role played by French books in the world that the revolutionary and Napoleonic armies destroyed?

* * * One way to approach that question would be to follow the lead of LouisAntoine de Caraccioli, an itinerant French-born author of Italian extraction: “The printing press has made an astonishing contribution to the Frenchification of Europe,” Caraccioli declared in a book published in 1777 whose title

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expressed its thesis, Paris le modèle des nations étrangères ou L’Europe française (Paris the Model of Foreign Nations, or French Europe). Caraccioli regarded French books as vehicles for the spread of French culture, and he regarded French culture as a powerful civilizing force, a model of social interaction, style, taste, and manners that was sweeping across the continent and unifying Europeans of all nations: “It is remarkable how much enthusiasm has declined since the reading of French works has become universal. People no longer worship their own country to the point of disdaining whatever does not belong to it, and even in conversation, they will no longer suffer anything that carries the whiff of fanaticism or the spirit of party,” he wrote. Caraccioli presented his vision of a unified Europe in stirring language, and, since he was of Italian origin, his vision cannot be dismissed as the expression of French chauvinism. But did it capture what was actually happening? Did the printing press, in fact, contribute to the Frenchification of Europe? Certainly not in the view of Herder, arguably the most influential German intellectual in the last third of the eighteenth century. Herder called into question the very idea of cultural transmission because he conceived of culture in organic terms, as the embodiment of the Volksgeist, which always grew out of a specific national soil. For Herder, culture was, by definition, particular rather than universal: transplant it to a foreign soil, and it would wither on the vine, like Burgundian grapes in the vineyards of Sans-Souci. Herder reacted to French cultural diff usion in Germany by becoming the original “multiculturalist.” Instead of embracing Caraccioli’s vision of cosmopolitan unity, he celebrated diversity. To him the vigorous if unrefined literary traditions of the Norsemen and the ancient Hebrews seemed far preferable to the encyclopedias, anthologies, and compilations of the French, which he regarded as so many symptoms of cultural exhaustion. And yet it cannot be said that Herder condemned French literature out of ignorance, since a large percentage of the books in his own library were French. It seems clear, therefore, that the diffusion of French books could produce a reaction against French culture just as easily as it could produce the Frenchification of Europe. Ironically, it also could lead to nationalism. Not, to be sure, the strident, chauvinistic, aggressive, political nationalism that developed in Germany in the early nineteenth century during the period of French military occupation under Napoleon. That kind of nationalism was far from the minds of Herder’s contemporaries. The nationalism that found expression in such literary movements of the 1770s as the Sturm und Drang or the Göttinger Hainbund seldom

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went beyond extolling the unique qualities of German culture. But it was a relatively new phenomenon all the same. And where did it come from? Not, I would argue, from anything so straightforward as pride over the accomplishments of German literature (impressive though those accomplishments were when one considers that German literature had scarcely existed at all two or three decades earlier). At the risk of burdening a historical discussion with philosophy, I would say that national consciousness (like all forms of consciousness) requires an “other,” and that the “other” of German national consciousness was France— or more precisely, France as it was reflected in the miniature Versailles imitations of princely courts in Germany. When German authors extolled the qualities of German (middle-class) culture, it was always, either explicitly or implicitly, in opposition to the perceived failings of French (aristocratic) culture. Thus, German depth stood opposed to French superficiality, substance to style, authenticity to artifice, and Geist to esprit. The whole set of invidious binary oppositions that Germans in the nineteenth century would subsume under the antithesis of Kultur and Zivilisation was already available for polemical use decades before the really nasty and virulent “Frog-eaters” (Franzosenfresser) began ranting against the Napoleonic invaders. Should we conclude, then, that Caraccioli got it backwards, and, that instead of unifying Europe, Francophone cosmopolitanism produced its dialectical antithesis? To frame the issue in those terms would be to accept that there were only two possible outcomes: either Germans surrendered to French culture as to an all-conquering force, or they resisted it like Arminius fighting off the Roman legions in the Annals of Tacitus. That dichotomy, however, is far too rigid to accommodate the wide range of functions that French books performed in Germany. To begin with, French books were not just vehicles for the spread of French culture. Since French books were much easier to come by in Germany than were English books, and since Germans were much more likely to know French than English, some of them read English works in the form of French translations. One of the more popular novels that the STN sold in Germany was Cecilia ou mémoires d’une héritière, the French translation of a work by the English novelist Frances Burney; the most popular travel book that it sold in Germany was Voyage en Sicile et à Malthe, the French translation of a work by the English author Patrick Brydone. For the many Germans who did not know English, there was only one alternative to reading English works in French, and that was to read them in German; but the German translations

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were sometimes based on French translations rather than English originals. Either way, therefore, French books served as vehicles for the spread of English literature. They also served as vehicles for disseminating information and opinions about international politics. And German booksellers registered a particularly strong demand for works about contemporary politics—for both the comte d’Albon’s Discours politiques, which dealt with the Continental Congress and the revolt of the American colonies against the British crown, and the anonymously published Entrevues du Pape Ganganelli, which dealt with papal politics in Rome. And what of the STN’s translation of Friedrich Nicolai’s Sebaldus Nothanker? In that case, a French book served as the vehicle for spreading German literature, not just in France, Italy, the Low Countries, the British Isles, and Russia, but also in Germany itself— above all, at princely courts in Germany, where so German a novel as Nicolai’s was not hoff ähig until it was translated into French. It would be a mistake therefore to conceive of the dissemination of French books in Germany in terms of a simple binary relation: French literature on the one hand, German readers on the other. It would also be a mistake to draw any firm inferences about how French books were read from the mere fact of their dissemination. In 1771, the STN published a pirated edition of d’Holbach’s notorious work of materialist philosophy, Le Système de la nature, and it managed to sell approximately four hundred copies to German booksellers, roughly three hundred to Baerstecher in Cleve, and one hundred to Walther in Dresden, despite the fact that the original edition had already creamed off part of the demand: “I have the honor to tell you,” Walther wrote to the STN in March 1771, “that this book [i.e., Système de la nature] is rather well known and that for some time now a number of copies of the original edition have been sold in Germany.” The strong demand for d’Holbach’s work may seem surprising, because it is commonly assumed that most Germans of the eighteenth century rejected the materialism of the radical French Enlightenment. And clearly many of them did reject it— Goethe, for example, who loathed the ironclad determinism of Système de la nature and who, many years later, described in his memoirs how that work had appeared to him and his youthful comrades in Frankfurt: “so gray, so Cimmerian, and so deathly that we could barely endure its presence and we recoiled from it in horror as if from a ghost.” Such a work had nothing to say to any young man whose senses were open to the joys of life because it was “the quintessence of senility,” Goethe concluded. And yet he also noted that he and his friends had been quick to lay hold of a copy, “out of curiosity”

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(aus Neugier). Out of curiosity, and also perhaps (reading between the lines of Goethe’s text) because the work yielded a frisson of transgression: the greater the horror, the stronger the attraction. Goethe’s reaction to Système de la nature is worth pondering because it dramatizes the freedom of German readers to interpret French books after their own fashion. But that does not mean Goethe should be seen as a typical German reader. While he read French works in the original language, many of his fellow countrymen read them in translation. And German publishers turned out a vast quantity of translations, 2,678 in the years from 1770 to 1788. Those translations reached German readers whose educational level was far inferior to that of Goethe, such members of the German public as the innkeepers and customs officials in Saxony whom Mme. de Staël encountered when she visited Germany in the early years of the nineteenth century and who astonished her by their knowledge of French literature. In its relation to French literature, therefore, the German reading public was far from monolithic. At a minimum, it was divided between those Germans who read French works in French and those who read them in German. I say “at a minimum” because even among those belonging to the former category there were vast differences. Karl Philip Moritz, a poor scholarship student from an artisan family, managed to teach himself French, but he had never actually heard the language spoken; so he read it as if it were Latin. On the other hand, Goethe, scion of a patrician family in Frankfurt, learned the language as a child during the French occupation of Frankfurt in the Seven Years’ War by attending performances of a French theater troupe and by forming a friendship with one of the actors, a young boy of his own age. When Goethe read French books, he was able to hear, in his mind’s ear, the sounds of a living language. So too could most of the German princes whose courts the STN’s correspondents supplied with French books: the Landgrave Friedrich II of Hesse-Cassel, who was educated in Lausanne and Geneva, or the Landgrave Friedrich V of Hesse-Homburg, who learned French as a child from his religious tutor, a French-speaking Swiss pastor, and who took his first communion in the French Reformed Church, despite the fact that his family was Lutheran. Inevitably, Germans read French books differently depending on whether they were reading them in the original language or in translation, whether they spoke French or simply read it as they would a dead language from antiquity, whether they spoke it fluently or haltingly. As French books spread across Germany, they encountered different kinds of readers with different levels of linguistic competence.

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They also moved through different social milieux and were subject to a correspondingly wide range of cultural practices. When they were absorbed into a large princely library like that of the Landgrave Friedrich II in Cassel, they became part of an aristocratic culture of representation. Encased in leather bindings, stamped with a coat of arms, and ranged on the shelves of the Landgrave’s library, French books served as objects of prestige or, to use the jargon of French sociology, as biens symboliques. Only as biens symboliques and not as books to be read? Mallet du Pan, Voltaire’s protégé, implied as much when he wrote to Voltaire from Cassel and complained that the French books in the Landgrave’s library had been selected “with the most distressing Teutonic barbarism.” If Mallet is to be believed, then the Landgrave did not pay much attention to which French books he purchased. He simply purchased them in large quantities and displayed them in his library. And the Landgrave certainly did purchase large quantities of books, from 8,000 to 10,000 livres worth of books annually, according to Jean-Gérard Bruère, the STN’s correspondent in Hesse-Homburg. The professors at the Landgrave’s prestigious Collegium Carolinum, however, were allowed to borrow books from the princely library for three weeks at a time. In fact, all of the state employees in Hesse-Cassel were allowed to do so; and, beginning in 1779, when the library took up residence in the newly constructed Museum Fridericianum, the grand Palladian structure designed by the architect Simon-Louis du Ry, it was open to the general public for several hours four days a week. The same books, therefore, that served to represent the Landgrave as a cultivated and enlightened prince may also have supplied reading material for local scholars and other members of the public. Representation and reading were not mutually exclusive options. Nor were they the only options. Recall, for example, how the Graf von Dann, grand écuyer of the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, reacted to the STN’s elegant multivolume edition of the Description des arts et métiers—a work that, by and large, sold poorly in Germany because most Germans preferred to obtain practical information about the arts and crafts from the German reference work Schauplatz der Künste. In his letter to the STN, Dann praised the paper, printing, and copperplate engravings in the STN’s edition and concluded that the work had given him “true pleasure”—true pleasure, that is, of an aesthetic kind. It was much the same with the “sovereign princes and great lords” at the courts of the North whom Virchaux supplied from Hamburg. They, too, attached enormous importance to the material qualities of books—to the

270

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whiteness of paper, the design of the frontispiece, and the spacing of words on the page. So much importance, in fact, that they were prepared to pay any price at all to receive the most “magnificent” editions. Like Virchaux’s muchvaunted assortment of cheeses, magnificent editions of French books were objects to be “savored” (goûtés). What they were made of mattered as much as what they were about. But now, by way of contrast, consider the uses of French books at other sites in their journey across Germany. At the cabinet littéraire of François Daclin in Hamburg, subscribers paid an annual fee to read French books and journals on the premises, which would have included a separate room for socializing and conversation. There, French books and journals were likely to be subjects of discussion, as they undoubtedly were at the reading societies in Cassel, whose members read “a great deal of French”: one of the principal goals of such societies was to create a forum for the discussion of books and journals. At both the cabinet littéraire in Hamburg and the reading societies in Cassel, the reading of French books was connected to practices of bourgeois sociability. Not the same kind of sociability, however. The self-selected members of reading societies were almost always men. The books that they read and discussed were usually of a practical and instructional nature—works on geography, travel, economics, history, and politics, as opposed to novels, which were regarded as frivolous and morally suspect. Cabinets littéraires, on the other hand, were commercial enterprises; so they were open to anyone who could afford the annual membership fee—to women as well as men. And, finally, what of the uses of French books at a really exclusive site of sociability like the baths of Hofgeismar, where the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel and his entourage withdrew during the summer season, and where women and men would have interacted but only women and men belonging to the aristocracy? There, to judge from Hemmerde’s orders, the summer revelers wanted works of belles-lettres more than anything else. Whether they wanted them as subjects of conversation, however, is open to question. For the courtiers at the baths of Hofgeismar, works of French belles-lettres are just as likely to have supplied material for as subjects of conversation: elegant turns of phrase, witty aphorisms, and clever bons mots, which could be lifted from the works and dropped in conversation at balls and banquets. In short, French books were versatile: they were good for displaying in libraries, for savoring, for conversing about, and for modeling conversation

Conclusion

271

on. When they fell into the hands of women readers, they were also good for escaping into fantasy worlds— or so it was alleged. Actually, those allegations need to be taken with a grain of salt since they belonged to a polemic against the dangers of excessive and untutored reading: “reading addiction” (Lesesucht) or “reading madness” (Lesewut) as it was called in the late eighteenth century. As the reading public widened, educated German men grew increasingly worried about readers who lacked the discernment and the critical faculties both to select the appropriate kinds of books and to read them appropriately; and women readers came in for particular blame—women who were thought to have a special weakness for sentimental novels, who were considered incapable of distinguishing clearly between fact and fiction, and for whom, therefore, reading represented the supreme danger: that of diverting attention from the practical chores of daily life. The accusation probably said more about male fantasies of women than it did about what and how women actually read, and it seems to have concerned novels in German more than it did novels in French. None of the STN’s correspondents ever said anything to indicate that the demand for novels came primarily from women. But their orders certainly did reveal a strong demand for novels, some of which, like those of Mme. Riccoboni, might very well have held a stronger appeal for women than for men. So what to conclude? Obviously, a topic as large and as complicated as the uses of French books in eighteenth-century Germany cannot be treated exhaustively in just a few paragraphs, or on the sole basis of documents from the archive of a publisher— documents that bear primarily on the intermediary steps in the process of literary transmission. To do justice to the topic, one would have to track the reception of individual French works in Germany by drawing on a range of sources, from reviews in literary journals to the memoirs and letters of readers. And that task would carry us beyond the framework of this book. Even at this stage, however, the evidence is sufficient to support an important negative conclusion: the wagons bearing crates of French books to the Leipzig Easter fairs did not roll across Germany like Juggernauts flattening the cultural terrain beneath their wheels. Indeed, the circulation of French books in Germany may very well have done more to accentuate than to level the differences between the various groups within the German public: between those who read French books in translation and those who read them in the original language; between those who read them with difficulty and those

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who read them with the facility of native speakers; between princes who made bulk purchases of French books to display as objects of prestige in their libraries and professional philosophers who ordered specific French books to critique in the privacy of their studies; between aristocratic bibliophiles who sought out the most elegant editions to savor as sources of aesthetic pleasure and the mainly middle-class members of the public who read French books on the premises of a cabinet littéraire; between courtiers at aristocratic sites of sociability, for whom French books supplied material for witty conversation, and the mainly middle-class members of reading societies, for whom they supplied topics of serious discussion; between men who (supposedly) read French books for instruction and women who (supposedly) read them as a means of escape from everyday life. Precisely because French books were good for so many things, they were also good for highlighting differences among the people who used them. Whatever else it may have accomplished, therefore, the transnational French book trade of the eighteenth century did not make Germans into identical replicas of the French, any more than Hollywood and the American “culture industry” of today have made Europeans into identical replicas of Americans. Mutatis mutandis, the thesis of L’Europe française suffers from the same defect as the thesis of “Coca-colonization.” It depicts the process of cultural transmission from one side only, as the unilateral imposition of a dominant culture on a subordinate one.

* * * Rather than delving into the uses of French culture in discrete local contexts, Caraccioli approached his subject from a lofty historical perspective. He represented L’Europe française as the modern successor to the Roman Empire, the great cosmopolitan civilization of antiquity, as if the spirit of ancient Rome had migrated across the millennia and been reincarnated in the eighteenth century: “Once upon a time all was Roman; today all is French.” The conceit was an old one, that of the translatio imperii, which Caraccioli used to give his subject a venerable pedigree. The problem with the conceit was that L’Europe française was not at all an imperium in the Roman sense of the word. Imperium designated the authority to command, absolutely and unconditionally, and it reflected the military origins of the Roman Empire. L’Europe française did not have any military origins. In fact, it coincided with the low point of French military might, between the reign of Louis XIV on the one side and the truly imperial conquests of Napoleon on the other. In the eigh-

Conclusion

273

teenth century, the agents of French cultural diff usion were artists, architects, and actors, expatriate philosophes, the descendants of Huguenot refugees, language tutors in aristocratic and patrician households, and above all booksellers. None of them commanded Germans absolutely and unconditionally, least of all booksellers, whose goal was merely to satisfy the demand of their customers. By transmitting French books to German readers, the French booksellers of eighteenth-century Germany functioned as links in a chain of cross-cultural communication. A chain of communication, not a chain of command. The distinction is crucial to capturing the historical specificity of Europe as a cultural community on the eve of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Those wars opened a new chapter in the history of Europe and the history of Franco-German relations, one in which French constitutions, French laws, and French administrative reforms spread across Germany in the wagon trains of French armies. But that was not how French books spread at the end of the Old Regime, and nothing could be more misleading than to represent their diffusion according to the model of military conquest. Neither the advance guard of la grande armée nor the historical descendants of the Roman legions, the French booksellers of eighteenth-century Germany were businessmen. From their standpoint, French books were good, above all, for making money. How good? Clearly, the firm of Fontaine père et fils in Mannheim turned a handsome profit from the sale of French books, for everyone who spoke of that firm emphasized its prosperity. While Fontaine and his son were prospering, however, several other of the STN’s correspondents fell into bankruptcy: Bartholomai in Ulm, Baerstecher in Cleves, Ammermüller in Nuremberg, and Virchaux in Hamburg. The casualty rate among the French booksellers of late-eighteenth-century Germany was remarkably high—much higher than Virchaux anticipated when he confidently announced his intention “to convert Swiss paper into shiny metals.” To make any money from the sale of French books in Germany, booksellers had to surmount a multitude of formidable obstacles: the difficulty of extracting payment from customers whom they had never met, in places where they had never been; the bewildering diversity of censorship regimes in the free imperial cities, ecclesiastical states, landgraviates, electorates, territorial enclaves, and duodecimo principalities of western Germany; and the excruciating slowness of commercial shipping across the tariff-strewn lands and the toll-clogged waterways of the old Reich. The obstacles were so great, it seems a wonder that French books reached German readers at all. But they did, and the story of how that happened is

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worth pondering because it forms an important episode in a long and momentous historical development: the emergence of Europe. In the course of its development, Europe has assumed a variety of shapes and identities, from western Christendom in the Middle Ages to the European Union of the early twenty-first century. In the eighteenth century, it was merely a collection of independent states, and it possessed neither the religious unity of the Middle Ages nor any institutions resembling those of the European Union today: no common political or judicial bodies, no common market, and no common currency. It did, however, have a common literary currency. French books were the literary euros of the Old Regime. Printed in many different countries and traded by booksellers from Paris to Petersburg, they supplied a common medium of intellectual exchange, connecting readers across the frontiers of nation and language. By following them as they circulated through the commercial networks of the transnational French book trade, one can watch Europe take shape as a cultural community more than two centuries ago— disputatious and heterogeneous, but a community all the same.

appendix a

STN Trade with Booksellers in Germany, 1770–1785

Location and Total Shipments Mannheim (36)

Hamburg (29) Frankfurt (14)

Prague (14) Dresden (12) Cassel (10) Cleve (9) Münz/Deutz (near Cologne) (8) Bad Homburg (near Frankfurt) (6) Berlin (6) Ulm (4) Nuremberg (2) Neuwied (1) Leipzig (1)

Booksellers in Each Location and Total Shipments Charles and Matthias Fontaine (27) Christian Schwan (6) Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour (3) Jean-Guillaume Virchaux (29) Johann Conrad Deinet (12) Heirs of Esslinger (1) Heinrich Ludwig Brönner (1) Wolfgang Gerle (14) Conrad Walther (12) Jean-Frédéric Hemmerde (10) J. G. Baerstecher (6) G. B. Hoffmann (3) Louis-François Mettra (8) Karl de Grandmesnil (6) Samuel Pitra (6) Albrecht Friedrich Bartholomai (4) Joseph Ehrenreich Ammermüller (2) Louis-François Mettra (1) Philipp Erasmus Reich (1)

This table is based primarily on two documentary sources: the STN’s Brouillard A (ms. 1033), which spans the period from early 1770 to early 1773, and its Livres de commissions (ms. 1016–21), which span the period from early 1774 to mid-1785. That leaves a hiatus of one year, from early 1773 to early 1774.

276

a p pendix a

For that period, the data are derived either from the STN’s Rencontre du magasin (ms. 1000) or from its Copies de lettres (ms. 1099). To assess the information contained in the table, one needs to bear in mind that a “shipment” (envoi) does not constitute a consistent unit of measurement. Shipments that the STN made to Hamburg, for example, were almost always larger than those that it made to Mannheim, if only because the distance from Neuchâtel to Hamburg was so much greater than the distance to Mannheim. It did not pay to send a crate of books to Hamburg unless the crate weighed more than one hundred pounds. Even crates that the STN sent to nearby locations, however, had to weigh at least fifty pounds, for otherwise they could not be expedited through the normal commercial shipping channels: in a wagon (voiture) when traveling by land, in a cargo ship (bateau) when traveling by water. Orders that were too small to form crates of minimum weight had to be sent as parcels (paquets) through the postal service, which most booksellers judged to be prohibitively expensive. Rather than send a parcel of books through the postal ser vice, the STN would usually do one of two things when it received an order that was too small to fill a crate of minimum weight: either it would add some unordered books to bring the crate up to the minimum weight, or it would enclose the order with another shipment that it was making to the same destination. Five of the orders that Christian Schwan in Mannheim placed in 1772 and two of the orders that Samuel Pitra in Berlin placed in that same year were too small to form crates of minimum weight. The STN enclosed Schwan’s orders with crates that it was sending to Fontaine in Mannheim; it enclosed Pitra’s with some small packages that it was sending to Lentulus, the Prussian governor of Neuchâtel who resided in Berlin. Orders that were enclosed with other shipments have not been counted as separate shipments. In 1780, the STN made two very large shipments of books worth more than 2,000 livres each to two correspondents in western Germany: to the bookseller Friedrich Jacob Röder in Wesel in the lower Rhine and to a nonprofessional bookseller named Jean-Gérard Bruère in Bad Homburg near Frankfurt. All of those books, however, the STN sent for its own account, and hardly any of them were ever sold. The two shipments to Röder and Bruère have not, therefore, been included in the table, nor have several small shipments of Bibles that the STN made to Protestant pastors in the landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel, to the pastor Roques in Hanau, and to the pastor Isaac Maurice Lagisse in Cassel. The table represents only the STN’s trade with professional booksellers.

STN Trade with Booksellers in Germany

277

Finally, there are three slightly ambiguous cases that bear mentioning. The first concerns an order that Heinrich Bender in Mannheim placed in 1779. The STN filled that order, but it sent the books to a merchant in Mannheim along with instructions not to release the books to Bender until the latter had paid for them in full. As it turned out, Bender did not have enough money to pay for the books; so his shipment was transferred to another firm in Mannheim, La Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour. In the table, Bender’s shipment is included with the shipments that the STN made to La Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour. The second case concerns two orders that J. G. Baerstecher in Cleve placed in 1772 and that the STN sent to Baerstecher’s commissioner in Leipzig. Those orders have not been counted, since the table is meant to represent the geographic distribution of the STN’s trade with booksellers in Germany who sold the STN’s books mainly to the public rather than to other booksellers at the fairs. The final case concerns two crates of books that the STN had transferred from a correspondent in Nancy to two Frankfurt booksellers—the first crate, in 1774, to Johann Esslinger, and the second, in 1775, to Johann Conrad Deinet. Since Esslinger and Deinet kept those books for the STN’s account, and since they do not appear to have had any success in selling them, the shipments from Nancy have not been counted either. In the late 1780s, the STN dispatched a traveling commissioner named Victor Durand on two lengthy business trips through Germany as well as Italy. At the time, it was no longer able to trade with its customers in France because the French government had adopted an administrative measure to halt the flow of books into the kingdom. Cut off from the French market, the STN shifted the focus of its trade to Germany, where Durand collected a large number of orders—above all from Mettra in Neuwied and from various booksellers in Vienna. Between the summer of 1786 and late 1790, it made ten shipments to Mettra and forty-two to eight different booksellers in the Austrian capital— ten to Jean-Baptiste Mangot, nine to Johann David Hörling, seven to Joseph Stahel, seven to Rudolphe Gräffer, five to Auguste Gräffer, two to Doll & Schwaiger, one to Johann Thomas von Trattner, and one to Friedrich Wappler. All the information on the STN’s shipments from the late 1780s I owe to Simon Burrows and Mark Curran, but that information has not been included in the table, which is limited to the period from 1770 to mid-1785. The data of Borrows and Curran are based primarily on the STN’s Rencontres du magasin and its Journaux, which provide the best source of evidence for shipments that the STN made during the period not covered by the Livres de commissions.

appendix b

The Folio Bible of 1773: Diffusion

Switzerland (582) Lausanne: Grasset (308); Heubach (200) Geneva: Chirol (24); Grasset (12); Duvillard & Sherrer (2); Pestre (1); Cailler (10) Yverdon: Heuter (12) Neuchâtel: Sinnet (4); Bertrand (1) Corgemont (near La Chaux de Fonds): Morel (2) Zurich: Heidegger (2) Basel: Preiswerck (1) Orbe: Bertrand (1) La Neuveville: Chiffelle (1) Yverdon: Bertrand (1) France (281) Nîmes: Gaude (136); Buchet (6) Paris: De Longe (36); Saugrain (12) Rouen: Machuel (36) Tonneins: Dubois (30) Montpellier: Rigaud (12) Valence: Aurèle (4) Strasbourg: Bauer (2) Bordeaux: Chappuis (2) Orléans: Couret de Villeneuve (2) Lyon: Grabit (2) Valenciennes: Amberbos (1)

The Folio Bible of 1773

279

United Provinces (31) The Hague: Gosse (31) Denmark (4) Copenhagen: Philibert (4) Germany (1) Frankfurt: Deinet (1) Italy (1) Milan: Castellini (1)

The STN began making shipments of its folio Bible in June 1773, and most of the pressrun had already been sold by January 1774 when the STN began recording orders and shipments in its Livres de commissions. To reconstruct the diffusion of the STN’s 1773 edition of the Bible, I have drawn on the data compiled by Simon Burrows and Mark Curran, which are based on a combination of the STN’s Journal and its Rencontres du magasin. My thanks to them for sharing their data with me. Note that in 1773, the STN relinquished 1,100 copies of its Bible to Samuel Fauche, possibly as part of the settlement by which it separated from its erstwhile associate: the destinations of those Bibles cannot be reconstructed. The total number of Bibles appears in parentheses after the individual country and purchasers’ names.

appendix c

The Folio Bible of 1779: Prepublication Subscriptions

France (252) Nîmes: Buchet (100) Ganges: Pomaret (12); Gervais (26) Montpellier: Rigaud (14); Cézary (13) Caen: Manoury (26) Orléans: Frémont-Chevillon (13); Letourmi (3) Uzès (Languedoc): Phéline (13) Loudun (Poitou): Malherbe (13) Bordeaux: Bergeret (6) La Rochelle: Ranson (1); Pavie (4) Marseilles: Caldesaigues (4) Auxerre: Bonnard (2) Maubeuge: Mallet (2) Switzerland (72) Le Locle: Girardet (55) Morges: Schnell (6) Geneva: Duvillard & Scherrer (1) Concise: Sinnet (2) Basel: Flick (2) Lausanne: Décombaz (2) La Neuveville: Chiffelle (1) La Saigne: Perrenoud (1) Neuchâtel: Mlle. [illegible] (1) Le Locle: Breguet (1)

The Folio Bible of 1779

281

Other Locations (13) Copenhagen: Philibert (2); Schlegel (3) Warsaw: Gröll (3) The Hague: Detune (1) Maastricht: Dufour & Roux (4) Source: Livre de commissions, Ms. 1018, folio 148. Besides the 337 subscriptions listed above, there were also 15 subscriptions from customers whose locations I was unable to identify. Thus, the total number of prepublication subscriptions came to 352. The total number of subscriptions appears in parentheses after the individual country and customers’ names.

appendix d

The Bible in Germany: The Neuchâtel Folio of 1779 and the Bienne Octavo

Location

Folios

Octavos

Total

Cassel (Lagisse, Hemmerde) Hanau (Roques) Hamburg (Virchaux) Neuwied (Mettra) Mannheim(Nouvelle Librairie) Wesel (Röder) Homburg (Bruère) Münz (Mettra)

13 6 2 1 1 0 0 0

38 0 2 0 1 2 2 1

51 6 4 1 2 2 2 1

Totals

23

46

69

Source: Livres de commissions, Ms. 1019, 1020, 1021. In addition to the Bibles that the STN’s correspondents in Germany purchased for their own account, the STN sent a number of Bibles en commission: thirteen folios to Roques in Hanau; six folios and thirteen octavos to Lagisse in Cassel; thirteen folios and thirteen octavos to Röder in Wesel, and six folios and six octavos to Bruère in Hesse-Homburg. Many of those Bibles, however, were ultimately returned to the STN or transferred to other correspondents: seven of the folios that went to Roques, four of the folios that went to Lagisse, all thirteen of the folios and eleven of the octavos that went to Röder, and all six of the folios and four of the octavos that went to Bruère. The Bibles that were returned to the STN or transferred to other correspondents have not been counted. The names of the STN’s customers appear in parentheses following the towns in which they resided.

appendix e

Diffusion of Sebaldus Nothanker in French Translation

Vol. 1 octavo (1774)

Vol. 2 octavo (1777)

Vol. 3 octavo (1777)

Switzerland (31) Geneva (9) Lausanne (6) Yverdon (4) Bern (3) Basel (3) Zurich (2) Orbe (1) Le Locle (1) Wintherthur (1) Neuchâtel (1)

410 35 28 2 302 2 1 1

32 11 12

21 4 8

7 1

7 1

1

1

France (45) Paris (6) Lyon (5) Nîmes (3) Dijon (3) Caen (2) Marseilles (2) Valence (1) Bordeaux (1) Thionville (1) Saarelouis (1)

103 1 25 7

Total Customers

Sebaltus (3 vols. octavo or 2 vols. duodecimo)

Intolérance ecclésiastique (2 vols. duodecimo)

Complete sets of Sebaltus and Intolérance ecclésiastique

107 19 48 3 26 8 1

130 98 24 1 6 1

256 120 80 4 38 10 1 1 2 0 0

59 18 4

188 21 59 6 4 12 0 8 10 0 0

2 2 37 3

2

127 3 55 6 6

4 6

8 6

4

3

2 4

(Continued)

Appendix E. (Continued)

Total Customers Rennes (1) Roanne (1) Belfort (1) Nancy (1) Bourg-en-Bresse (1) Strasbourg (1) Péronne (1) Orléans (1) Chambéry (1) Loudun (1) Troyes (1) La Rochelle (1) Versailles (1) Montpellier (1) Besançon (1) Saint-Maixant (1) Rouen (1) Reims (1) Nantes (1) Lunéville (1)

Vol. 1 octavo (1774)

Vol. 2 octavo (1777)

Vol. 3 octavo (1777)

Sebaltus (3 vols. octavo or 2 vols. duodecimo)

Intolérance ecclésiastique (2 vols. duodecimo)

2 4 2 2 12

2

2

2 6

4 7 6 1 2

1 10 2 13 12

20 6 2 1

4

1 2 4

Low Countries (3) Maastricht (1) Amsterdam (1) The Hague (1)

200 50

150 50

150 50

150

100

100

Russia (4) Saint Petersburg (3) Moscow (1)

4

4

4

4

4

4

Germany (12) Mannheim (4) Hesse-Homburg (1) Frankfurt (1) Cassel (1) Wesel (1) Hamburg (1) Dresden (1) Augsburg (1) Münz (near Cologne) (1)

8 3

6 2

4

4

4

4

British Isles (2) London (1) Dublin (1)

0

2

2 6

2

16 12 4

80 67 13

100 79 21

34 9 5

33 1 6

13

1 12 13

71 10 11 4 1 12 26 0 6 1

6 1 0

0 0 0 2 6 7 6 1 2 0 10 2 13 16 0 0 0 1 2 0

8

1

0

Complete sets of Sebaltus and Intolérance ecclésiastique

18 18

4 4

160 50 4 106

22 18 4

Total Customers

Vol. 1 octavo (1774)

Vol. 2 octavo (1777)

Vol. 3 octavo (1777)

Sebaltus (3 vols. octavo or 2 vols. duodecimo)

Intolérance ecclésiastique (2 vols. duodecimo)

Complete sets of Sebaltus and Intolérance ecclésiastique

Poland (5) Warsaw (5)

3 3

3 3

3 3

12 12

0 0

15 15

Scandinavia (3) Stockholm (2) Copenhagen (1)

6

0

0

9 7 2

5 5

14 12 2

0

0

8

5 1

13 1 0 2 9 1 0 0

Italy (9) Venice (3) Milan (1) Padua (1) Turin (1) Cremona (1) Bergamo (1) Bologna (1) Austrian Netherlands (2) Brussels (2) Portugal (1) Lisbon (1) Totals

6 19 3 2

2 6

1

3 1

12 1 0

0

0

2

4

6

0

0

0

2

4

6

12 12

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

765

198

184

341

322

845

Source: Livres de commissions, Ms. 1016–21. According to data derived from the STN’s stock inventories (Rencontres du magasin, Ms. 1001-09), the STN had sold approximately 1,057 complete sets of the two formats by June 1787—423 of the three-volume octavo (Sebaltus) and 634 of the two-volume duodecimo (Sebaltus and Intolérance ecclésiastique). From the Livres de commissions, however, which end in mid-1785, I have been able to reconstruct the destinations of only 845 complete sets. The table does not, therefore, represent the entire diff usion of the STN’s translation, though it does represent almost 80 percent of it. Note that there was a gap of several months in 1777 between the publication of volumes 2 and 3. Some booksellers therefore ordered volume 2 and failed to order volume 3 afterward, presumably because they were unaware that a third volume was on its way. On the other hand, there were also a few rare occasions when booksellers who had ordered volume 1 purchased volume 3 but failed to purchase volume 2. Why they would have done that is hard to imagine. The result, however, is that the total number of complete sets is sometimes a little less than the figures in the table would appear to indicate. Suppose, for example, that one bookseller in a city ordered volumes 1 and 2 and another in the same city ordered volumes 1 and 3; in that case, a retail customer could have completed the set on his own by mixing and matching, but the table does not assume that he would have done so: no complete sets would be counted for that city. Finally, it is also important to note that the Livres de commissions do not indicate with any consistency which of the two formats (the three-volume octavo or the two-volume duodecimo) the STN sent when customers ordered complete sets of Sebaltus with the original title. It was not possible, therefore, to compile separate statistics for the two formats.

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notes

introduction 1. Robert Darnton, “What Is the History of Books?” in The Book History Reader, ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (London, 2002), 9–26. 2. Friedrich Kapp and Johann Goldfriedrich, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1886–1913) (all subsequent references to the work will be to the third volume); Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, eds., Histoire de l’ édition française, 4 vols. (Paris, 1983–); Nigel Morgan et al., The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 6 vols. (Cambridge, 1998–2009). In the last several years dissatisfaction with the national model of book history has been growing, as can be seen from the series Transnational Histories of the Book sponsored by the Centre for the History of the Book at the University of Edinburgh. The Edinburgh project, however, is confined to the period after 1800 and deals mainly with the relations between Britain and the Continent. 3. On the itinerant habits of early modern booksellers and the Frankfurt fair as the center of the Latin book trade, see Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800, trans. David Gerard (London, 1976), 138–40, 228–32. 4. On French booksellers in London, see James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450–1850 (New Haven, 2007), 109; and on Huguenots in the Low Countries, see the essays in Elizabeth Eisenstein, Grub Street Abroad: Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan Press from the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1992). In the second half of the eighteenth century, the only two cities in Russia with any kind of established book trade were Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and all the booksellers in those cities were German. My thanks to Dr. Mark Lehmstedt for pointing this out to me. 5. The pressmen who worked in the printing shop of the Société Typographique in Neuchâtel during the 1770s included Germans and Swiss Germans, as well as native French-speakers—a fact attested by the letters of Johann Jacob Flick in the STN archive. Flick, a bookseller in Basel, wrote to the STN about workers, some of whom he directed to the printing shop in Neuchâtel. 6. Rudolph Jentzsch, Der deutsch-lateinische Büchermarkt nach den Leipziger OstermessKatalogen von 1740, 1770 und 1800 in seiner Gliederung und Wandlung (Leipzig, 1912).

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7. On the factory-like production of translations in eighteenth-century Germany, see Helmut Knufmann, “Das deutsche Übersetzungswesen des 18. Jahrhunderts im Spiegel von Übersetzer- und Herausgebervorreden,” Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 9 (1967). On the widespread presence of French books in the bookshops of eighteenth-century Germany, see Goldfriedrich, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels vom Beginn der klassischen Literaturperiode bis zum Beginn der Fremdherrschaft (1740–1894), vol. 3 of Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels (Leipzig, 1909), 531–36. 8. Raven, Business of Books, 143–44; Stefania Valeri, Libri nuovi scendon l’Alpi: Venti anni de relazioni franco-italiane negli archivi della Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (1769– 89) (Macerata, Italy, 2006). Although Raven does not say explicitly that the imported books from the Continent were French (some of them may have been Latin), it seems clear that French books predominated in the cross-Channel trade during the eighteenth century. 9. Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. Debevoise (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 45– 73. 10. On Goethe’s concept of Weltliteratur, see Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany, 1992), 53– 68. Goethe did not invent the concept of Weltliteratur until the late 1820s; but his Werther can be seen as an example of Weltliteratur avant la lettre. The idea of the French language as a source of cultural capital transferable to other national literatures is a theme that runs through the work of Casanova, World Republic of Letters. 11. Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, eds., Le livre triomphant, 1660–1830, vol. 2 of Histoire de l’ édition française (Paris, 1990), 385–87. 12. See, for example, the various articles on extraterritorial French publishing collected in Chartier and Martin, Le livre triomphant, 385–492. Those articles do give some attention to the European markets for French books but much more attention to the production of French books for the French market. The same imbalance can be seen in the highly acclaimed works of Robert Darnton: The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979); The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Mass., 1982); and The Forbidden Best- Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York, 1995). 13. The Marxist literary scholar Werner Krauss drew attention to the importance of the French book trade in eighteenth-century Germany in two important articles: “Über den Anteil der Buchgeschichte an der literarischen Entfaltung der Aufklärung” and “Der Weg der deutschen Aufklärung nach Frankreich während des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Studien zur deutschen und französischen Aufklärung (East Berlin, 1963), 144–46, 413–17. Since then, no one has attempted to produce a comprehensive overview of the French book trade in eighteenth-century Germany, but several German scholars have written articles or monographs on specific French booksellers or French publishing firms in Germany: Martin Fontius, Voltaire in Berlin: Zur Geschichte der bei G. C. Walther veröff entlichten Werke Voltaires (East Berlin, 1966); Jürgen Voss, “Ein Zentrum des französischen Buchhandels im Deutschland des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die Librairie Fontaine in Mannheim,” in Deutsch-französische Beziehungen im Spannungsfeld von Absolutismus, Aufklärung und Rev-

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olution, Pariser Historische Studien, vol. 36 (Bonn, 1992), 139–52; Christine Haug, “ ‘Die kleinen französischen Schriften gehen zur Zeit ungleich stärker als aber andere solide Werke . . .’ Der Buchhändler Johann Georg Esslinger (1710–1775) in Frankfurt am Main und sein Handel mit Geheimliteratur,” Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte 4 (2002), 104–35; and Karin Angelike, Louis-François Mettra: Ein französischer Zeitungsverleger in Köln (1770–1800), Rheinisches Archiv: Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande der Universität Bonn, 145 (Cologne, 2002), 316–45. Mettra, the subject of Angelike’s study, was a bookseller as well as a newspaper publisher, and her study includes a chapter on Mettra’s trade in French books, most of it based on the same archival material I had already discussed in a section of my dissertation, “The Process of Cultural Exchange: Publishing Between France and Germany (1769–89)” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991), 181– 98. In addition to Angelike’s study of Mettra, there have also been a few other studies devoted to the French-language periodical press of late eighteenth-century Germany: Matthias Beermann, Zeitung zwischen Profit und Politik: Der Courrier du Bas-Rhin—Eine Fallstudie zur politischen Tagespolitik im Europa des späten 18. Jahrhunderts, Deutsch-Französische Kulturbibliothek, 4 (Leipzig, 1996); Edgar Mass, “Die französische Presse im Deutschland des 18. Jahrhunderts: Köln, ein unrepresentatives Beispiel,” in Mehrsprachigkeit in der deutschen Aufklärung, ed. Dieter Kimpel (Hamburg, 1985), 156–77, and “Französische Journalisten in Deutschland,” in Deutsche in Frankreich, Franzosen in Deutschland, 1715–1789, ed. Jean Mondot, Jean-Marie Valentin, and Ju¨rgen Voss, Beiheft to Francia 25 (1992), 121–26; J. Kreutz, “Mannheim: Gazette d’Allemagne: Zur Geschichte einer kurpfälzischen Zeitung im Ancien Regime,” Francia 20:2 (1993): 151– 66; and A. Volmer, Presse und Frankophonie im 18. Jahrhundert: Studien zur französischsprachigen Presse in Thüringen, Kursachsen und Russland (Leipzig, 2000). 14. The information about the location of the booksellers who corresponded with Pa risian publishers comes from a single document, Tableau des principaux libraires de l’Europe, which was included in a 1781 edition of the Pa risian Almanach de la librairie and which is analyzed in Chartier and Martin, Le livre triomphant, 395– 96. For reasons that are too numerous to mention in an endnote, the “Tableau” does not provide either a complete or a perfectly accurate picture of the geographic distribution of French books outside of France. But the picture it provides is complete and accurate enough to support the main conclusion: Germany was one of the principal markets—probably the principal market—for French books outside of France. 15. On the Leipzig fair cata logues as (admittedly imperfect) sources of evidence about the German literary market, see my discussion in chap. 1. Etienne François discusses the importance of French books to the German literary market in his essay, “Les échanges culturels entre la France et les pays germaniques au XVIIIe siècle,” in Transferts: Les relations interculturelles dans l’espace franco-allemand (XVIIIe –XIXe siècle), ed. Michel Espagne and Michael Werner (Paris, 1988), 36–37. 16. The translation of French works into German was the subject of a large collaborative research project, the results of which are summarized by Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, René Nohr, and Rolf Reichardt, “Kulturtransfer im Epochenumbruch—Entwicklung

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und Inhalte der französisch-deutschen Übersetzungsbibliothek 1770–1815 im Überblick,” in Kulturtransfer im Epochenumbruch: Frankreich-Deutschland 1770 bis 1815, ed. HansJürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt (Leipzig, 1997), 1: 29–86. The figure of 2,678 translations for the period from 1770 to 1788 appears on p. 70. 17. On the market at German courts for German works in French translation, see my discussion in Chapter 6. On the culture of representation at German courts, see T. C. W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660–1789 (Oxford, 2002). 18. On the critical reactions of middle-class German intellectuals to French culture, see Krauss, “Der Weg der deutschen Aufklärung nach Frankreich.” 19. On Jacobi’s relations with Rey, see Eisenstein, Grub Street Abroad, 127–28; and Siegfried Sudhof, “Die Privatbibliothek eines Philosophen und Literaten: Der Buchbesitz Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis (1743–1819),” in Buch und Sammler: Private und öff entliche Bibliotheken im 18. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg, 1979), 141–49. On Goethe’s reading of d’Holbach, see his recollections in Dichtung und Wahrheit, pt. 3, book 11, Insel Verlag (1975), 2: 545. On Kant’s encounter with the work of Rousseau, one of the most memorable and fruitful cross-cultural encounters in the history of eighteenth-century thought, see the essay by Ernst Cassirer, “Kant and Rousseau,” in Rousseau, Kant, Goethe: Two Essays, trans. James Gutmann, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randal (Princeton, 1945), 1–60. On Herder’s reactions to French culture, see Pierre Pénisson, “Les rapports culturels de l’Allemagne à la France encyclopédiste chez Herder,” in Espagne and Werner, Transferts, 383– 92. 20. Michael Jeismann, Das Vaterland der Feinde: Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und Selbstverständnis in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1792–1918 (Stuttgart, 1992). 21. In the first half of the nineteenth century, total German book production grew roughly tenfold— an increase that reflected the expansion of the reading public and the industrialization of printing. In those circumstances, translations displaced foreign books in original languages as the primary vehicles of literary transfer; and the annual production of translations shot up, reaching a high point around mid-century. In 1845, nearly 10 percent of the novels published in Germany were translated novels. By then, however, the translations were almost as likely to be from English as from French. Norbert Bachleitner, “A Proposal to Include Book History in Translation Studies Illustrated with the German Translations of Scott and Flaubert,” Arcadia 44 (2009), 425. 22. The STN is known, above all, from the works of Robert Darnton cited in n. 12. But a great many other scholars have also studied the STN’s papers. For an overview of research on the STN, see L’ édition neuchâteloise au siècle des Lumières: La Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (1769–1789), ed. Michel Schlup (Neuchâtel, 2002); and Le rayonnement d’une maison d’ édition dans l’Europe des Lumières: La Société Typographique de Neuchâtel, 1760–1789, ed. Robert Darnton and Michel Schlup (Neuchâtel, 2005). At the moment, two scholars at the University of Leeds in England, Simon Burrows and Mark Curran, are preparing an online database of all the STN’s commercial transactions, a scholarly resource that will soon be made public. They have generously shared with me

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some of the information from their database in advance of its publication; and, at a few points in this book, I use their data to supplement my own. It is important to note, however, that the Leeds database will have no effect on the analysis of the demand for French books in Germany that I present in Chapter 4. The database contains information on the shipments that the STN made. Its shipments, however, did not always coincide exactly with the orders of its correspondents, so they did not necessarily reflect the demand in the literary marketplace. My analysis of demand is based on the most reliable evidence: the actual orders of the STN’s correspondents in Germany. 23. The geographic designation “the North” (le nord) was not an invention of the STN’s correspondent in Hamburg. The historian J. G. A. Pocock points out that Voltaire used the same designation in his Histoire de l’empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand in order to refer to “Sweden, Baltic Germany, Poland, and Russia.” See Pocock, “Some Europes in Their History,” in The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge, 2002), 58. 24. That said, Riga could certainly be described as a German city, and no doubt Germans made up a large segment of the reading public in the multiethnic, polyglot regions of eastern Europe. 25. Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers, 55. Darnton’s claim that “a kind of invisible, floating stock came into existence throughout the area bordering France from the Low Countries to Switzerland” has come under attack from Mark Curran, one of the codirectors of the University of Leeds STN project. See n. 22. In a forthcoming article, which Dr. Curran sent to me in advance of publication, he challenges several aspects of Darnton’s claim and by extension the representative value of the STN archive. He notes, on the strength of the Leeds database, that a considerable percentage of the orders the STN received— especially orders for prohibited books from booksellers in France—were never filled. And he concludes that the STN was less able, or less willing, than it claimed to procure books it did not have in stock: most of the books it sold were the ones most readily available to it—in other words, books printed in Switzerland. That may well have been so. I would argue, however, that the orders recorded in the STN’s account books, even if not executed, were nevertheless indicators of the demand for French books— provided that those orders were not skewed toward some particular segment of the market. Curran says that they were skewed and that most booksellers ordered from the STN only such books as the STN had in stock. But if that were the case, then how to explain the discrepancy between orders and sales, a discrepancy that the Leeds database reveals? Finally, and most important, Curran does not take adequate account of piracy. When he disputes the thesis of a “floating stock,” he seems to be taking “stock” to mean stock of editions. The prevalence of piracy, however, all but ensured that many of the same books (though not necessarily the same editions) would be available throughout the different regions of the extraterritorial French publishing industry. Curran’s arguments are based on a wealth of solid empirical evidence, but the evidence is not solid enough to support the full weight of his revisionist thesis— or so it seems to me. No doubt his thesis will be

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widely discussed in the years to come. Cf. Curran, “Beyond The Forbidden Best- Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France” (forthcoming). 26. On the French ignorance of and indifference toward Germany in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, see Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, “La construction d’une référence culturelle allemande en France: Genèse et histoire (1750–1914),” Annales ESC 4 (July–Aug. 1987): 976. The situation changed somewhat at the end of the eighteenth century, but not much. According to Jean-Pierre Lefebvre (“L’introduction de la philosophie allemande en France au XIXe siècle: La question des traductions,” in Espagne and Werner, Transferts, 465– 76), the reception of Kant’s philosophy in France occurred with a décalage of roughly a half-century. 27. And even Fauche had never directed a printing shop; his experience in the book trade had been confined to publishing and bookselling. On Fauche, see Michel Schlup, “La Société Typographique de Neuchâtel: Points de repère,” in L’ édition neuchâteloise au siècle des Lumières, 69– 70.

chapter 1. rite of spring 1. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 6 March 1770. The author of the letter, C. A. Serini, was an employee of the firm. 2. STN to Société Typographique de Berne, 26 March and 2 April 1770. 3. Ibid., 7 April 1770. In its letter of 7 April, the STN indicated that it had made the shipment to Bern three days earlier, on 4 April; but according to its daily account book (Brouillard A, Ms. 1033, folio 24), it made the shipment on 1 April. 4. Serini on behalf of the Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 11 April 1770. It should be noted that Serini overstated somewhat the actual number of booksellers who attended the Leipzig fair. According to the research of Reinhard Wittmann (“Die frühen Buchhändlerzeitschriften als Spiegel des literarischen Lebens,” Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 13 [1973]: 815), the number of firms trading at the Leipzig fairs ranged from 250 to 350 during the 1770s and 1780s, and some of those firms were represented at the fairs by Leipzig commissioners rather than by associates or employees of the firms. 5. For a detailed description of activities at the fairs, see Mark Lehmstedt, “ “Ein notwendiges Übel”: Die Leipziger Buchhändlermesse im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Leipzig: Stadt der wa(h)ren Wunder— 500 Jahre Reichsmesseprivileg, ed. Volker Rodekamp (Leipzig, 1997), 70– 71. The fair began on Jubilate Sunday, three weeks after Easter Sunday. Strictly speaking, therefore, it was not an Easter fair, but it was commonly referred to as such. 6. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 8 July 1770. 7. Robert Darnton, Edition et sédition: L’univers de la littérature clandestine au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1991), 48–52. 8. Serini to STN, 16 March 1776. At the time, Serini, who had previously worked for the Société Typographique de Berne, was an employee of the Basel book dealer Johann Jacob Flick.

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9. Friedrich Nicolai to Friedrich Perthes, 4 May 1808. Cited in Pamela Selwyn, “Generationskonflikt unter Buchhändlern? Der deutsche Buchhandel im Briefwechsel zwischen Friedrich Perthes und Friedrich Nicolai im Frühjahr 1808,” Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel 157 Beiheft no. 2 (1990): 16. 10. On the Kommissionsbuchhandel, see Lehmstedt, “Ein notwendiges Übel,” 67– 68, and “Die Herausbildung des Kommissionsbuchhandels in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert,” in L’Europe et le livre: Réseaux et pratiques du négoce de librairie XV e –XIX e siècles, ed. Frédéric Barbier, Sabine Juratie, and Dominique Varry (Paris, 1996), 451–83. 11. The resemblance between the two expressions was all the more striking in the late eighteenth century because German orthography had not yet been standardized and many Germans continued to write “c” instead of “k.” Thus, announcements in the Leipzig cata logues would typically read, “bei Herrn X in Commission.” No wonder the STN was confused. 12. The equivalent in German to what the STN understood by “en commission” was “Konditionsverkehr.” See Lehmstedt, “Die Herausbildung des Kommissionsbuchhandels,” 453. 13. Bosset de Luze, one of the STN’s directors, met with Varrentrap on a trip to Frankfurt in the summer of 1779; and in his report to the home office in Neuchâtel, which he sent from Mainz on 24 July 1779, he described Varrentrap as “the dean of the book trade” (doyen de la librairie), adding that Varrentrap was so old that his only concern was to liquidate his stock and not to leave his children with any burdens. But that was almost a decade after Varrentrap had offered to serve the STN as its commissioner. In the early 1770s, he was still an active book dealer—more active than Esslinger, who may indeed have been a little too old to keep up with the demands of his profession. Esslinger’s son-inlaw, the Mannheim bookseller Christian Schwan, told the STN in a letter of 28 January 1772, “My father-in-law is an old man [vieillard] who for the last several years has been relying quite a lot on my advice.” 14. Varrentrap’s relation with the Société Typographique de Bouillon can be inferred from the Leipzig fair cata logues; Esslinger’s with Bassompière is mentioned in Esslinger’s letter to the STN of 17 March 1774. 15. Varrentrap to STN, 20 October 1770. 16. The bookseller in Basel, Johann Jacob Flick, knew of Varrentrap’s offer to the STN because Varrentrap’s son had visited him in Basel after his trip to Neuchatel. See Flick to STN, 8 February 1772. 17. Schwan to STN, 14 and 28 January 1772. 18. STN to Schwan, 14 September 1773. 19. In his letter of 17 March 1774, Esslinger confirmed receipt of the books from Nancy, which reached him through the intermediary of Schwan in Mannheim, as well as those from Dresden. The books from Dresden had originally been sent to the bookseller Conrad Walther. On the books that Esslinger received from Nancy and Dresden, see also STN to Schwan, 23 August and 14 September 1773, and 31 January 1774, as well as STN to Duvez in Nancy, 23 August 1773, and to Walther, 27 January 1774. The books from

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Berlin had originally been sent to the bookseller Samuel Pitra. On those books, see STN to Pitra, 13 November 1773. The books from Cassel had originally been sent to the bookseller Jean-Frédéric Hemmerde. On the transfer of those books to Esslinger, see Johann Georg von Scheidlin, a banker in Nuremberg, to STN, 28 January 1775. 20. Johann Conrad Deinet to STN, 12 February 1779. 21. In late 1774, the STN seems to have consulted Hans Konrad Heidegger, a magistrate in Zurich, about the possibility of engaging the ser vices of a Leipzig commissioner, but it never pursued the matter. See Heidegger’s letter to the STN dated 7 January 1775. 22. That the Swiss German book dealers swapped the STN’s books at the Leipzig fairs can be inferred from comments they made in their letters to the STN. See Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 21 June 1778; Emmanuel Haller to STN, 25 May 1773; and Johann Jacob Flick to STN, 16 March 1776. In his letter to the STN of 8 September 1781, however, Flick indicated that he was able to sell some of the STN’s books for money, though he had to grant credit terms of fifteen to eighteen months. 23. From information scattered through the correspondence of the Société Typographique de Berne, it does not appear that the directors of the firm traveled to Leipzig. During the 1770s, they dispatched shop assistants (commis) to represent the firm at the fairs: first, Serini, who left his employers in 1773 to work for the Basel book dealer Johann Jacob Flick; then a young man named Pfaehler, who later became one of the co-directors of the firm. As for their storeroom (magasin) in Leipzig, the book dealers in Bern alluded to it in two of their letters to the STN, on 7 December 1772 and 25 June 1778. Serini described the relations of the Société Typographique de Berne with German booksellers in a letter to the STN dated 28 November 1778, by which time he was established as a bookseller for his own account in Basel; and, in that letter, he said that the Société Typographique de Berne “deals with almost all the booksellers of Germany.” When the founder of the Société Typographique de Berne, Vinzenz Bernhard Tscharner, died in 1778, his brother Nicklaus Emmanuel took over responsibility for the firm and established the “Nouvelle Société Typographique de Berne.” In the Neuchâtel archives, the letters of the Nouvelle Société are contained in a separate dossier. So as not to confuse the reader with too many long company names, however, I shall refer to both the original firm and its successor as the Société Typographique de Berne. For biographical information on some of the directors of the firm, see Johann Lindt, “Die typographische Gesellschaft in Bern,” Schweizerisches Gutenbergmuseum 4 (1958): 3–38. Clorinda Donato discusses the trade in French books that the Société Typographique de Berne conducted at the fairs during the early 1770s in her article, “From Switzerland to Europe through Leipzig: The Swiss Book Trade and the Leipziger Messe,” Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte 4 (1994): 103–33. 24. Emmanuel Haller to STN, 25 May 1773. Haller placed his first order with the STN several months later, on 7 September 1773, and asked the STN to send it directly to the Leipzig autumn fair. Like the Société Typographique de Berne, Haller sent a commis to Leipzig rather than traveling there himself. 25. The STN sent Flick small quantities of books en commission during the early 1770s, but that was before he began transporting the STN’s books to the Leipzig fairs.

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The first year in which he placed entries for the STN’s books in the Leipzig fair cata logue was 1774. Thereafter, he ordered the STN’s books for his own account. Serini, too, corresponded with the STN before he began transporting the STN’s books to Leipzig: first as an employee of the Société Typographique de Berne from 1769 to 1773, then as an employee of Flick from 1773 to 1776. And, in most instances, he signed his own name to the correspondence rather than that of his employers. On 16 March 1776, he told the STN that he had been elevated to the rank of bourgeois of Basel and was therefore authorized to establish a business for his own account, though he still had some obligations to Flick that he had to honor before he could set himself up in trade. Two years later, according to the fair catalogue, he sold the STN’s books in Leipzig for the first time. On 1 September 1779, however, he reported to the STN that he had had to declare himself insolvent. Eventually, Serini managed to resurrect his trade, and, in 1781, he resumed his correspondence with the STN. 26. Steiner to STN, 16 July 1784. 27. While the competition at Leipzig did not deter the Swiss German book dealers from selling the STN’s books at the fairs, it did prompt several complaints—from Flick about the Société Typographique de Berne (Flick to STN, 4 February 1784), from Haller about Flick (Haller to STN, 14 August 1774), and from Flick about Haller (Flick to STN, 16 March 1776). 28. On the weakness of the fair cata logue as a source of evidence about the German literary market, see H. J. Koppitz, “Zur Bibliographie der deutschen Buchproduktion des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie 9 (1962), 21. For a more positive assessment, cf. Bernhard Fabian, “Die Messkataloge des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts,” in Buch und Buchhandel in Europa im achtzehnten Jahrhundert: The Book and the Book Trade in Eighteenth- Century Europe, ed. Giles Barber and Bernhard Fabian (Hamburg, 1981), 321–42. 29. For the Easter fair of 1777, Flick decided to order just thirty copies of the STN’s edition of Les Incas, a novel by Marmontel, because, as he explained shortly before his departure for Leipzig, “that work is being pirated in Lausanne, Yverdon und Liège, in addition to many other places” (Flick to STN, 26 March 1777). It turned out to be a wise decision. In the Easter cata logue of 1777, four different booksellers, including Flick, announced editions of Marmontel’s work. 30. Even the pirated edition of a French work could generate orders for hundreds of copies if no other editions of that work were available at the fair, as happened with Voyage dans les mers de l’Inde by Le Gentil, a travel narrative that the STN published jointly with the typographical societies of Bern and Lausanne. Fortunately for the Swiss, the original Pa risian edition of that work was never announced in the fair cata logues. The Swiss edition, therefore, had the market all to itself, and a German bookseller agreed to purchase three hundred copies provided that the Swiss were able to deliver the copies to him at the Easter fair of 1780. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 23 March 1780, cited in Silvio Corsini, “Un pour tous . . . et chacun pour soi? Petite histoire d’une alliance entre les Sociétés typographiques de Lausanne, Berne et Neuchâtel,” in Le rayonnement d’une maison d’ édition, 127.

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31. The STN’s edition of Falkenstein came out in September 1777, too late to be sold at the autumn fair, at which two other editions, including one by the Société Typographique de Berne, were announced in the catalogue. And the delay cost the STN dearly: “I am quite surprised that you did not speculate sooner on so interesting a work as this one,” Flick said of Falkenstein. “I can assure you that I would have sold a thousand copies in eight days” (Flick to STN, 20 August 1777). Eventually, Flick agreed to take 217 copies of the STN’s edition “to sell . . . primarily at the next [i.e. Easter] Leipzig fair” (Flick to STN, 22 September 1777). 32. In 1778, the Société Typographique de Berne agreed to surrender the whole of the German and Swiss German market to a German bookseller who had offered to purchase four hundred copies of two editions that the typographical societies of Neuchâtel, Lausanne, and Bern had published jointly: two hundred of Mémoires du maréchal de Berwick and two hundred of Correspondance d’un jeune militaire by Jean-François de Bourgoing. Before that agreement could be concluded, the STN had to give its consent, and it appears to have expressed some misgivings about whether an order of two hundred copies was enough to warrant so generous a concession. The book dealers in Bern, however, insisted that it was a good deal, an order-in-the-hand that the associates would be foolish to let go in the vain hope of snaring a larger order in the future. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 27 December 1778. 33. The Neuchâtel edition of Mirabeau’s Des lettres de cachet et des prisons d’ état was published by Jonas Fauche, the son of the STN’s former associate. To satisfy the demand for that work, Fauche printed the first volume at the staggeringly high pressrun of nine thousand copies, and a significant fraction of that pressrun was distributed in Germany, probably by the Hamburg bookseller Jean-Guillaume Virchaux, whose Leipzig commissioner announced the work in the Easter cata logue of 1783. See Michel Schlup, “L’édition du Tableau de Paris à Neuchâtel (1781–1783),” in Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ed. Jean-Claude Bonnet (Paris, 1994), cxxxii. 34. In its letter to the STN of 28 December 1769, the Société Typographique de Berne said that everything it purchased from Neuchâtel would be for the Easter fairs, “because it would be a waste of effort and money to order a quantity [of the STN’s books] to sell to retail customers in our region.” Later on, however, it must have changed its mind because all the evidence indicates that the Société Typographique de Berne did, in fact, order a few of the STN’s books for its local retail trade. 35. On the date of departure for Leipzig, which fell in late March or early April, see Serini (as employee of the Société Typographique de Berne) to STN, 12 March 1771; Serini (as employee of Flick) to STN, 23 March 1774; Flick’s assistant to STN, 26 April 1779; and Flick to STN, 20 March 1780. On the date of return from Leipzig, which fell in late May, see Serini (as employee of the Société Typographique de Berne) to STN, 6 March 1770 and 29 May 1771; Flick to STN, 29 May 1780; and Haller to STN, 22 May 1774. On the return of merchandise from Leipzig, which occurred in June, see Serini (as employee of the Société Typographique de Berne) to STN, 10 June 1770. On the process of sorting merchandise obtained at the Easter fair, which could drag on through July and

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August, see Flick to STN, 28 June 1777, and Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 11 August 1772. 36. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 7 June 1780. 37. In late 1774 (as indicated in n. 21), the STN seems to have asked Hans Konrad Heidegger, a magistrate in Zurich, about the feasibility of hiring a Leipzig commissioner. In his reply of 7 January 1775, Heidegger told the STN that it would be easier for a Leipzig commissioner to sell the STN’s French books at the fairs if he were able to swap them against German books. Not all of the books that the Swiss German book dealers brought back from Leipzig were German books, however. The Société Typographique de Berne also purchased some French books at the fairs. Thus, in May 1775, the book dealers in Bern declined the STN’s invitation to purchase copies of Confidences d’une jolie femme, a novel by Mademoiselle d’Albert that the STN had just published. Not until Pfaehler, their employee, had returned from Leipzig would they be able to judge whether they needed any copies of the STN’s edition, they explained; in the meantime, they had to reckon with the possibility that Pfaehler had already obtained copies of d’Albert’s novel from Dutch publishers at the fair. See Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 23 May 1775. 38. The relations between the Société Typographique de Berne and Félice predated the establishment of the STN. The Société Typographique de Berne alluded to its relations with Félice in the letters that it wrote to the STN on 14 September 1769 and 7 April 1772. On those relations, see also Lindt, “Die typographische Gesellschaft in Bern,” 4, and Donato, “From Switzerland to Europe through Leipzig,” 104–18. As for Heubach, it is clear from documents in the Neuchâtel archives that his primary correspondent in German Switzerland was Haller. Haller referred to his relations with Heubach in his letters to the STN of 25 May 1773, and 5 May, 9 October, and 15 December 1774; Serini (as an employee of Flick) referred to Haller’s relations with Heubach in his letter to the STN of 25 May 1774. Haller, however, also received French books from a second Lausanne publisher, Gabriel Décombaz, who surrendered to him all of the German market for the Lausanne edition of Annales de la vertu by Madame de Genlis. See Haller to STN, 10 April 1781. 39. The Société Typographique de Berne mentioned the importance of inserting titles in the fair cata logues in its letter to the STN of 6 March 1770. 40. On the itinerary of commercial shipping between Bern and Leipzig, see the letter cited above in n. 4. 41. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 7 April 1772. 42. Ibid., 4 January 1770. The following year, the Société Typographique de Berne did, in fact, halt its shipments to Leipzig in mid-February because of the costs of transportation, according to the letter that it wrote to the STN on 14 February 1771. For the Easter fair of 1770, however, its shipments were staggered over three months, from late December to late March; so the supposed deadline of late February was not inflexible. Information scattered through the letters of the STN’s other correspondents in Bern and Basel indicates that in most years, shipments continued to depart for Leipzig until midor late March. See Flick to STN, 28 February 1777, 8 March 1779, 25 February 1780, and 15 March 1785; Haller to STN, 24 March 1774.

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43. According to the Brouillard A, Ms. 1033, folio 18, the STN sent two hundred copies of Lettres d’Algarotti and two hundred of volume 1 of Histoire du patriotisme français to Bern on 15 February 1770. Later in the same year, it sent another two hundred copies of volumes 2 and 3 of Patriotisme français—volume 2 in May and volume 3 in September. It is not clear, however, when the book dealers in Bern forwarded the copies of those volumes to Leipzig, whether in the autumn or not until the following spring. 44. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 6 March 1770. 45. Regarding the two hundred copies of Naufrage de Viaud, which the STN sent to Bern on 1 April 1770, see n. 3. 46. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 8 April 1770. 47. Ibid., 8 July 1770. 48. On the work rhythms of the STN’s printing shop, see Robert Darnton, “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the rue Saint-Séverin,” in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984), 81, and “Bookmaking,” in Darnton, Business of Enlightenment, 219–27; and Jacques Rychner, “Le travail de l’atelier,” in Chartier and Martin, Le livre triomphant, 46– 70. 49. The modalities of Haller’s trade at Leipzig can be inferred from the letters he wrote to the STN on 26 April and 13 June 1779, 23 May 1781, and 1 October 1783. In the letter from October 1783, which seems to have referred to the recently held autumn fair, he wrote: “I am awaiting word from my commissioner in Leipzig to order from you the quantity that I will need of Cecilia [the French translation of a novel by the English novelist Frances Burney].” 50. Serini (as employee of Flick) to STN, 25 May 1774. Serini had made the same observation about the importance of having books on hand at the fairs several years earlier when he was working for the Société Typographique de Berne and the STN had asked him to gather orders at the Easter fair for its edition of d’Holbach’s Système de la nature: “It is necessary to supply the book when receiving money, the booksellers of Germany don’t pay anything in advance” (Serini to STN, 7 March 1771). 51. Orell, Gessner & Fuessli to STN, 7 October 1782. On the German translations of French works, see Lüsebrink et al., “Kulturtransfer im Epochenumbruch.” 52. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 28 February 1771. Six years later the Frankfurt bookseller Johann Conrad Deinet reported to the STN that a German translation of Robertson’s History of America would be coming out in a two-volume quarto edition at the next Leipzig fair: “I hope nevertheless to be able to place six copies of the [French] translation by M. Suart [i.e., Suard]” (Deinet to STN, 31 August 1777). Since both of Robertson’s histories had been published originally in English, the choice for German readers was between a French and a German translation. No doubt works published originally in French were better able to withstand the competition from German translations than were French translations of English works. On the relation between the demand for French originals and German translations, see Krauss, “Der Weg der deutschen Aufklärung nach Frankreich,” 416–17.

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53. The German translation was published in 1770 by Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius in Leipzig: Sonderbare Schicksale des Herrn Viaud, eines französischen Seefahrers, von ihm selbst beschrieben. Eine wahre Geschichte. Aus dem Französischen übersetzt. 54. In a letter to the STN of 8 December 1771, the Société Typographique de Berne indicated that it planned to have editions of two works by Albrecht von Haller printed in Leipzig. Since that was before the adoption of the legislation on Saxon book privileges, the book dealers in Bern must have had those two works printed in Leipzig in order to save on the costs of shipping. Six years later, however, after the legislation had gone into effect, they seem to have had another work printed in Leipzig, Anecdotes intéressantes et historiques de l’ illustre voyageur, Mr. le comte de Falkenstein, pendant son séjour à Paris, which their Leipzig commissioner Karl Friedrich Schneider entered in the autumn fair cata logue with the notation “avec privilège.” A few of the French books that had been printed in Saxony and were therefore protected by Saxon book privileges corresponded to titles in the STN’s cata logue, as the STN discovered when it sent its cata logue to a Leipzig book dealer named Gottlob Hilscher. In his reply to the STN, dated 6 August 1775, Hilscher indicated that he had come across several works in the STN’s cata logue, such as the Oeuvres of Molière and Boileau, which could not be sold in Leipzig because editions of those works had been printed there and were covered by Saxon book privileges. 55. Bosset in Mainz to STN, 24 July 1779. 56. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 28 February 1771. Actually, the Société Typographique de Berne seems to have been mistaken: only one edition of Londres was announced in the autumn cata logue of 1770, a Lausanne edition that was being sold in Leipzig by a Leipzig commissioner, the firm of Arkstée & Merkus. 57. Haller to STN, 26 September 1773. 58. Flick to STN, 22 September 1777 and 18 March 1778. 59. Ludwig Wekhrlin, Chronologen 7 (1780), 184. Cited in Rudolf Vierhaus, “ ‘Sie und nicht Wir’: Deutsche Urteile über den Ausbruch der französischen Revolution,” in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert: Politische Verfassung, soziales Gefüge, geistige Bewegungen (Göttingen, 1987), 209–10. 60. Flick to STN, 3 March 1781. 61. Haller to STN, 4 March 1781. 62. Jean-Guillaume Virchaux to STN, 21 March 1781. The Neuchâtel-Bern edition of Le compte rendu must have been printed in Bern because there are no traces of it in the printer’s log (Banque des ouvriers) of the STN. 63. Flick to STN, 30 March 1781; Serini to STN, 10 March 1781. 64. Bohn obtained a Saxon book privilege for his translation of Necker’s work, which probably explains why the other translations were not entered in the Leipzig catalogue. Those translations, all of them published in 1781, came from Voss in Berlin, Trattner in Vienna, and Van Düren in Frankfurt. 65. Christof Ziegler to STN, 7 May 1781.

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66. Administration de l’École Typographique des Orphelins [Karl de Grandmesnil] to STN, 20 August 1781. 67. Virchaux to STN, 14 November 1781. 68. STN to Breithaupt in Leipzig, 5 October 1771, and STN to Dyck in Leipzig, 19 October 1771. In 1773, the STN did manage to start a correspondence with Philipp Erasmus Reich, the leading publisher in Leipzig, who received a small shipment from the STN worth approximately 74 livres; but the correspondence petered out shortly afterward. See STN to Reich, 27 March, 12 April, 24 June, and 24 August 1773; Reich to STN, 3 and 23 April, and 7 August 1773. 69. STN to Dubosc and Gontard in Leipzig, 14 November 1773. 70. Walther to STN, 16 September 1776. 71. Bohn to STN, 26 March 1776. 72. Béguelin to STN, 25 May 1776. 73. STN to Gerle, 3 April 1780. Gerle had mentioned the possibility of selling the STN’s books in Leipzig in his letter to the STN of 25 March 1780. 74. Only three booksellers in Germany purchased a hundred or more copies of the STN’s editions for sale in Leipzig: Conrad Walther in Dresden, who received 100 copies of d’Holbach’s Système de la nature in 1771; J. G. Baerstecher in Cleve, who received 306 copies of d’Holbach’s work in 1771 and 1772, in addition to 100 of Mme. Riccoboni’s Lettres d’Elisabeth Sophie de Vallière, which the STN sent directly to Baerstecher’s commissioner in Leipzig for the Easter fair of 1772; and Jean-Guillaume Virchaux of Hamburg, who received 928 copies (nearly the entire pressrun) of the abbé Mably’s Du gouvernement et des lois de la Pologne and 500 of Pièces intéressantes et peu connues pour servir à l’ histoire in 1781. It also seems likely that Virchaux received at least several hundred copies of the four-volume Neuchâtel edition of Mercier’s Tableau de Paris, which the STN printed on behalf of Jonas Fauche, the son of its former associate, in 1781. Fauche maintained close relations with Virchaux and probably surrendered the German market to him for the Neuchâtel edition of Mercier’s work, which Virchaux announced in the Leipzig autumn cata logue of 1781. Information on the shipments of the works by d’Holbach and Riccoboni to Walther and Baerstecher comes from the Brouillard A, Ms. 1033; information on the shipment of the work by Mably and the anonymously published Pièces intéressantes to Virchaux comes from the Livre de commissions, Ms. 1020. On Virchaux as the likely German distributor for the Neuchâtel edition of Mercier’s Tableau de Paris, see Schlup, “L’édition du Tableau de Paris à Neuchâtel,” cxxix. 75. The French book historian Frédéric Barbier, who made a brief foray into the Neuchâtel archives to study the trade between the STN and Germany, also draws attention to the small volume of the STN’s direct trade with Leipzig. Barbier, however, does not seem to have been aware that the STN’s books reached the Leipzig fairs through the intermediary of its correspondents in Bern and Basel. In addition, he makes the mistake of confusing the geographic distribution of the STN’s correspondents with the geographic distribution of its trade; so he produces a map representing the locations of the STN’s correspondents and treats that map as if it represented the diffusion of the STN’s books.

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Cf. Barbier, “Der französische Buchhandel und Leipzig zwischen 1700 und ca. 1830,” in Von der Elbe bis an die Seine: Kulturtransfer zwischen Sachsen und Frankreich im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Michel Espagne and Matthias Middel (Leipzig, 1993), esp. 270– 72.

chapter 2. whom to trust? 1. Luc Preiswerck in Basel to STN, 11 April 1781. 2. On the importance of credit to the transmission of knowledge through print, see Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 1998). 3. The STN’s Brouillard A, Ms. 1033, which covers the years from 1770 to 1772, lists only two shipments from the STN to Bartholomai: one from 13 December 1771, the other from 2 October 1772. In its letter of 10 January 1774, the STN indicated that it had also made two shipments to Bartholomai in 1773: one on 10 June, the other on 16 July. 4. Bartholomai to STN, 30 May 1771. 5. On the STN’s edition of Questions sur l’Encyclopédie and its arrangement with Voltaire, see Darnton, “What Is the History of Books?” 15. 6. STN to Kindervatter, 29 November 1773 and 10 January 1774, and STN to Bartholomai, 29 November 1773 and 10 January 1774. 7. Bartholomai to STN, 19 January 1774. 8. STN to Bartholomai, 24 January 1774. In its next letter to Bartholomai, dated 21 February, the STN indicated that Bartholomai had complied with its request and that it had received the promissory note signed by him for the full amount of his debt. 9. Kindervatter to STN, 10 June 1774. 10. Kindervatter to STN, 12 September 1776. Kindervatter informed the STN of the outcome of Bartholomai’s bankruptcy trial in his letter of 12 September. About Bartholomai’s activities in 1779 and how he had resurrected his trade, Kindervatter informed the STN in a letter of 16 January 1779. 11. STN to Motta, 6 January 1772; Motta to STN, 30 December 1771. In the letter it sent to Baerstecher on 26 July 1773, the STN evaluated his debt at 1,763 livres, 19 sous, 9 deniers. 12. STN to Baerstecher, 9 August 1773. All the documents relating to the STN’s case with Penserot are contained in a separate dossier, Ms. 1167. My reconstruction of the events and the competing legal arguments is based primarily on the following documents from that dossier: Van Beughem’s formal protest of Baerstecher’s nonpayment, dated 23 November 1772 and signed by a notary in Cleve named Rudolph Christi; Penserot’s formal protest of the STN’s nonpayment, dated 7 December 1772 and signed by a notary in Neuchâtel named D. F. Jeanrenaud; and the STN’s printed deposition entitled “Information sommaire.” The German version of the Prussian code stipulated the time delay for protesting a Wechsel in the event of nonpayment. The question was what exactly “Wechsel” referred to—whether it referred to all commercial bills or only to letters of exchange (i.e., payment orders by which one firm would direct another firm to transfer funds to a third

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firm). The STN argued that it referred to all bills, Penserot that it referred only to letters of exchange. The question was important because Baerstecher’s note was not a letter of exchange; it was a promissory note made out by a debtor to his creditor. The dossier relating to the Penserot aff air also contains documents that the STN assembled for the suit it planned to bring against Baerstecher and his associate G. B. Hoff mann. For the rest of this chapter, any references to documents from the Penserot dossier will be identified by the notation “Ms. 1167.” In the eighteenth century, Neuchâtel was also subject— at least nominally—to the Prussian crown, but it must not have been subject to the same commercial code as the Prussian enclave of Cleve. 13. Baerstecher to STN, 15 and 23 December 1772. The letter of 15 December was signed not by J. G. Baerstecher but rather by his brother, David Baerstecher. The latter, however, sounded suspiciously like an identical twin, so closely did his rhetoric match that of his “brother.” 14. Fischer to STN, 17 February 1773. Fischer came to the same conclusion about the futility of bringing legal action in the letter that he wrote to the STN on 14 July 1773. 15. STN to Baerstecher, 26 July 1773; Baerstecher to STN, 20 August 1773. 16. STN to Deprée, 4 October 1773, and to Baerstecher, 22 November 1773. 17. Baerstecher to STN, 14 December 1773. 18. STN to Fischer, 23 December 1773 and 13 January 1774. 19. STN to Baerstecher, 13 January 1774. 20. Baerstecher to Fischer, 28 January 1774, and Baerstecher to STN, 2 February 1774. Baerstecher wrote to Fischer in German, to the STN in French. 21. STN to Baerstecher, 14 February 1774. 22. STN to Fischer, 28 March 1774. 23. Ibid., 30 May 1774 (Ms. 1167). 24. Delaroque to STN, 11 June 1774. 25. Such was the version of events that Sack presented to the STN in a letter of 12 February 1778 (Ms. 1167) when he sought to explain why he had not taken legal action. It was also more or less the version that Fischer presented in a letter of 3 June 1776 (Ms. 1167) to the Freiherr von Danckelmann, a government official in Cleve. In his letter of February 1778, Sack claimed that he had written to the STN twice in 1774 insisting that he would need to receive an advance on his legal costs before taking any action and that the STN had ignored his letters. Those letters, however, do not exist in the Neuchâtel archives. There is only one letter from Sack in Neuchâtel, and that is the one from 1778. The STN maintained that until 1778, it had never received any direct communication from its lawyer in Cleve. 26. Baerstecher to STN, 19 December 1774.The crate that finally reached Neuchâtel in July 1774 contained the following books: 100 copies of Baerstecher’s two-volume octavo edition of Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains comprising 72 sheets; 50 of his one-volume octavo edition of Histoire des diables modernes comprising 14 sheets; and 9 of a two-volume duodecimo edition of Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois comprising 55 sheets. If evaluated according to the STN’s standard price of one sou

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per sheet, those books would have been worth just a little less than 420 livres. The information on the contents of the shipment I owe to Simon Burrows and Mark Curran. 27. Fischer to STN, 10 January 1775. 28. Fischer defended the arrangement that he had concluded with Baerstecher in the letter that he wrote on 3 June 1776 to the Freiherr von Danckelmann. See n. 25 above. Danckelmann, an official in the trade ministry (Collegium) of Cleve, had asked Fischer about the failure of Sack, the STN’s lawyer, to take legal action against Baerstecher. In his reply, Fischer told Danckelmann that the books Baerstecher had sent to Neuchâtel had reduced his debt to the STN by a considerable amount (um ein merkliches), and that afterward there was nothing further to be done—legal action against Baerstecher was futile. Fischer’s response to Danckelmann was enclosed with the letter that Danckelmann wrote to the STN on 12 August 1776 (Ms. 1167). The previous year, however, when Fischer wrote directly to the STN, he admitted that the books Baerstecher had sent to it did not cover all of its debt and that for the rest of what Baerstecher owed, the STN might still have to take legal action against him. Cf. Fischer to STN, 10 January 1775. The crate that reached Neuchâtel in April 1775 contained the following books: 200 copies of Baerstecher’s two-volume octavo edition of Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains comprising 72 sheets; 79 of his one-volume octavo edition of Maximes du duc de La Rochefoucauld comprising 30 sheets; and two copies of volume one of the STN’s own edition of Description des arts et métiers, which he was simply returning to Neuchâtel. The STN sold the Arts et métiers at a price of 12 livres per volume. So if the other books were evaluated according to its standard price of one sou per sheet, the total value of the books in the shipment would have come to roughly 862 livres. The information on the contents of the shipment I owe to Simon Burrows and Mark Curran. 29. STN to d’Osteau, President of the Regency Council in Cleve, 3 August 1776. The STN’s threatening letter of 3 August followed another, more moderately worded letter to d’Osteau, dated 4 May 1776, which had gone unanswered. 30. STN to Schulenburg, 15 January and 29 March 1778. 31. Sack to STN, 12 February 1778 (Ms. 1167). 32. Hoffmann was still in Cleve in the summer of 1779 when Bosset de Luze stopped there during his journey through the Rhineland. And nothing had changed: Hoff mann continued to refuse the STN’s demands for payment, and Sack continued to argue that legal action would be futile. In addition, the STN’s lawyer expressed considerable irritation that “for such a trifling matter” (une pareille bagatelle), the STN had appealed to the ministry in Berlin. As for Baerstecher, Bosset referred to him as Hoffmann’s “former associate,” noting that he was now an “actor” (comédien) in Düsseldorf. See Bosset to STN, 14 August 1779; STN to Bosset, 28 August 1779. 33. On Baerstecher’s failed efforts to publish a German translation of Diderot’s Encyclopédie and his political activities during the Revolution, see Jürgen Voss, “Verbreitung, Rezeption und Nachwirkung der Encyclopédie in Deutschland,” in Aufklärungen: Frankreich und Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Gerhard Sauder (Heidelberg, 1986), 189. According to Voss, Baerstecher went bankrupt in Cleve in 1776.

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34. On Ammermüller’s disappearance, see Johann Georg von Scheidlin in Nuremberg to STN, 29 September 1773 and 31 August 1774. The STN’s efforts to recover its debt from Pitra can be followed through its letters to correspondents in Berlin: to a Prussian government minister named Lentulus on 3 January 1774; to a second Prussian minister, the Baron von Schulenburg, on 13 February 1777 and 15 January 1778; to Nicolas de Béguelin, a member of the Prussian Royal Academy, on 15 March 1776; and to Pitra himself on 18 March and 28 June 1776, and 2 January 1777. As for Serini, he informed the STN of his bankruptcy in a tearful letter dated 1 September 1779. The STN’s efforts to recover its debt from him can be followed through its letters to Luc Preiswerck, a banker and shipping agent in Basel, who represented its interests in the bankruptcy proceedings against Serini. See STN to Preiswerck, 6 June and 30 September 1779. 35. Ackermann to STN, 13 December 1787. 36. Deinet to STN, 14 April 1783. 37. Bosset did not post a separate letter from every one of the cities he visited. He would accumulate information from several cities and then transmit it in a single long report. Altogether he posted six such reports from German-speaking Switzerland and western Germany, from Basel on 12 July, Frankfurt on 23 July, Mainz on 24 July, and the Chateau of Huth in Westphalia on 31 July, and 4 and 14 August. After spending several weeks at the chateau in Westphalia, he continued down the Rhine to the Low Countries. At the same time that he was gathering information on booksellers in the Rhineland, he also solicited orders for the quarto edition of the Encyclopédie, which the STN was attempting, without much success, to promote in Germany. On Bosset’s efforts to sell the Encyclopédie in Germany, see chapter 5. 38. Bosset to STN, 23 July 1779. 39. STN to Bingner in Mannheim, 31 July 1779. 40. Bingner in Mannheim to STN, 3 March 1780. Before trying to establish himself as a bookseller for his own account, Bender had been a clerk in the shop of Esslinger in Frankfurt, according to Haug, “Die kleinen französischen Schriften,” 121. 41. Bosset to STN, 31 July and 14 August 1779. 42. I had intended to include a chapter on the fascinating episodes of swindle and deception that resulted from the STN’s ill-considered decision to establish entrepôts of its books in Wesel and Homburg. In 2006, however, a German scholar published an article dealing with many of those same episodes. See Julia Bohnengel, “ ‘Cette cruelle affaire’: Johann Heinrich Mercks Buchhandelsprojekt und die Société typographique de Neuchâtel.” Stand-alone article published by Wehrhahn Verlag, Hanover, 2006.

chapter 3. french booksellers in the reich 1. Among German booksellers of the late eighteenth century, it was common to distinguish the book trade in the “Reich” from the book trade in “northern Germany” (mainly

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Saxony and Prussia). On that distinction, which also corresponded to widely differing trade practices, see Goldfriedrich, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 3: 50–115. 2. On Mettra’s career as diplomat, commercial agent of Frederick II, and banker, see Angelike, Louis-François Mettra, 56– 75. Angelike’s meticulously researched study of Mettra supersedes the earlier studies by Monica Hjortberg, Correspondance littéraire secrète 1775–1793: Une présentation (Göteborg and Paris, 1987), and by Victor Johansson, Sur “La correspondance littéraire secrete” et son éditeur (Göteborg, 1960). On Mettra’s manuscript news gazette, see Robert Darnton, The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon (Philadelphia, 2010), 333–34. In addition to his clandestine manuscript news sheet, Mettra published two printed journals: a Francophone news gazette, Le nouvelliste politique d’Allemagne, which appeared from 1780 to 1788, and La correspondance littéraire secrète, which appeared from 1775 to 1793. Throughout this and subsequent chapters, I will be relying on the bibliography compiled by Darnton in order to identify livres philosophiques: Darnton, The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1769–1789, vol. 2 of The Forbidden Best- Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York, 1995). It is important to emphasize, however, that the defining characteristic of livres philosophiques was their legal status in France. In Germany, where the severity of censorship differed from one state to another, livres philosophiques did not cohere as a distinct body of literature. 3. Mettra was known to the STN’s directors even before he began trading with them. He had gathered subscriptions for the STN’s literary review, Le Journal helvétique, while in Paris during the early 1770s, and Bosset had met with him at an inn in Düsseldorf during his journey through the Rhineland in the summer of 1779. See Bosset in Huth to STN, 29 July 1779. In his correspondence with the STN, Mettra used a variety of company names—first, Editeurs des Ouvrages Périodiques, then, at different times, Société Typographique de Deutz, Société Typographique de Münz, Société Typographique de Cologne, and, finally, Société Typographique de Neuwied. In the Neuchâtel archives, his letters are contained in two separate dossiers— one labeled “Editeurs des Ouvrages Périodiques,” covering the period from 1780 to 1782, and the other labeled “Société Typographique de Cologne, Münz, Neuwied,” covering the period from 1782 to 1788. Since the directors of the STN knew Mettra personally, they cannot have been in any doubt with whom they were corresponding. In what follows, I shall always refer to Mettra by his personal name rather than the various company names that he used. According to Angelike (Louis-François Mettra, 326), who is able to identify Mettra’s handwriting from her extensive research in various archives, Mettra wrote all the letters that the STN received from the various firms listed above beginning in August 1782. 4. Mettra indicated the location of his shop in letters he wrote to the STN on 13 May and 22 August 1782. 5. Until January 1782, Mettra’s shop had been in Deutz, a small town on the right bank of the Rhine directly opposite the city of Cologne, which, like Münz, was subject to the archbishop elector of Cologne rather than the imperial city of Cologne. In both cases, therefore, Mettra elected to be near the city of Cologne but not in it, almost certainly

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because of the intolerant censorship in the city, which would have posed an obstacle to the publication of his gazette, Le Nouvelliste politique d’Allemagne, as well as his trade in livres philosophiques. I discussed the various advantages that Mettra gained by establishing himself in Deutz and Münz in my dissertation, “The Process of Cultural Exchange,” 181–89. In her study of Mettra, Angelike reaches conclusions similar to my own: see Angelike, LouisFrançois Mettra, 170– 91. On the long history of repressive censorship in Cologne, see Viktor Mückel, Die Entwicklung der Zensur in Köln (Ph.D. law diss., University of Cologne, 1932). 6. For an account of Simonin’s misfortune and the list of books burned in Cologne, see Goldfriedrich, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 3: 391. The list bears a close resemblance to the STN’s handwritten cata logue of livres philosophiques. 7. Bosset in Huth to STN, 31 July 1779. 8. Mettra to STN, 22 August 1782. 9. In a letter of 4 April 1784, Mettra complained that the STN had failed to send him its cata logue of “ouvrages libres.” 10. Mettra to STN, 24 November 1782. 11. The shipments containing the livres philosophiques were expedited on 19 November 1782 (Livre de commissions, Ms. 1020, folio 249), 5 December 1782 (folio 254), and 19 August 1783 (Ms. 1021, folio 94). 12. Mettra to STN, 1 January and 26 February 1784. 13. Livre de commissions, Ms. 1021, folio 161; Mettra to STN, 13 September 1784. 14. Mettra to STN, 2 and 18 November 1784; Livre de commissions, Ms. 1021, folio 208. The STN does not seem to have owned Tibulle. 15 The STN made five shipments to Mettra from January 1782 to August 1783, all of which can be reconstructed with precision on the basis of entries in the Livres de commissions, Ms. 1020–21. It then appears to have made three further shipments to Mettra in 1784: in January (Ms. 1021, folio 147–48), April (folio 161), and November (folio 208). By 1784, however, the STN had adopted a new system of bookkeeping for the Livres de commissions. It no longer made separate entries for orders and shipments, nor did it record the dates on which shipments were made. It merely recorded the dates on which orders were received and the contents of the orders. To indicate which books it had sent, it would usually make marks beside the titles in the orders—usually but not always. Because it was somewhat inconsistent about marking which books it had sent, we cannot reconstruct precisely how many books Mettra received in the period from January to November 1784. According to the data of Simon Burrows and Mark Curran, the STN made only one shipment to Mettra in 1784. In his letters to the STN, however, Mettra acknowledged the receipt of two shipments. See Mettra to STN, 4 April and 13 September 1784. It seems all but certain, therefore, that the STN made at least two shipments to Mettra in 1784. The third is subject to doubt. 16. A crate that the STN expedited on 7 September 1782 reached Mettra on 22 November; a crate that the STN expedited on 19 August 1783 reached him sometime in late December. See Mettra to STN, 24 November 1782 and 1 January 1784.

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17. On the transformations of the Rhine, see David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany (New York, 2006). In principle, the laws in Cologne and Mainz required not only that merchandise be transferred to another ship but also that it be put up for sale before proceeding on its journey— a commercial privilege known as the Stapelrecht. By the eighteenth century, however, the Stapelrecht had fallen into disuse; so, in practice, it was enough for merchandise to be transferred to another ship. On the Stapelrecht in Mainz and Cologne, see Clemens Graf von Looz, Das Finanzwesen der Stadt Köln im 18. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 1978), 65– 67; F. G. Dreyfus, Sociétés et mentalités à Mayence dans la seconde moitié du 18 e siècle (Paris, 1968), 171; and T. C. W. Blanning, Reform and Revolution in Mainz (Cambridge, 1974), 73. 18. When placing an order on 10 November 1782, Mettra asked the STN to send off the crate as soon as possible so that it would reach him before the disruption of navigation during the winter months. 19. Dreyfus, Sociétés et mentalités, 174. 20. Since the accounts of the shipping agents were forwarded to the recipients of the shipments, nearly all such accounts in the Neuchâtel archives pertain to crates of books that the STN received rather than to crates of books that it sent. There are a great many accounts, for example, pertaining to crates that the STN received from a bookseller in Brussels named Jean-Louis de Boubers. Those crates traveled from Brussels to Cologne, up the Rhine to Mainz, then along the Main to Frankfurt, and from there overland to Basel, presumably so as to avoid the toll-clogged stretch of the upper Rhine. From the documents in the Neuchâtel archives, it is therefore possible to reconstruct the course, the speed, and the expense of commercial shipping in the Rhineland, albeit from north to south rather than from south to north. On 18 July 1772, for example, Boubers expedited to the STN a large crate weighing 5.25 quintal (525 pounds) that contained thirty-five copies of a multivolume quarto edition of Histoire de France by the abbé Paul Velly worth 1,050 livres: it reached Basel on 19 September, laden with faux frais of 126 livres, 16 sous, and 6 deniers—in other words, more than 10 percent of the value of the merchandise. The progress of Bouber’s shipment can be followed in the accounts that the shipping agents sent to the STN: Franz Joseph Eschweiler in Cologne, 27 August 1772; Bethmann frères in Frankfurt, 4 September 1772; and Jean Preiswerck fils in Basel, 19 September 1772. 21. Franck frères to STN, 14 January 1778. 22. The procedure in Cologne can be reconstructed from the account that Franz Joseph Eschweiler, the STN’s shipping agent in Cologne, sent to Neuchâtel for one of the shipments that the STN received from Boubers. See Eschweiler to STN, 27 August 1776. On the cranes and scales in Cologne and the expenses they entailed, see also von Looz, Das Finanzwesen der Stadt Köln, 112–14, 121. 23. Mettra to STN, 22 August 1782. Mettra made the same complaint in a letter of 24 November 1782, after receiving the crate that the STN had sent to him on 7 September. 24. The Neuchâtel archives contain a circular letter, dated 4 July 1770, about a tariff war between the Palatinate and the United Provinces. The letter, which came from the firm of Schneider, Lotzbeck & Company in Kehl, was addressed to the “merchant estate

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of Switzerland” (Handelsstand der Schweiz) and described the disastrous consequences of the tariff war for commercial shipping in the Rhineland. It implored Swiss merchants to join with their German colleagues in seeking the mediation of the emperor. 25. Baerstecher received a total of 306 copies of Système de la nature, 200 in 1771 directly from the STN and 106 the following year from J. L. Boubers, the STN’s correspondent in Brussels. Brouillard A, Ms. 1033, folio 111, 133, 262. 26. According to the Brouillard A, Ms. 1033, folio 111, the STN expedited the first crate containing one hundred copies of d’Holbach’s work on 27 June 1771. Baerstecher acknowledged receipt of the crate in his letter of 18 September 1771. 27. Baerstecher to STN, 19 December 1774. 28. Mettra to STN, 1 January 1784. 29. For the reference to Mettra’s Hessian trade, see Haug, “Die kleinen französischen Schriften,” 108. 30. Mettra to STN, 4 April 1784. 31. Ibid., 13 January 1785. 32. Ibid., 1 January and 27 October 1784. 33. Ibid., 13 May 1782, 8 August 1783, and 13 September 1784. 34. Ibid., 13 January 1785. 35. Ibid., 13 September 1784. 36. The copies of the STN’s letters to Mettra have not survived for most of the period of its correspondence with him. But since Mettra continued to ask for price discounts and more favorable trade terms, one can infer that the STN had rejected those requests. 37. Mettra to STN, 4 August, 2 November, and 18 November 1784. 38. Mettra referred to the “fatal day” of 27 February 1784, his temporary relocation to Deutz, and his move to Neuwied in the first letter he wrote to the STN from Neuwied on 2 March 1785. In that letter, Mettra described Deutz as “a very inconvenient location for our trade,” though he did not explain why it was “inconvenient.” In her dissertation on Mettra, Karin Angelike speculates that Mettra may have abandoned the electorate of Cologne for political reasons: in 1784, the liberal archbishop-elector Max Friedrich died, and his successor, the Habsburg Max Franz, youngest brother of the emperor Joseph II, seemed likely to tighten censorship. According to information that Angelike uncovered in her research, the losses that Mettra sustained in the flood led him to cede Le Nouvelliste politique to a new publisher, Paschal Alexis Hermann. See Angelike, Louis-François Mettra, 217, 223. Le Nouvelliste politique published a description of the flood, which is reproduced in Hjortberg, Correspondance littéraire secrète, 54–55. 39. Karl d’Esters, “Neuwied als Zeitungsstadt,” in Bilder und Gestalten aus der Vergangenheit der Stadt Neuwied (Neuwied, Germany, 1953), 209–15; and Joseph Hansen, Quellen zur Geschichte des Rheinlandes (Bonn, 1931), 1: 33. 40. Mettra to STN, 6 March 1788. 41. W. Trossbach, Der Schatten der Aufklärung: Bauern, Bürger und Illuminaten in der Grafschaft Wied-Neuwied (Fulda, Germany, 1991), 174. Cited in Angelike, LouisFrançois Mettra, 338.

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42. Mettra to STN, 7 January 1788. 43. On the Correspondance littéraire secrète, see Angelike, Louis-François Mettra, 127–51. According to Darnton, however, the Correspondance was not so scandalous as to offend the French authorities, who allowed it to circulate inside the kingdom (Devil in the Holy Water, 333). 44. Mettra to STN, 20 May 1788. 45. Ibid., 13 December 1788. 46. Ibid., 27 March 1788. 47. Precisely when the STN overcame its doubts about Mettra’s creditworthiness cannot be determined, since his dossier in the Neuchâtel archives is missing letters for 1786 and 1787 and the STN’s Copies de lettres have not survived for most of that period either. The most we can say is that the STN retained its doubts through the spring, summer, and autumn of 1785. Thus, in April 1785, when the STN sent a crate of books to Mettra, it did not send it to him directly. Instead, it took the precaution of sending it to a shipping agent in Mainz along with instructions not to release the books to Mettra until he had carried out inquiries about the state of Mettra’s finances. In September, the shipping agent in Mainz wrote to Luc Preiswerck, the STN’s shipping agent in Basel, to say that Mettra’s finances did not look good and that he was therefore awaiting further instructions about what to do with the books: see Preiswerck to STN, 10 September 1785. In his letters to the STN of 6 and 22 September 1785, Mettra complained that the crate of books, which the STN had announced to him in its letter of 14 April, had not yet reached him. So long a delay was incomprehensible, he wrote. It should be pointed out, moreover, that the STN was also corresponding with Paschal Alexis Hermann in Deutz, the bookseller and journal publisher who had purchased Le Nouvelliste politique d’Allemagne from Mettra in 1784, shortly after the flood that had destroyed Mettra’s shop in Münz. Hermann accumulated a debt to the STN of 1,514 livres, 15 sous; then, in 1786, he went bankrupt, and soon after, he went missing. Hermann and Mettra do not appear to have been associated at the time of Hermann’s bankruptcy and disappearance, but even so, those events must have cast an unfavorable light on Mettra. About Hermann’s bankruptcy and disappearance, see the report from a correspondent of the STN in Cologne: De Tongre to STN, no date (but probably late winter 1786). 48. Mettra numbered the eleven shipments sequentially, from “86” to “96.” The calculation of 6,000 livres, a highly conservative estimate, is based on a variety of sources: the letters of Mettra and the STN as well as the accounts of the shipping agents Henry Ackermann in Mainz and Luc Preiswerk in Basel, who transmitted the crates to Neuchâtel. See Ackermann to STN, 12 June and 26 July 1787, and 25 October and 8 November 1788; Preiswerck to STN, 23 June and 15 December 1787, and 9 January, 2 February, 5 November, and 22 November 1788; Mettra to STN, 27 March, 14 August, 26 October, and 15 December 1788; and STN to Mettra, 18 October and 29 December 1787, and 16 February, 23 February, and 2 December 1788. To balance the shipments that Mettra made to Neuchâtel, the STN made five shipments to Neuwied between August 1786 and March 1787, then an additional five shipments between September 1787 and October

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1788. Those final five shipments appear to have been made in reponse to the orders that Mettra placed with Victor Durand, the STN’s traveling commissioner, who made two trips to Neuwied between 1787 and 1788. The information on the STN’s shipments to Neuwied I owe to Simon Burrows and Mark Curran. 49. The bill for the large shipment that Mettra sent to the STN was included in his letter of 15 December 1788. The books contained in that shipment seem to have been part of a large swap that Mettra arranged with the STN’s traveling commissioner, Victor Durand, who had visted Mettra in Neuwied several months earlier. In a letter that Durand posted from Frankfurt on 18 September 1788 after his meeting with Mettra, Durand said he had conducted a “large transaction” ( forte aff aire) in Neuwied. In exchange for what the STN ordered from Neuwied, Mettra ordered a vast quantity of books from Neuchâtel, 6, 859 livres’ worth of books, according to the letter that Durand posted from Ulm on 24 October 1788. 50. Alexandre Beaunoir, Voyage sur le Rhin depuis Mayence jusqu’ à Dusseldorf (Neuwied, Germany, 1791). Cited in Johansson, Sur “La correspondance littéraire secrete,” 68– 69. The “several literary societies” of which Mettra was a member included the Bavarian Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Sittlich-ökonomische Gesellschaft of ÖttingBurghausen, and the Société des Philanthropes in Strasbourg. On Mettra’s membership in those learned societies, see Angelike, Louis-François Mettra, 75–83. 51. On the final phase of Mettra’s career in Neuwied, his diplomatic mission on behalf of revolutionary France, and his last years in Leipzig and Berlin, see Angelike, LouisFrançois Mettra, 93–121. 52. The biographical information on Fontaine comes from Jürgen Voss, “Ein Zentrum des französischen Buchhandels im Deutschland des 18. Jahrhunderts,” 142. Most of the letters in Fontaine’s dossier in Neuchâtel appear to have been written by employees of the firm, whose handwriting can be distinguished from Fontaine’s, which is recognizable from his signature at the end of the letters. The few letters written by Fontaine himself can be identified because they are written in the same hand as his signature: those are the letters with the phonetic spelling errors. 53. Meuron to STN, 20 December 1770. 54. Chaillet to STN, 22 September 1770. 55. Flick to STN, 21 August 1772. 56. Bosset to STN, 23 July 1779. Charles Fontaine announced his formal retirement in a printed circular dated 10 May 1777. That announcement also indicated that Matthias Fontaine had already been the de facto director of the business for the past several years. 57. Of the twenty-seven shipments that the STN made to Charles and Matthias Fontaine, twenty-five can be reconstructed from two series of documents in the Neuchâtel archives—from the Brouillard A (Ms. 1033) for the period December 1770 to November 1772 and from the Livres de commissions (Ms. 1016–21) for the period February 1774 to July 1783. The two other shipments were made in 1773, in a period between the end of the Brouillard A and the beginning of the Livres de commissions. The STN made reference

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to those two shipments in the letters that it wrote to Charles Fontaine on 5 June and 8 November 1773. 58. On Schwan, see Ludwig Böhm, “Christian-Friedrich Schwan (1733–1815): Ein Mannheimer Verleger der Carl-Theodor-Zeit,” in Mannheim und der Rhein-NeckarRaum: Studien zu Kunst und Geschichte der Pfalz, ed. E. Gropengiesser and H. Meyer (Mannheim, 1965), 77– 98. 59. Motta to STN, 30 December 1771. According to information contained in the Brouillard A, Ms. 1033, five of the shipments that the STN made to Charles Fontaine in 1772 also contained books for Schwan. 60. Charles Fontaine to STN, 22 December 1770. 61. One of the letters in Fontaine’s dossier, dated 13 April 1771, expressed some frustration over delays in the printing of the STN’s multivolume edition of Voltaire’s Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, which Fontaine had ordered. But those delays had nothing to do with the slowness of shipping, and the letter that complained of the delays did not go out over the signature of Charles Fontaine: it bore the signature “Fontaine fils” instead. 62. In its letter of 20 March 1774, the STN assured Charles Fontaine that it would instruct its shipping agent in Basel to have Fontaine’s crate sent to him “directly” (en droiture), so as to avoid the expense of a “commission in Strasbourg.” 63. Charles Fontaine made two requests to the STN to have his books sent directly to Frankfurt, on 3 December 1771 and on 17 August 1775; the STN announced on two occasions that it would be directing shipments to Frankfurt, on 28 August 1775 in a letter to Charles Fontaine and on 29 July 1779 in a letter to Matthias Fontaine. It is not certain whether Charles and Matthias Fontaine always attended the Frankfurt fairs in person or whether, on some occasions, they sent an employee of the firm in their stead. One of the letters in Fontaine’s dossier, dated 26 April 1772, was posted from Frankfurt without the signature of either Charles or Matthias Fontaine, perhaps because neither of them was there to sign it. 64. Bosset made the arrangement to join the books of Matthias Fontaine to Berthoud’s shipment of textiles during his meeting with Fontaine in the summer of 1779. He reported that arrangement to his associates at the home office in his letter of 23 July 1779. 65. As indicated in note 57, the STN made two shipments to Charles Fontaine in 1773, in the roughly one-year period period between the end of the Bouillard A and the beginning of the Livres de Commissions—the first in June, the second in November. According to the data of Simon Burrows and Mark Curran, the June shipment contained 76 copies of 23 works; the November shipment 76 copies of 18 works. Their data, however, omit three shipments that the STN made to Matthias Fontaine, on 29 July 1779, 1 March 1780, and 22 February 1781. See Livres de commissions, Ms. 1019, folio 139 and 201, and Ms. 1020, folio 54. 66. Bosset to STN, 23 July 1779. Matthias Fontaine told the STN of the public sale in his letter of 25 August 1779, which also announced that he would be sending the STN a special cata logue of the books contained in the sale.

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67. Charles Fontaine to STN, 18 December 1773. 68. Stefan Mörz, Aufgeklärter Absolutismus in der Kurpfalz während der Mannheimer Regierungszeit des Kurfürsten Karl Theodor (1742–1777) (Stuttgart, 1991), 53–72; Ferdinand Werner, Die kurfürstliche Residenz zu Mannheim (Worms, Germany, 2006), 72– 94. 69. Schubart’s comment is cited, without any bibliographic reference, in Böhm, “Christian Friedrich Schwan,” 82. 70. On Karl Theodor’s relation to Voltaire, see Henry Stavin, “Voltaire und Kurfürst Karl Theodor: Freundschaft oder Opportunismus?” in Voltaire und Deutschland: Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Rezeption der französischen Aufklärung, ed. Peter Brockmeier, Roland Desné, and Jürgen Voss (Stuttgart, 1979), 3–12. According to Jochen Schlobach, the Jesuit-educated Karl Theodor admired Voltaire less as an author of the Enlightenment than as the eighteenth-century representative of the French classical tradition. See Schlobach, “Französische Aufklärung und deutsche Fürsten,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 17 (1990): 330. 71. Charles Fontaine to STN, 18 March 1773. Livre de commissions, Ms. 1016, folio 139 for Eloge historique de la raison and Don Pedre, roi de Castille; and folio 153 for Histoire de Jenni. 72. Böhm, “Christian-Friedrich Schwan,” 83. 73. Schwan to STN, 20 October 1775. 74. Ibid., 28 April 1777. 75. Collini to Voltaire, 1 January 1777. Cited in Mörz, Aufgeklärter Absolutismus, 57. 76. Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour to STN, 21 July 1787. 77. Ibid., 23 October 1788. 78. Voss, “Ein Zentrum des französischen Buchhandels,” 143–45. 79. Neorberg to STN, 2 November 1779. Neorberg’s name is transcribed incorrectly in the Neuchâtel archives, where his dossier is filed under the name “Noeberg.” According to Bosset in the letter he sent to the home office from Mainz on 24 July 1779, Le Roux had gathered “twenty or so” (une vingtaine de) subscriptions for the octavo edition of the Encyclopédie. In addition to gathering subscriptions for the octavo edition of the Encyclopédie, which dominated the German market, Matthias Fontaine collected twenty-seven subscriptions for the STN’s quarto, according to Darnton, Business of Enlightenment, 306. 80. Friedrich Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre 1781 (Berlin, 1783), 2: 403. Cited in Voss, “Ein Zentrum des französischen Buchhandels,” 143. 81. Matthias Fontaine to STN, 10 January 1785. 82. Bosset to STN, 23 July 1779. On censorship under Karl Theodor, see Mörz, Aufgeklärter Absolutismus, 417–22. Ludwig Böhm refers briefly to Lamey’s role as censor in an article about a censorship case involving a German journal that Christian Schwan began publishing in 1774. See Böhm, “Die Schreibtafel,” in Mannheim und der RheinNeckar-Raum, 100. It should be pointed out that Karl Theodor’s commitment to religious tolerance was conditional rather than absolute. He allowed his Protestant subjects to practice their religion, but he excluded them from high government positions; and he

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would undoubtedly have preferred that all his subjects be Catholic. As the ruler of Bavaria, therefore, he did not extend tolerance to Protestants. Indeed, his policies in Bavaria became increasingly repressive—most famously, in his persecution of the Illuminati. 83. Schwan to STN, 8 January 1772. 84. Charles Fontaine to STN, 25 May 1771. 85. Ibid., 3 December 1771. In his letter of 25 May, when he wrote, “such books are not for me,” Fontaine was referring to both Système de la nature and Dieu. According to the Brouillard A, Ms. 1033, folio 66, the STN had sent Fontaine twenty-five copies of Voltaire’s pamphlet on 31 December 1770. Fontaine, however, indicated that he was sending back eighteen copies; so he must have kept seven of the twenty-five copies. 86. Charles Fontaine to STN, 20 June 1775. 87. Stahel to STN, 3 September 1788. 88. Hemmerde to STN, 22 September 1772. Before establishing himself as a bookseller in Cassel, Hemmerde had performed an apprenticeship with Johann Esslinger in Frankfurt, according to Haug (“Die kleinen französischen Schriften,” 117), who gives Hemmerde’s name as “Johann Heinrich.” All of Hemmerde’s letters in the Neuchâtel archives are signed “Jean-Frédéric.” 89. On the transfer of Hemmerde’s books from Cassel to Frankfurt, see Johann Georg von Scheidlin in Nuremberg to STN, 4 and 29 October 1774, and 28 January 1775. 90. Hemmerde to STN, 28 April and 29 May 1781. 91. Lagisse to STN, 26 June 1781. 92. Laue to STN, 22 June 1781. 93. Hemmerde to STN, 17 July 1781. 94. Ibid., 11 June 1782. 95. Ibid., 29 March 1783. 96. For the three shipments the STN made in 1772, the evidence comes from the Brouillard A, Ms 1033; for the seven shipments it made between July 1781 and June 1784, from the Livres de commissions, Ms. 1020–21. 97. On French cultural influence in Cassel and the relations of the Landgrave to Voltaire, see Jochen Schlobach, “Der Einfluss Frankreichs in Hesse-Kassel,” in Aufklärung und Klassizmus in Hessen-Kassel unter Landgraf Friedrich II, 1760–1785, Exhibition Catalogue, ed. Peter Gercke and Friederike Naumann (Cassel, 1979), 97–102; Henry Antony Stavin, “Cosmopolitisme et xénophobie à la cour de Frédéric II, Landgraf de HesseCasse,” in Cosmopolitisme, patriotisme et xénophobie en Europe au siècle des Lumières, ed. Gonthier-Louis Fink (Strasbourg, 1987), 133–44; and François, “Les échanges culturels entre la France et les pays germaniques,” 35–36. 98. Hemmerde to STN, 21 July 1772. 99. Jean-Gérard Bruère to STN, 19 October 1780. Bruère’s figure is considerably higher than that cited by the German scholar Hans Jürgen Kahlfuss in his study of the Landgrave’s library. According to Kahlfuss, the Landgrave authorized Luchet to make annual book purchases of 1,000 Reichstaler (3,500 livres) during the period from 1779 to 1781. Not surprisingly, Luchet gave priority to the purchase of French books. Cf. Kahlfuss,

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“Die ‘grosse fürstliche Bibliothek zu Cassel,’ ” in Gercke and Naumann, Aufklärung und Klassizmus in Hessen-Kassel, 146. The information on the number of volumes in the Landgrave’s library comes from Kahlfuss (145), who notes that several works were often bound together in the same volume. 100. Jacques Mallet du Pan to Voltaire, 21 March 1773. Letter 16601 of Voltaire’s Correspondence, ed. Theodore Besterman (Geneva, 1963), 81: 133. Quoted (though without a precise and accurate reference) in Stavin, “Cosmopolitisme,” 139. Mallet made his complaint about the French books in the Landgrave’s library before Luchet had taken over as director and before the library had moved to its new quarters in the Museum Fridericianum, which was not completed until 1779. And, by then, Mallet was no longer in Cassel. But it is unlikely he would have noted any improvement in the organization of the library. According to Kahlfuss (“Die ‘grosse fürstliche Bibliothek zu Cassel,’ ” 147), Luchet introduced a new cata loging system that made matters worse rather than better. 101. Mallet du Pan to Ostervald, 13 June 1772. Cited in Edouard Chapuisal, “Voltaire et Mallet du Pan,” Revue des travaux de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques et comptes rendus des séances 105 (1952): 154. After his departure from Cassel, Mallet returned to Geneva, where he continued his correspondence with Ostervald. In the geographic inventory (répertoire géographique) of the STN’s correspondents in the Neuchâtel archive, Mallet’s name is listed under Geneva, not Cassel. 102. Schlözer’s bon mot was cited by Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder, Grundlage zu einer hessischen Gelehrten und Schriftsteller Geschichte: Seit der Reformation bis auf gegenwärtigen Zeiten (Cassel, 1788), 8: 139. Cited in Stavin, “Cosmopolitisme,” 143. 103. Mallet to Voltaire, 21 March 1773. 104. Hemmerde to STN, 28 April 1781. 105. Lagisse to STN, 26 June 1781. 106. Laue to STN, 3 August 1784. 107. The information about Hemmerde comes from a letter that a correspondent of Laue in Cassel named Bohle sent to Laue. It was included in Laue’s letter to the STN of 28 August 1784. 108. Bohle’s letter to Laue was enclosed with Laue’s letter to the STN of 12 October 1784. 109. Laue to STN, 28 January 1785. 110. Ibid., 19 July 1785. 111. In his article about the Enlightenment in Cassel, Hans Erich Bödeker mentions the fact that Hemmerde survived as a bookseller until 1793. See Bödeker, “Strukturen der Aufklärungsgesellschaft in der Residenzstadt Kassel,” in Mentalitäten und Lebensverhältnisse: Beispiele aus der Neuzeit— Rudolf Vierhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. “collaborators and students” (Göttingen, 1982), 70. 112. For background information on Deinet, see A. Dietz, Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte (Frankfurt, 1925), 4: 509–10; H. Bräuning-Ocatavio, foreword to Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen vom Jahr 1772 (Bern, 1970), 1–3, and Wetterleuchten der literarischen Revolution: Johann Heinrich Merck und seine Mitarbeiter an den Frankfurter gelehrten

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Anzeigen 1772 in Bild und Wort (Darmstadt, 1972), 68; and Heribert Raab, “Apostolische Bücherkommissare in Frankfurt am Main,” Historisches Jahrbuch 87 (1967): 351. 113. Deinet to STN, 30 April 1774. 114. Lavater, Tagebücher, 23 June 1774, in H. Funck, ed., Goethe und Lavater: Briefe und Tagebücher (Weimar: Schriften der Goethegesellschaft, 1901), 281. 115. Deinet to STN, 5 January 1776. 116. Ibid., 19 September 1773 and 18 May 1775. 117. Ibid., 19 September 1773. 118. On the conflict between the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen and the City Council, see Bräuning-Ocatavio, foreword to Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, 7– 9. The conflict began with the issue of 21 July 1772, which contained a critical review by Johann Georg Schlosser of Erbauliche Betrachungen, a theological work by Johann Melchior Goeze, the orthodox Lutheran chief pastor of Hamburg. The review was all the more offensive to the Frankfurt authorities as Goeze had dedicated his work to the Frankfurt City Council; for publishing the review, Deinet received a fine of 20 Reichstaler. Eventually, after another conflict of a similar nature, the Council forbade the Anzeigen to publish any reviews of theological works, on penalty of a 100 Reichstaler fine, unless the reviews were submitted for prepublication censorship to the Lutheran consistory (Predigerministerium). 119. Deinet to STN, 19 September 1773. On Deinet’s publication of the trial documents and the reaction of the City Council, see Dietz, Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, 4: 510. 120. Lavater to Goethe, 1 October 1774, in Funck, Goethe und Lavater, 43. 121. Bosset to STN, 24 July 1779. Merck described Deinet as a “scoundrel” in a letter of 16 March 1779 to Christoph Martin Wieland: Merck, Werke und Briefe, ed. H. Kraft (Frankfurt, 1968), 2: 210. On the robberies and desertions of Deinet’s shop assistants, see Deinet to STN, 31 August 1777, 22 July 1778, and 12 February 1779. 122. According to Dietz (4: 506), Heinrich Ludwig Brönner died in 1767, leaving his business to his two sons, Heinrich Remigius and Johann Karl. But neither Chaillet, who visited Frankfurt in 1770, nor Bosset, who went there nine years later, mentioned those two sons. Chaillet reported that he had met with “Henry Louis Brenner [sic]” (Chaillet to STN, 22 September 1770), Bosset that he had met with “Mr. Broenner” (Bosset to STN, 24 July 1779). And the Brönner whom Bosset had visited sent the STN an order that bore the signature “Henry-Louis Broenner, Imprimeur-Libraire” (Brönner to STN, 23 July 1779). It seems probable, therefore, that Dietz was mistaken about when Heinrich Ludwig died. 123. Deinet to STN, 3 June 1775. The STN’s Swiss German correspondents also made repeated complaints to the STN about the large sums of money they were obligated to pay when purchasing German books at the Leipzig fairs. See, for example, Haller to STN, 4 September 1781; Serini to STN, 20 March 1779; and Flick to STN, 20 March and 31 May 1780. 124. Deinet to STN, 5 January 1776. 125. Ulrich Eisenhardt, “Ein Eingriff in das kaiserliche Bücherregal: Die Begründung des ‘Hanauer Umschlags’ in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Archiv für

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Urheber-, Film-, Funk-, und Theaterrecht 50 (1967): 634. When informed of what the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel intended, the Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat) in Vienna concluded that the Hanau Congress represented a gross violation of imperial laws. Note that the “Hanau Congress” was referred to, in German, as the “Hanauer Umschlag.” 126. Deinet to STN, 3 June 1775. 127. STN to Kessler, 5 August 1779. 128. According to Chaillet d’Arnex, who visited Frankfurt on the STN’s behalf in the autumn of 1770, the Frankfurt bookseller Heinrich Ludwig Brönner “only buys French books in exchange for Latin books, yet his shop is very well supplied with French books and his trade in that category is very considerable” (Chaillet to STN, 22 September 1770). Nine years later, the profile of Brönner’s trade looked much the same. According to Bosset, Brönner continued to insist on swapping while conducting a large trade in French books—larger in fact than anyone else in Frankfurt. It turned out that some of the French books Brönner sold were, in fact, his own publications; so Bosset was able to work out a deal by which Brönner would accept some books from the STN’s stock in exchange for two of his French publications: Mémoires historiques et géographiques sur la Valachie by Friedrich Wilhelm von Bauer and a French-German dictionary. But that was the only time that the STN sent any books to Brönner. His insistence on swapping precluded a regular trade with the STN. See Bosset to STN, 24 July 1779; Brönner to STN, 23 July 1779; and STN to Brönner, 2 August 1779. 129. Deinet to STN, 5 January 1776. 130. Ibid., 3 June 1775. 131. Ibid., 10 May 1776. Eventually, Bender established himself as a bookseller in Mannheim, and, in 1779, he placed an order with the STN. In 1776, however, he had not received any books directly from the STN. 132. Deinet to STN, September 1775. The STN sold its quarto edition of Descriptions des arts et métiers at a price of 12 livres per volume—more than twice as much, in other words, as the Jewish peddlers in Frankfurt. The STN’s nine-volume octavo edition of Voltaire’s Questions sur l’Encyclopédie was not listed in any of its cata logues, so it is not clear exactly how much the STN charged for it; but the price for a complete set can scarcely have been less than 18 livres. If Deinet’s information was accurate, then the Jewish peddlers were also selling the work by Voltaire at approximately one-half the price the STN would have charged for it. 133. Deinet to STN, 13 September 1776. 134. Ibid., 31 August 1777. The Bible d’Ostervald was a French Protestant Bible, which the STN sold in various editions and formats. For the octavo editions of that Bible, the STN’s cata logue listed prices ranging from 6 to 8 livres—roughly three times as much as Deinet claimed to have paid to the Jewish peddler in Frankfurt. 135. Ibid., 2 March 1777. 136. Ibid., 5 January 1776. 137. Ibid., 2 March 1777. 138. Ibid., 22 March 1776.

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139. Ibid., 3 June 1775. 140. Ibid., 5 January 1776. 141. Ibid., 20 June 1776; STN to Deinet, 1 July 1776. 142. Deinet to STN, 3 June 1775. 143. Deinet and the STN did not agree about which books belonged to whom. The figure of 518 is derived from the notations in the Livres de commissions and therefore reflects the STN’s view of its account with Deinet. Note that the STN had already released several books for its own account before 1776, including one hundred copies of an anonymously published novel entitled Histoire de François Wills and one hundred of a play by Farmian de Rozoy entitled Henri IV, neither of which Deinet had ordered: the STN simply added them to a shipment that it made to Deinet on 6 February 1775. In April 1776, Deinet returned half the copies of Henri IV to Neuchâtel. The STN made ten shipments to Deinet from February 1775 to August 1780 whose contents can be reconstructed on the basis of the entries in the Livres de commissions, Ms. 1016–20. It also made one shipment to him during that period (probably in early 1778) whose contents cannot be reconstructed because the corresponding page of the Livre de commissions is missing. The only evidence in the Livres de commissions bearing on that shipment comes from the index at the end of the volume (Ms. 1019), which refers to the missing page. Finally, in addition to the eleven shipments from 1775 to 1780, which fall in the period covered by the Livres de commissions, the STN made one shipment to Deinet in September 1773. See STN to Deinet 13 September and 18 October 1773. According to the data of Simon Burrows and Mark Curran, that shipment contained 66 copies of 13 different titles. It should be pointed out that my data, based on the Livres de commissions, do not coincide exactly with the data of Burrows and Curran. Theirs omit a shipment of 11 June 1775 that the STN entered in the Livre de commissions (Ms. 1016, folio 140), while they include two other shipments— one from 9 May 1775, the other from 5 January 1776—for which there is no evidence in the Livres de commissions. 144. Deinet to STN, 10 May 1776. 145. Deinet enclosed the balance sheet of his account and the list of unsold books with the letter he sent to the STN on 15 December 1777. In his dossier, however, the balance sheet and the list have been filed out of place, just before Deinet’s letter of 31 August 1777. 146. Deinet to STN, 31 August 1777, 22 July 1778, and 12 February 1779. 147. STN to Deinet, 9 June 1779. 148. The information on Deinet’s return shipment to Neuchâtel I owe to Simon Burrows and Mark Curran. 149. The details of the settlement that Deinet reached with Bosset can be reconstructed from two balance sheets that he sent to the STN: one that he enclosed with his letter of 23 July 1779, another that he enclosed with his letter of 14 April 1783. 150. Bosset to STN, 24 July 1779. 151. Bigarrures invited readers to attribute authorship of the work to Rousseau. Composed in the form of letters from a “citizen of Geneva” to the American colonists, it includes

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one letter signed “J.J.R.” In that letter, the author complains of his treatment at the hands of “nos magnifiques seigneurs” (i.e., Le Petit Conseil), who had persecuted him for a work condemned by the Parlement of Paris—in other words, Emile. See Bigarures [sic] d’un citoyen de Genève et ses conseils républicains dédiés aux américains (Philadelphia [sic], 1776), 3–4. 152. Deinet to STN, 13 September 1776. 153. Ibid. 13 February 1778. 154. On the history of the Imperial Book Commission, see Ulrich Eisenhardt, Die kaiserliche Aufsicht über Buchdruck, Buchhandel und Presse im heiligen römischen Reich deutscher Nation (Karlsruhe, 1970). On the office of Apostolic Book Commissioner and its connection to the Imperial Book Commissioner, see Raab, “Apostolische Bücherkommissare,” 326–54. 155. Deinet to STN, 7 February 1776. 156. On the jurisdictional conflicts between the Frankfurt City Council and the Imperial Commission, see Eisenhardt, Die kaiserliche Aufsicht, 90– 91. 157. Haug, “Die kleinen französischen Schriften,” 125. 158. François-Antoine Chevrier, Les trois C, conte métaphysique imité de l’espagnol (1762), 26. Cited in K. Schnelle, Aufklärung und klerikale Reaktion: Der Prozess gegen den Abbé Henri Joseph Laurens— Ein Beitrag zur deutschen und französischen Aufklärung (East Berlin, 1963), 91. 159. Laurens’s trial was transferred to the ecclesiastical court in Mainz because he claimed benefit of clergy. On Laurens’s trial, see Schnelle, Aufklärung und klerikale Reaktion. 160. Schwan to STN, 28 January 1772. 161. The transcripts of Esslinger’s interrogations are housed in the Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main: Criminalia Akten Nr. 8250. My quotations are from Haug, “Die kleinen französischen Schriften,” 122–24. Arétin, one of the four works that the Book Commissioner attributed to Voltaire, was in fact written by Laurens. It is unlikely that Esslinger’s protestations of innocence and disbelief would have fooled his interrogators since he had already had run-ins with the authorities before the Laurens affair—notably, in 1749, in connection with some prohibited German works by the radical Aufklärer Johann Christian Edelmann. On the Edelmann affair, see Haug, “Die kleinen französischen Schriften,” 118–20. 162. Chaillet to STN, 22 September 1770. 163. STN to Van Düren frères, 22 September 1770. In Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, Voltaire did in fact criticize the atheism of d’Holbach; but the STN may have been stretching the point when it claimed that Voltaire preserved “the respect due to religion.” 164. The brothers Van Düren seemed very conservative in 1770, but they were no longer so conservative in 1788, when Victor Durand, the STN’s traveling commissioner, visited them in Frankfurt. Following Durand’s visit, the STN sent the brothers Van Düren a number of pornographic and anti-clerical works, including two copies of Exercises de dévotion de M. Henri Roche and two of Cabinet d’amour et de Vénus. And, in 1792, the publisher Johann Christian Konrad Krieger in Giessen sent them one copy of the notori-

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ous atheistic treatise De tribus impostoribus. For booksellers who had refused to purchase works by Voltaire, it was quite a dramatic change: either the brothers Van Düren had undergone some kind of conversion experience or, more likely, they had come to the realization that they were forfeiting a lucrative market by exercising such vigilant self-censorship. The information on the STN’s shipment to Van Düren I owe to Simon Burrows and Mark Curran. On the diff usion of De tribus impostoribus, see Christine Haug, “Ein Zensurverfahren zur Zeit der französischen Revolution,” Quatuor Coronati 32 (1995): 162. 165. Eisenhardt, Die kaiserliche Aufsicht, 124, 127. Eisenhardt incorrectly transcribed the title of Linguet’s book as Essai sur le monarchisme. 166. Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers, 37– 66. 167. Deinet to STN, 3 June 1775. Deinet made his comment about La Mettrie in the same letter in which he complained of Fille de joie. 168. Ibid., 30 June 1779. 169. Eisenhardt, Die kaiserliche Aufsicht, 124. 170. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, pt. 1, book 4, Insel Verlag (1975), 1: 167– 68. 171. Deinet to STN, (n.d.) September 1775. 172. Ibid., 13 September 1776. 173. On how the philosophes viewed the institution of censorship, see Sophia Rosenfeld, “Writing the History of Censorship in the Age of Enlightenment,” in Postmodernism and the Enlightenment, ed. Daniel Gordon (New York, 2001), 117–45. 174. Deinet announced his appointment as Imperial Commissioner in a letter to the STN of 12 August 1780. 175. On the Catholic reactions to Deinet’s appointment as Book Commissioner, see Raab, “Apostolische Bücherkommissare,” 350–54. 176. Deinet to STN, 12 August 1780. The following year, the STN received a letter on behalf of the heirs of J. L. Eichenberg that reiterated what Deinet had said the previous year about his goal as commissioner: “One may assume that the book trade will be reviving here in Frankfurt. His Imperial Majesty wishes it. The Imperial Book Commission ad rem Librarium is occupied . . . with drawing up the plan for it.” The letter, dated 10 July 1781, is filed in a separate dossier from that containing Deinet’s other letters to the STN. 177. The poem, “Ein Marienbild in einer katholischen Kirche,” appeared in Deinet’s journal, Was Neues? which Deinet published as a weekly supplement to the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen. On that poem, the reactions to it, and the ensuing trial before the Aulic Council in Vienna, see Dietz, Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, 4: 510. On Deinet’s trial in Frankfurt, see Raab, “Apostolische Bücherkommissare,” 351–52. According to Raab, the City Council in Frankfurt objected to the way in which Deinet had “extended his personal immunity as Imperial Commissioner to cover private and business affairs.” 178. According to Raab (“Apostolische Bücherkommissare,” 351–52), the Imperial Prosecuting Attorney von Werner was appointed to replace Deinet as commissioner in 1784. Eisenhardt, however, maintains that Deinet was the last person to occupy the office

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of Imperial Book Commissioner, and he is able to cite a report that Deinet addressed as commissioner to the Archbishop of Mainz in 1790. See Eisenhardt, Die kaiserliche Aufsicht, 100, n. 209. Deinet must therefore have resumed his functions as commissioner at some point after his suspension in 1784. According to Haug (“Ein Zensurverfahren,” 161– 62), Deinet was still acting as commissioner in 1792. In fact, he was taking his functions quite seriously, for he initiated proceedings to suppress the edition of De tribus impostoribus published by Johann Christian Konrad Krieger. In his last letter to the STN, dated 14 April 1783, Deinet mentioned that his stepson, Philipp Wilhelm Eichenberg, had attained his majority. According to Dietz (Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, 4: 510), the younger Eichenberg was active as a printer and bookseller in Frankfurt until 1796. Deinet died in 1797. 179. Schmieder to STN, 30 August 1779. 180. [Johann Wilhelm Christian Gustav Casparon], “Topographie der Hessischen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Cassel,” Journal von und für Deutschland 6, no. 1 (1789), 36. Cited in Bödeker, “Strukturen der Aufklärungsgesellschaft,” 67. 181. Walter Wittmann, Beruf und Buch im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1934), esp. 34–40. 182. Siegfrid Sudhof, “Die Privatbibliothek eines Philosophen und Literaten,” 141–49. 183. On the situation in France, see Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers, esp. 3–21. 184. Materialien zur Statistik des niederrheinisch-westfälischen Kreises, 1 (Erlangen, 1791): 76. Cited in Mückel, Entwicklung der Zensur in Köln, 33. Note that though the journal volume was published in 1791, the article was describing conditions in the Cologne book trade around 1780. 185. Thierry Rigogne, Between State and Market: Printing and Bookselling in EighteenthCentury France (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2007), 201–18. 186. Darnton, “Reading, Writing, and Publishing,” in Literary Underground of the Old Regime, 191– 99. 187. Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, pt. 1, book 4, 1: 169.

chapter 4. demand 1. Mettra to STN, 4 January 1782. Of the STN’s correspondents in the Reich, only Fontaine was able to hold off ordering books until his customers requested them. That was because Mannheim was relatively close to Neuchâtel. Even Fontaine, however, ordered at least some books in advance of demand. 2. Gerle to STN, 28 July and 20 November 1779. Eventually, after Joseph II acceded to the throne, the Bohemian censorship commission was abolished, and censorship in Prague became much more lax— a development that Gerle reported with undisguised satisfaction. See Gerle to STN, 29 August 1781. 3. On Virchaux, see Chapter 7.

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4. The exception was Deinet, who, as noted in the previous chapter, received a considerable quantity of the STN’s books en commission. 5. In a forthcoming article (“Beyond The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France”), Mark Curran tries to argue that the orders recorded in the STN’s Livres de commissions do not provide an adequate basis for studying demand in the literary marketplace. For a discussion of his argument and my criticisms of it, see n. 25 in the Introduction. 6. The system of classification most widely used in the eighteenth century was the one elaborated at the beginning of the century by Gabriel Martin, a Pa risian bookseller who specialized in the sale of “rare” (i.e., secondhand) books. At the time, public sales of private libraries were becoming more and more common. Martin used his system of classification to produce the auction cata logues that accompanied those sales, as described by Jean Viardot, “Livres rares et pratiques bibliophiliques,” in Chartier and Martin, Le livre triomphant, 592. On the contents and orga nization of eighteenth-century libraries, see, for example, Daniel Mornet, “Les enseignements des bibliothèques privées (1750–1780),” Revue d’ histoire littéraire de la France 17 (1910): 449– 92; and the various studies collected in Buch und Sammler: Private und öff entliche Bibliotheken im 18. Jahrhundert, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Literatur und Kunst des 18. Jahrhunderts, vol. 3 (Heidelberg, 1979). François Furet used the categories of eighteenth-century libraries in his large quantitative study of the French literary market, “La ‘librairie’ du royaume de France au 18e siècle,” in Livre et société dans la France du XVIIIe siècle (Paris and The Hague, 1965), 3–32. For a criticism of that study, see Darnton, “Reading, Writing, and Publishing,” 174– 75. 7. Philipp Erasmus Reich, who took over the publication of the Leipzig fair catalogues in 1759, justified the new format in a long prefatory note to the autumn cata logue of that year—the same year incidentally in which Latin disappeared from the title page of the fair cata logue. From then on, the cata logue bore the title “Allgemeines Verzeichniss” rather than “cata logus universalis.” The substitution of German for Latin on the title page bore witness to the same development as the introduction of the new format: the decline of the old Gelehrtenbuchhandel. See Fabian, “Die Messkataloge des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts,” 324–26. The cata logue was divided into two main sections: one devoted to German and Latin books; the other to books in foreign languages, most of which were in French. The German and Latin books were listed by their authors’ names unless they had been published anonymously. But the French books were listed by title only, presumably because so many of them were published anonymously. 8. Virchaux’s comments about Les Confessions come from an announcement that he placed in the literary supplement of the Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten, 1 June 1782. 9. On the publishing history of Mercier’s Tableau de Paris, which went through several editions, see Schlup, “L’édition du Tableau de Paris à Neuchâtel.” The figure of thirteen works by Mercier is derived from the bibliography of the STN’s editions compiled by Michael Schmidt. The bibliography appears in Schlup, L’Edition neuchâteloise au siècle des Lumières, 236–85.

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10. In addition to its Collection complète des oeuvres de Dorat, the STN published a one-volume edition of Oeuvres diverses de Dorat. And, unfortunately, it is not always clear from the Livres de commissions which of thoses two editions its correspondents had ordered. It is possible that a few of the orders I have counted as orders for the Collection complète were in fact for the one-volume Oeuvres diverses. 11. Deinet to STN, 5 January 1776; Virchaux to STN, 29 July 1780; Mettra to STN, 18 November 1784; Fontaine to STN, 18 March 1773; and Hemmerde to STN, 21 July 1772. 12. The STN’s edition of the Arts et métiers could have been seen as a distinct work. But that was not how the publishers of the original Pa risian edition saw it. They saw the STN’s edition as pirated, and they owned the privilege for the Arts et métiers, which they were able to enforce quite effectively. The STN was unable, therefore, to make shipments of its edition to customers in France, as Schlup describes in “La Société Typographique de Neuchâtel,” 97. But, of course, the privilege of the Pa risian publishers was not valid beyond the borders of the French kingdom. On the production of the STN’s edition of the Arts et métiers, see Alain Cernuschi, “Notre grande entreprise des arts: aspects encyclopédiques de l’édition neuchâteloise de la Description des arts et métiers,” and Madeleine Pinault Sorensen, “Les planches de la Description des arts et métiers de Neuchâtel,” both of which are in Darnton and Schlup, Le rayonnement d’une maison d’ édition, 185–218, 219–55. 13. Schlegel to STN, 12 July 1777. 14. STN to the Baron von Schulenburg, 13 February 1777; Graf von Sacken to STN, 26 April 1779. Eventually, after having received the tenth volume of the Arts et métiers in 1780, Frederick the Great himself sent a letter of acknowledgment, dated 14 January 1780, to Ostervald in Neuchâtel. 15. Graf von Dann to STN, 10 June 1777. The subscriptions for the Prince Victor von Anhalt Schaumburg, the Landgrave Ludwig IX of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the two courtiers in Darmstadt were transmitted to the STN by correspondents in Hesse-Homburg, neither of whom was a professional bookseller. See Jean-Gérard Bruère to STN (n.d. [autumn 1779]); and Le Chevalier Verdi Duvernois to STN, 26 October 1782. 16. Fontaine to STN, 18 October 1771. 17. Hemmerde to STN, 22 September 1781. 18. Gerle to STN, 7 March 1778. 19. Bauer to STN, 17 October 1778. 20. Virchaux to STN, 24 June 1780. 21. Neorberg to STN, 2 November 1779. 22. On the German diff usion of the quarto Encyclopédie, see Darnton, Business of Enlightenment, 304–8. 23. For a somewhat different view of how Diderot’s Encyclopédie was received in Germany, cf. Voss, “Verbreitung, Rezeption und Nachwirkung der Encyclopédie in Deutschland,” 183– 92. Voss notes that with the exception of Lessing, most of the leading authors in the German republic of letters maintained a critical distance toward Diderot’s work; and he concludes that “readers” were less interested in the “ideological components” of the work than in the “practical knowledge” they could derive from it. Voss, however,

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does not consider the symbolic uses of the Encyclopédie for German princes, some of whom may not have been readers of the work at all. Finally, it should be noted that the German market absorbed copies not only of Diderot’s Encyclopédie but also of the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon, a revised Protestant version of Diderot’s work published by Barthélemy de Félice. On Félice’s edition, which was intended to appeal to readers offended by the irreligion of the philosophes, see the essays collected in Jean-Daniel Candaux et al., L’Encyclopédie d’Yverdon et sa résonance européenne: Contextes, contenus, continuités (Geneva, 2005). 24. In addition to its nine-volume edition of Eléments d’ histoire générale, the STN sold two other similarly titled works by Millot: Eléments de l’ histoire de France and Eléments de l’ histoire d’Angleterre. It appears to have recorded orders for those works by copying out their titles; orders for the nine-volume work it distinguished by making such notations as “Millot 9 volumes,” or “Eléments de Millot 9 volumes,” or “Histoire générale de Millot.” But the Livres de commissions also contain a number of orders for “Millot” or “Eléments de Millot” (twenty-four from Virchaux, two from Gerle, ten from Fontaine, and four from Deinet) without any further indication which of the three works had been requested. I have counted them as orders for the nine-volume Eléments d’ histoire générale, but it is possible that a few of them were for one of the other works by Millot. 25. Thus Diderot in his Supplément au voyage de Bougainville: “The Tahitian is close to the origin of the world, while the European is closer to its old age. The contrast between them and us is greater than the difference between a newborn baby and a dottering old man.” Denis Diderot, Supplement to Bougainville’s “Voyage,” in Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works, trans. Jacques Barzun and Ralph Bowen (New York, 1964), 186. For a similar view as applied to the native inhabitants of the Americas, see the discussion of Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, 1993), 117–40. 26. Note that in Table 4, I have included under “history” a small subcategory devoted to “bibliography” (i.e., manuscript and rare books’ cata logues). When the orders for works belonging to that subcategory are added, the total number of orders for history comes to 717. 27. On L’An 2440, which was one of the best-selling works in the underground trade in France, see Darnton, Forbidden Best- Sellers, 115–36. 28. Virchaux to STN, 24 June 1780. 29. Deinet to STN, 19 September 1773. 30. Ibid., 22 March 1776. 31. Though Deinet ordered twelve copies of Ganganelli’s letters, the STN sent him sixty-two copies, which it released en commission. In August 1779, Deinet returned an unspecified number of those copies along with other books he had been holding en commission. On the books that Deinet returned to Neuchâtel, see note 149 in Chapter 3. 32. Virchaux to STN, 4 September 1779. Virchaux made his comment about D’Albon’s work after the STN had sent him thirteen unsolicited copies in a shipment of 26 July 1779. Thereafter, he ordered and received an additional twenty-five copies, twelve of which were transmitted to him by Félice in Yverdon.

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33. Eventually, in 1782, the STN published a second volume of D’Albon’s work, and, in 1785, a third. The Livres de commissions do not record any orders for the third volume, but all the booksellers in Germany who had ordered copies of volume 1 ordered as many or nearly as many copies of volume 2— a clear indication that volume 1 had met with a favorable reception. 34. Virchaux to STN, 26 May 1780.

chapter 5. the word of god in the age of the encyclopédie 1. On Neuchâtel as a center of Protestant publishing during the Reformation, see Febvre and Martin, Coming of the Book, 312–14. 2. The Bible d’Ostervald was a slightly revised and modernized adaptation of the accepted Genevan versions of 1588 and 1693. The first edition was published in Neuchâtel in 1744. See Bernhard Dammermann et al., “Continental Versions from c. 1600 to the Present Day,” in The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed. S. L. Greenslade, vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge, 1963), 350. Before the establishment of the STN, Samuel Fauche, one of the STN’s original associates, had also published his own folio edition of the Bible. 3. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge, 1979), 363. 4. Merck in Darmstadt to STN, 12 March 1783. It is important to point out, moreover, that Calvinists were much more likely to own and read the Bible than were Lutherans. For Lutherans, the Bible was above all a pastoral book— at least until the late seventeenth century and the rise of pietism. On the contrasting readings styles of Calvinists and Lutherans, see Jean-François Gilmont, “Protestant Reformations and Reading,” in A History of Reading in the West, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Amherst, Mass., 2003), 213–37 5. In a letter of 10 June 1773 to the bookseller Pierre Godefroy in Rouen, the STN announced that it had found a way to transmit “our crates of Bibles and other religious books [i.e., Protestant religious books] through the Chambre Syndicale in Lyon without any impediment.” In the days following, it repeated that same announcement to other French booksellers who had expressed an interest in purchasing its Bibles. In a letter of 13 January 1774, the STN told Heubach in Lausanne that most of the 1773 edition had already been placed. 6. The list of prepublication subscribers to the 1779 edition appears in the Livre de commissions, Ms. 1018, folio 148. 7. On the absorption of Huguenot refugees in Germany, see Michelle Magdelaine, “Frankfurt am Main: Drehscheibe des Refuge,” in Die Hugenotten, ed. R. von Thadden (Munich, 1985), 26–37. 8. STN to Goebhardt in Bamberg, 27 March 1779, and STN to Jasperd in Berlin, 29 March 1779. 9. The responses of Brönner and Andreae were relayed to the STN by a correspondent in Frankfurt named Pierre Bourquin. See Bourquin to STN, 23 April 1779.

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10. Febvre and Martin, Coming of the Book, 316. Already at the time of its first edition, the STN had made some efforts to enlist the ser vices of pastors, such as Albert Hollard, a Swiss-born pastor who was ministering to the refugee community in Erlangen. See STN to Hollard, 19 September 1771. 11. The STN obtained the list from its correspondent Pierre Bourquin in Frankfurt, who transmitted it in the letter that he wrote to the STN on 23 April 1779. 12. Bosset in Mainz to STN, 24 July 1779. 13. Hanau was a territorial enclave near Frankfurt belonging to the landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel, the same territorial enclave in which Samuel Fauche had established his entrepôt of books in the mid-1770s. But it appears to have enjoyed considerable autonomy, for the French Reformed Church in Hanau was legally and institutionally separate from that in the rest of Hesse-Cassel, according to Catherine Yon, “Das Refuge auf dem Land: Das Beispiel Hessen,” in Die Hugenotten, ed. R. von Thadden (Munich, 1985), 127–45. On Roques’s former pupil, the Landgraf Friedrich V, see Karl Schwartz, Landgraf Friedrich V von Hessen-Homburg (Rudolstadt, Germany, 1878). On the Société Patriotique de HesseHombourg, see Jürgen Voss, “Die Société patriotique de Hesse-Hombourg (1775–81): Der erste Versuch einer europäischen Koordinationsstelle für wissenschaftlichen Austausch,” in Deutsche patriotische und gemeinnützige Gesellschaften, ed. Rudolf Vierhaus, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, vol. 8 (Munich, 1980), 195–221. 14. STN to Roques, 5 August 1779. 15. Information on the expense of the shipment that the STN made to Roques comes from the invoice that the shipping firm of Hollweg and Laue in Frankfurt sent to the STN on 15 November 1779. Since the STN usually released the thirteenth copy gratis, the total cost of thirteen Bibles, evaluated at a price of 18 livres per copy, was 216 livres. 16. Roques to STN, 29 March 1780. 17. STN to Roques, 27 April 1780. The STN announced the octavo Bible for the first time in a letter of 2 December 1779 to the Basel bookseller Johann Jacob Thurneysen. 18. Roques to STN, 8 April 1782. 19. Hestermann to STN, 11 November 1784. 20. Hestermann’s trip to Neuchâtel is described in a letter he wrote to the STN on 1 February 1788. Durand’s meeting with Roques is recounted in a letter that the STN wrote on 10 January 1788 to the Pastor Girard in Hanau. 21. STN to Girard, 10 January 1788. 22. Hestermann to STN, 1 February 1788. 23. STN to Girard, 10 January 1788. According to a stock inventory of June 1787 (Rencontre du magasin, Ms. 1009), the STN’s warehouse in Neuchâtel still contained 593 copies of the folio Bible. 24. Hestermann to STN, 1 February 1788. 25. According to a document entitled “Marchandises pour notre compte dans l’ étranger” (Ms. 1010), the Bibles were in Frankfurt in the hands of the bookseller Eichenberg on 21 May 1788. They were returned to Neuchâtel by the shipping firm of Laue & Company in Frankfurt.

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26. Hesse-Cassel did not have its own institution for the training of French pastors, who were therefore obliged to attend the University of Marburg unless they went to study in Switzerland. Later, in the early nineteenth century, it became increasingly common for the French churches in Hesse simply to recruit their pastors from Geneva and Lausanne, presumably because the Huguenots in Hesse no longer had sufficient command of French, which continued to serve as the language of worship, even though it had fallen out of use as a medium of daily communication. On the gradual divorce between the liturgical and quotidian language of the Huguenots in Hesse-Cassel, as well as the post of inspector that Lagisse occupied, see Walter Mogk, “Kirchengeschichtliche Aspekte zur Situation der französisch-reformierten Gemeinden im Hesse-Kasselschen Refuge,” in Hugenotten und Waldenser in Hesse-Kassel, ed. Jochen Desel and W. Mogk (Cassel, 1978), 395–423. 27. Lagisse to STN, 3 April 1780. In his letter to the STN, Lagisse said he would pay for the tenth Bible out of his own pocket and that he would give it to “new colonists” (nouveaux colonistes), who were “in no condition to pay the full price.” By “new colonists,” however, Lagisse cannot possibly have meant recent arrivals, since the very last French settlements in Hesse-Cassel were founded between 1720 and 1722. Presumably, he was referring to the village of Gewissensruh, whose church was not completed until the 1770s. At the time of their arrival, the Huguenots had received financial aid from the Hessian government, but that aid seldom went for the construction of such institutions as schools and churches, the expense of which the refugees had to bear on their own. According to Yon (“Das Refuge auf dem Land,” 132), it was not unusual for a church to be completed many years after the founding of a colony. 28. Lagisse to STN, 10 June 1780. In his letter of 10 June, Lagisse indicated that the cost of shipping came to 3 livres per copy of the Bible. The crate of Bibles, which the STN had sent off on 14 April 1780, traveled overland from Basel to Frankfurt, according to information contained in the Livre de commissions, Ms. 1019, folio 218. 29. STN to Lagisse, 19 June 1780. 30. Lagisse to STN, 10 June 1780. 31. Ibid., 24 April 1781. The letter of 24 April also contained Lagisse’s order for a dozen copies of the octavo. 32. Ibid., 26 June and 4 August 1781. 33. Ibid., 4 August 1781. Lettres contre Voltaire was a French translation, published posthumously in 1780 by the typographical societies of Bern and Lausanne. 34. The STN sent Lagisse one copy of Haller’s work along with 10 octavo Bibles in the shipment that it made to him on 16 August 1781. Livre de commissions, Ms. 1020, folio 116. 35. Lagisse to STN, 16 February 1782. 36. The copy of the STN’s letter to Lagisse has not survived, but its contents can be inferred from Lagisse’s reply to the STN on 16 February 1782. 37. Livre de commissions, Ms. 1020, folio 168. 38. Lagisse to STN, 10 May 1783.

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39. Ibid., 18 April 1784. I owe the information about the shipment of catechisms to Simon Burrows and Mark Curran. I was not able to find any indication of that shipment in the Livre de commissions. 40. Ibid. 41. The copies of the STN’s letters have not survived, but their contents can be inferred from the letters that Lagisse sent to the STN on 8 June 1784 and 12 October 1785. 42. Bosset to STN, 31 July 1779. The octavo Bible that Lagisse sold was a Bienne edition, but an octavo edition of the Bible had also been published in Basel. 43. Röder to STN, 15 August 1779. Wesel belonged to the Prussian principality of Cleve and was home to a small Huguenot refugee community. 44. Ibid., 26 November 1779. The STN made its offer of the folio Bible in its letter to Röder of 23 October 1779. It was after the exchange of letters with Röder that the STN decided to lay in a stock of the Bienne octavo. At a price of 6 livres, however, the Bienne edition was more expensive than the Basel octavo, the edition that Röder had requested. The STN included thirteen copies of the Bienne edition in the large shipment of books that it made to Röder in early 1780 for the establishment of its Wesel entrepôt. But Röder had sold only two of them by the time he asked the STN to repossess the books in the entrepôt. The other eleven copies remained the STN’s property. See Röder to STN, 6 March 1781. 45. In a letter to Rigaud dated 11 May 1773, the STN said that it had acquired a share in a quarto edition of the Bible “which is currently being produced” and that it had done so on the strength of Rigaud’s judgment about the strong demand for quarto Bibles in his “region.” Roughly one year later, in its letter to Heubach of 14 April 1774, it indicated that it had received sixty copies of the Lausanne quarto. The following month it sent a dozen of those copies to Rigaud, according to the entry in the Livre de commissions, Ms. 1016, folio 27. 46. The STN commented on the superior quality of the paper in its 1773 edition in the letter it wrote to Heubach on 20 May 1773, at which time Heubach’s edition had not yet left the press. The STN based its comparison on a sample sheet that Heubach had sent to Neuchâtel. It said that Heubach’s paper lacked size (colle) in its letter to him of 24 November 1773; on that occasion, it was referring to an already published Lausanne edition of the New Testament. 47. STN to Heubach, 6 June 1777, and STN to Ranson, 19 September 1776. On the STN’s relations with Ranson, one of its few retail customers, see Darnton, “Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity,” in The Great Cat Massacre, 215–56. 48. STN to Perregaux, 17 January 1779. 49. STN to Duvoisin, chapelain de l’hôtel d’Hollande in Paris, 6 April 1779. The STN had obtained the plate of Ostervald’s portrait in 1773. At that time, however, it did not incorporate the portrait in its edition of the Bible; it used the plate to produce individual prints, which it offered to customers who had purchased the Bible. See, for example, STN to Gosse Junior in The Hague, 24 June 1773. By incorporating the portrait in its 1779 edition and by having it engraved anew in Paris, the STN increased the costs of

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production. Those costs, plus the expense of the other typographical ornaments, account for the difference in price between the 1773 and the 1779 editions—12 livres for the former compared with 18 for the latter. 50. Yon, “Das Refuge auf dem Land,” 133–36. 51. My calculation of the relation between Bibles and bread rests on the following assumptions: (1) that Lagisse did not, in fact, try to realize a profit and therefore sold the STN’s folio Bible at the wholesale price of 18 livres rather than at the recommended retail price of 24 livres; (2) that a pound of plain bread in late-eighteenth-century German cost about 1 Groschen, and that a peasant diet required about 50 pounds of bread per week for a family of five (husband, wife, and three children); (3) that the French livre tournois was equal to about 6.85 Groschen (24 Groschen = 1 Reichstaler = about 3.5 livres), so that 18 livres tournois were worth 123.3 Groschen. On the relation of books to bread generally, see Albert Ward, Book Production, Fiction, and the German Reading Public, 1740–1800 (Oxford, 1974), 150–51. 52. Bosset in Mainz to STN, 24 July 1779. 53. On the publishing history of the quarto, see Darnton, Business of Enlightenment. 54. Neorberg to STN, 2 November 1779. 55. Roques to STN, 29 March 1780. 56. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (Amsterdam, 1782– 83), 4: 80– 81. Cited in Roger Chartier, Les origines culturelles de la Révolution Française (Paris, 1990), 114–15.

chapter 6. against the current Note to epigraph: Friedrich Nicolai, Briefe über den jetzigen Zustand der schönen Wissenschaften in Deutschland (1755), ed. G. Ellinger (Berlin, 1894), p. 128, cited in Hans Heiss, Studien über einige Beziehungen zwischen der deutschen und der französischen Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert: Der Übersetzer und Vermittler Michael Huber (1727–1804) (Erlangen, 1907), 75. 1. The article “études” in the Encyclopédie urged young people to undertake the study of “some modern language, like Italian, Spanish, or, even more, English.” German was not mentioned. See Paul Lévy, Pénétration de la langue allemande en France (Paris, 1950), 158. By the late eighteenth century, however, there were enough people in Paris with a reading knowledge of German to support a cabinet de littérature allemande, which was located on the rue Saint-Honoré. Jürgen Voss discusses that cabinet in his article, “Eine deutsche Lesebibliothek im Paris des späten 18. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 6 (1979): 466. Obviously, Strasbourg was an exception to the general French ignorance of German. Most of the population there consisted of native German speakers. 2. The only quantitative bibliographic study concerning French translations of German works is by Liselotte Bihl and Karl Epting, Bibliographie französischer Übersetzungen aus dem Deutschen: Bibliographie de traductions françaises d’auteurs de langue allemande,

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1487–1944 (Tübingen, 1987). Unfortunately for the historian of the eighteenth century, Bihl and Epting treat the entire three-hundred-year period from 1487 to 1789 as a single chronological unit. During that long period, the average number of translations published annually was 3.5. Thereafter, it rose more or less steadily: to 26.3 from 1789 to 1815, 44.3 from 1815 to 1830, and 76.1 from 1830 to 1848. By the last two decades of the Old Regime, the average number of translations published annually was almost certainly higher than 3.5, but just how much higher is hard to say. In any case, the number of French translations from German was dwarfed by the number of German translations from French. For a discussion of Bihl and Epting’s bibliography, see Frédéric Barbier, “Les transferts culturels et le livre imprimé: A propos d’un ouvrage récent,” Revue de synthèse 3 (July– Sept. 1990): 293– 98. 3. Cited in L. Reynaud, L’ influence allemande en France au XVIIIe et XIXe siècle (Paris, 1922), 12. 4. On Huber and his translations, see Heiss, Studien über einige Beziehungen. 5. On the role played by the Journal étranger and the Année littéraire in creating a climate favorable to the reception of German literature, see P. van Tieghem, L’année littéraire (1754–1790) comme intermédiaire en France des littératures étrangères (Paris, 1917); Johannes Gärtner, Das Journal Etranger und seine Bedeutung für die Verbreitung deutscher Literatur in Frankreich (1905; reprint, Geneva, 1971). 6. Melchior Grimm, Correspondance littéraire (January 1762). Cited in Reynaud, L’ influence allemande, 32. 7. STN to Blouet, 10 November 1773. 8. On members of the Prussian Academy as translators, see the letter that the Berlin bookseller Georg Jacob Decker wrote to the STN on 15 October 1773. When Bosset visited Cleve during his journey through the Rhineland in the summer of 1779, he met with a pastor named Talbot, who had translated several German works, according to the letter that Bosset wrote to the home office on 14 August 1779. After roughly three generations of living in Germany, however, the German Huguenots did not necessarily speak French well any longer. In a letter to the STN of 20 May 1780, Virchaux reported that Joachim Campe had commissioned a pastor named Saunier to do a translation of his Robinson Crusoe adaptation for children, Robinson der Jüngere, only to withdraw the commission for the final volume because Saunier had done such a bad job. 9. Abbé Rozier to STN, 23 January 1774. 10. STN to abbé Fouchet, 4 January 1774. 11. STN to Grasset et comp. in Lausanne, 4 September 1773. 12. STN to abbé Rozier, 8 February 1774. 13. On one occasion, the STN informed a correspondent in Lausanne that Bertrand had begun work on the French translation of the German translation of the English novel Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollet but that “his numerous occupations obliged him to abandon it.” See STN to Heinrich Wuest, 20 January 1774. 14. STN to Nicolai, 21 July 1777. 15. Turkheim to STN, 27 January 1780.

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16. Bérenger to STN, 10 and 31 December 1779. 17. Hirschberg to STN, 17 January 1773. 18. Bérenger to STN, 31 December 1779. 19. In the early 1770s, Ostervald made several trips to Lausanne, and on each occasion, he gave Wuest a wide berth. Wuest complained of those snubs in letters to the STN of 4 May 1770 and 17 July 1772, but continued to correspond with the STN anyway. His ostensible pretext for writing to the STN was to provide material on German literature for the STN’s literary revue, Le Journal helvétique. It is clear, however, that his real motive was to peddle his translations. 20. With his letters of 5 August 1771 and 19 April 1773, Wuest sent the STN sample translations whose stylistic weaknesses he underlined—literally: in both of those cases, he underlined the words and phrases he considered infelicitous. One translation was of an excerpt from letters exchanged between Gellert and Rabener, which described the Prussian assault on Leipzig during the Seven Years’ War; the other was of an excerpt from Gellert’s Moralische Vorlesungen. In each case, Wuest begged the STN’s “indulgence.” 21. When Wuest mentioned Correvon to the STN in his letters of 20 November 1770, 5 August 1771, and 28 July 1772, he implied that his arrangement with Correvon was informal and ad hoc. Eventually, in 1774, he announced that he and Correvon would be collaborating on a regular basis. See Wuest to STN, 11 and 22 January, and 23 April 1774. But it is questionable just how much Wuest did, in fact, collaborate with Correvon. He must have known that the STN would be reluctant to pay good money for translations done by a native German speaker. He had a strong motive, therefore, to exaggerate the extent of his collaboration with Correvon. 22. STN to Wuest, 20 January 1774; Wuest to STN, 8 February 1774. Two months later, in a letter of 22 April, Wuest intimated that he had not, in fact, completed the whole translation, just parts of it, which he planned to send to Neuchâtel so that the STN could inspect them. Four months after that, in a letter of 25 August, he announced that he had finally completed the translation of all three volumes. But even then he was somewhat vague about what exactly he had completed: he told the STN that he was awaiting the go-ahead from Neuchâtel before he began to revise his translation. In all likelihood, Wuest was working from the German translation of Smollett’s novel that Philipp Erasmus Reich in Leipzig had published in 1772 under the title Humphry Klinkers Reisen. 23. STN to Wuest, 20 January 1774; Wuest to STN, 22 January 1774. 24. STN to Delamare, 25 February 1779. 25. STN to Virchaux, June 1780. 26. STN to Société Typographique de Berne, 5 August 1779. I have been unable to identify the work Begriff der Reisen. 27. STN to Virchaux, 16 August 1780. 28. The STN made its appeal to Delavaux through the intermediary of the Basel bookseller Serini, to whom it wrote on 19 February 1780. 29. STN to Virchaux, 13 April 1780. In a letter of 6 January 1780 to the Société Typographique de Berne, the STN calculated that it would be unable to maintain its

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usual wholesale price of 1 sou per sheet if it paid a translator any more than 6 to 9 livres per sheet of the original German. Eventually, sometime in the early 1780s, a French translation of Siegwart was, in fact, published— apparently by a bookseller in Basel. 30. Durichsel’s letter was enclosed with the letter that Paul Christian Hilscher, a bookseller in Dresden, sent to the STN from Leipzig on 4 May 1772. In a previous letter, dated 10 March 1772, Hilscher had indicated that Durichsel wanted nothing more than “some copies for his friends” in exchange for the manuscript of the translation. 31. STN to Virchaux, 10 June 1780. 32. STN to Beat Ludwig Walthard in Bern, 13 November 1787. 33. The STN published the French edition of Heidegger’s tract, but did not want that fact to be known because the work was highly controversial in Switzerland. It therefore eliminated any reference to itself or to Neuchâtel from the title page. It also lied to its Swiss correspondents about where the work came from. In a letter of 7 October 1769 to the Genevan firm of Chirol et Philibert, for example, it reported that it had received copies of the French translation from someone else. Despite the STN’s efforts at concealment, its Swiss correspondents found out that the STN was the publisher of the French translation of Heidegger’s work, and two of its correspondents in Basel—the bookseller Johann Jacob Flick and the author Isaak Iselin—warned the STN of the possible repercussions. See Flick to STN, 18 October 1769; Iselin to STN, 18 May 1770. Since the STN was not in contact with any French translators in 1769, it seems reasonable to assume that Bertrand executed the translation. 34. The STN claimed, in letters to Wuest on 13 September and to Deinet on 18 October 1773, that it had “corrected” Varrentrap’s defective translation. Since I have not been able to locate a copy of Varrentrap’s original French translation, I cannot evaluate how much of it the STN “corrected.” 35. References to the STN’s acquisition of the translation by Rieu are contained in the letter that the STN wrote to the Société Typographique de Berne on 23 December 1779 and in the letter that Bérenger, an associate of the Société Typographique de Lausanne, wrote to the STN on 31 December 1779. Initially, the STN had planned to publish Rieu’s translation in association with its sister societies in Bern and Lausanne, but the latter backed out of the project; so, in the end, the STN published the translation alone. See STN to Société Tyypographique de Berne, 8 January 1780. 36. The STN also played some part in the publication of an eighth translation: a sixvolume collection of travelers’ accounts concerning Russia and Persia edited by Jacob Samuel Wyttenbach, Histoire des découvertes faites par divers savans voyageurs dans plusieurs contrées de la Russie et de la Perse, which was published in installments between 1779 and 1787. Most of that work, however, was printed by the Société Typographique de Berne; so I have not included it in the list of the STN’s translations. To satisfy the demand of its customers for the French translations of German works, the STN also managed to obtain copies of several translations that other Swiss firms had published— of novels and poems by the celebrated Bern physician Albrecht von Haller, which the Société Typographique de Berne published in the early and mid-1770s; of a travel narrative

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about a scientific expedition to the Arabian peninsula by the cartographer Carsten Niebuhr, which the Société Typographique de Berne published in 1780; and of Martin Miller’s Siegwart, which was eventually published in Basel in the early 1780s, after the STN and the Société Typographique de Berne had given up on it. 37. Richard Schwinger, Friedrich Nicolais Roman Sebaldus Nothanker: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Aufklärung (Weimar, 1897) 154. 38. STN to Bélin in Paris, 18 April 1779. 39. STN to abbé Fouchet, 15 January 1774. The same day, the STN addressed an almost identical letter to the abbé Rozier, another one of its correspondents in Paris. 40. The STN spoke of German literature in the following letters to correspondents in France: to Chevrier in Poitiers, 30 December 1773; to Fontanel in Montpellier, 8 January 1774; and to Gaude père et fils in Nîmes, 2 November 1773. It also discussed German literature in a letter of 1 November 1773 to Jacques Barelle in Milan. 41. Gustav Schwetschke, Codex nundinarius Germaniae literatae bisecularis: MessJahrbücher des Deutschen Buchhandels (Halle, 1850, 1877), 2: 253, 273. 42. Johann Heinrich Steiner to STN, 6 July 1774. The STN received copies of the Leipzig Easter cata logue from Johann Conrad Deinet in Frankfurt. See Deinet to STN, 10 and 15 May 1776. 43. Béguelin to STN, 6 October 1770. 44. The STN asked Deinet to supply recommendations of German works near the beginning of their correspondence in the letters it wrote to him on 13 September and 18 October 1773. In the late 1770s and early 1780s, the STN also received a good deal of advice about German works from Jean Turkheim in Strasbourg and Virchaux in Hamburg. By then, however, it had pretty much renounced its translation project. 45. Deinet to STN, 9 December 1774. 46. Ibid., 5 January 1776. 47. Ibid., 2 March 1777. 48. Ibid., 13 April 1775. On Werther, see also Deinet to STN, 9 December 1774. 49. Deinet made his laudatory comments about Nicolai and Sebaldus in his letters to the STN of 19 September 1773, 9 December 1774, and 18 May 1775. He supplied the first volume of Sebaldus unsolicited, but the STN asked him to supply the second volume, which he sent to Neuchâtel following the Easter fair of 1775, according to a bill that he submitted to the STN roughly one year afterward. That bill was enclosed with Deinet’s letter to the STN of 10 May 1776; the STN had made its request for the second volume in its letters to Deinet of 18 October and 13 December 1773. At almost exactly the same time that the STN received the second volume from Deinet, it also received a copy from Nicolai. See n. 86. Finally, following the Easter fair of 1776, Deinet sent the STN a copy of the third volume. See Deinet to STN, 15 May 1776. 50. Deinet to STN, 13 September 1776. 51. STN to Deinet, 13 December 1773. 52. On Deinet’s devotion to Lavater, see the section devoted to Deinet in chap. 3.

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53. Deinet plugged the works by Lavater in his letters to the STN of 19 September 1773, 5 January 1776, and 2 March 1777. 54. On the commercial success of Lavater’s sermons concerning the poisoning of the communion wine in Zurich, see my own discussion in A Poisoned Chalice (Princeton, 2002), 98. 55. STN to Bérenger, 3 January 1780. 56. Deinet to STN, 7 February 1776. In his letter of 7 February, Deinet said that there were three plays in the collection. In a letter of 22 May 1776, he corrected himself and noted that there were four. 57. STN to Deinet, 1 July 1776. 58. Sandoz to STN, 18 November 1781. The following year, however, a Parisian publisher brought out the first four volumes of what would eventually become a twelve-volume collection of French translations of contemporary German plays, Nouveau théâtre allemand, ou recueil des pièces qui ont paru avec succès sur les théâtres des capitales de l’Allemagne. The translator of the plays was Adrien-Chrétien Friedel. It is possible, therefore, that Deinet knew rather more about the taste of the Parisian theater public than the STN gave him credit for. 59. On Wieland’s novel, see Victor Michel, C. M. Wieland: La formation et l’ évolution de son esprit jusqu’en 1772 (Paris, 1938), 447– 75; Oskar Vogt, Der goldene Spiegel und Wielands politische Ansichten (Berlin, 1904); and W. H. Bruford, Culture and Society in Classical Weimar (Cambridge, 1962), 22–24. 60. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 1 November 1780. 61. Even Mme. de Staël, who usually emphasized the differences rather than the similarities between French and German authors, linked Wieland and Voltaire. See Germaine de Staël, De l’Allemagne, Garnier-Flammarion (Paris, 1968), 1: 173. 62. On Nicolai’s novel, see Schwinger, Friedrich Nicolais Roman Sebaldus Nothanker; Horst Möller, Aufklärung in Preussen: Der Verleger, Publizist und Geschichtsschreiber Friedrich Nicolai (West Berlin, 1974), 80– 99. 63. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Sprache als Medium der hermeneutischen Erfahrung,” in Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen, 1960), 361– 67. For Gadamer, translation presents a special case of the general hermeneutic situation. 64. The mystery of why the STN would have been drawn to so quintessentially German a novel as Nicolai’s may, at least in part, have had a personal explanation. In the early 1770s, the STN published a pirated edition of d’Holbach’s atheistic treatise Système de la nature, and so incurred the wrath of the compagnie des pasteurs, the chief clerical body in Neuchâtel, which punished Bertrand, an ordained pastor, by suspending him from his ministry. The STN seemed to be alluding to that event in a letter it wrote to Nicolai in September 1774, several months after the first volume of Bertrand’s translation had left the press: “We confess that some personal reasons made such a work [i.e., Sebaldus] even more interesting for us. Was that honest man [i.e., Sebaldus] to be the only one who would be unjustly persecuted by his prideful and vindictive confrères?” STN to

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Nicolai, 1 September 1774, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbestiz Berlin: Volume 71, Nicolai Briefwechsel, Nachlass Nicolai. The letter from the STN to Nicolai was not entered in the STN’s Copies de lettres. My thanks to Dr. Pamela Selwyn for drawing my attention to the original letter in Nicolai’s papers. 65. STN to Deinet, 28 March 1776. 66. STN to Société Typographique de Berne, 23 September 1779. 67. STN to Lambergen, 22 April 1770. 68. Steiner to STN, 15 November 1774. I have not been able to identify the work Steiner sent to the STN; so perhaps it was never published. 69. Abbé Rozier to STN, 23 January 1774. 70. STN to Rozier, 8 February 1774. 71. Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 18 August 1778. In their letter to the STN, the booksellers in Bern indicated that a French translation of Niebuhr’s work had already been published in a large quarto edition. In all likelihood, therefore, they did not intend to retranslate the work but simply to lift excerpts from the existing French translation. They also told the STN that they intended to publish their abridged edition in three volumes. At that time, however, the project was still in the planning stages. The Bern edition of Niebuhr’s work, which was finally published in 1780 under the title Voyage de M. Niebuhr en Arabie et en d’autres pays de l’Orient, appears to have comprised two rather than three volumes. It bore the imprint “en Suisse, chez les libraires associés”— an imprint that the typographical societies of Bern, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel typically used for their joint publications. But the STN does not appear to have played any role in the printing of Niebuhr’s work. 72. STN to Guiseppe Celestino Astori, 31 March 1774. In its letter to Astori, the STN said that its translator (presumably, Bertrand) had completed the translation of the first two volumes but had not yet begun work on the final two. In the end, the STN did not publish a translation of Le Bret’s treatise. 73. STN to Société Typographique de Berne, 31 January 1780. 74. STN to Wieland, 5 March 1774, and STN to Nicolai, 21 July 1777. 75. Basedow to STN, [n.d.] October 1770. 76. STN to Basedow, 10 December 1770. 77. Basedow to STN, October 1770. In his correspondence with the STN, Basedow referred to his work as Das Elementarwerk; and an edition bearing that title was eventually published in 1774. The edition published in 1770, however, bore the title Das Elementarbuch. 78. STN to Basedow, 10 December 1770. 79. Basedow to STN, October 1770. 80. Georges Mounin, Les belles infidèles (Paris, 1955); Constance West, “La théorie de la traduction au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue de littérature comparée (Apr.–June 1932): 330–55. 81. On the Romans and translation as conquest, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, vol. 2 of Werke (Munich, 1962), 91. 82. By compressing such a far-ranging and complicated debate into a short paragraph, I am of course simplifying the issues enormously. For a full discussion of how the

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early romantics in Germany conceived of translation, see A. Huyssen, Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung: Studien zur frühromantischen Utopie einer deutschen Weltliteratur (Zurich, 1969). 83. STN to Basedow, 2 July 1770. 84. Friedrich Nicolai, Briefe über den jetzigen Zustand der schönen Wissenschaften in Deutschland (1755), ed. G. Ellinger (Berlin, 1894), 128. Cited in Heiss, Studien über einige Beziehungen, 75. 85. Pamela Selwyn, Everyday Life in the German Book Trade: Friedrich Nicolai as Bookseller and Publisher in the Age of Enlightenment, 1750–1810 (University Park, Pa., 2000), 302–3. 86. Nicolai to STN, 17 January 1775. Nicolai also signaled his approval of the STN’s translation by supplying a copy of the second volume of his German edition, which he delivered to Pfaehler of the Société Typographique de Berne at the Leipzig Easter fair in 1775, and which Pfaehler then transmitted to the STN. See Société Typographique de Berne to STN, 20 June 1775; Nicolai in Leipzig to STN, 8 May 1775. 87. Moritz August von Thümmel, Wilhelmine, ein prosaisch komisches Gedicht (Leipzig, 1773), 86. The 1773 Leipzig edition of Thümmel’s work dropped the second half of the title, “der vermählte Pedant,” which had appeared in the original 1764 edition. 88. On Wilhelmine, see Alfred Anger, Literarisches Rokoko (Stuttgart, 1962), 88– 96; Martin Greiner, Die Entstehung der modernen Unterhaltungs-Literatur: Studien zum Trivialroman des 18. Jahrhunderts (Hamburg, 1964), 65– 66. On Thümmel, the author of Wilhelmine, see Horst Heldmann, Moritz August von Thümmel: Sein Leben, sein Werk, seine Zeit (Neustadt, 1964). There was at least one small, though noteworthy, difference between the first and later editions of Wilhelmine. In the first edition, Cupid appears in Sebaldus’s dream accompanied by none other than Martin Luther. In the subsequent editions, Luther drops out, perhaps because of the pressure from critics who considered it unseemly for Luther to be associated with a pagan deity. In Huber’s translation, Cupid appears alone. 89. Friedrich Nicolai, Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker, critical edition, ed. Bernd Witte (Stuttgart, 1991), 165– 66. The critical scholarly edition of Nicolai’s novel, edited by Witte, is based on the original Berlin edition, which is also the one that Bertrand used for his translation. The original edition comprised three volumes. 90. Vie et opinions de maître Sebaltus Nothanker, traduit de l’allemand par un ami du héro (London [sic], 1774, 1777), 2: 8. 91. STN to Cramer, 9 October 1773. 92. STN to Machuel, 9 October 1773. 93. STN to Périsse, 2 October 1773. 94. The original Berlin edition of Sebaldus also appeared anonymously— a mode of publication that was common for “pseudo-factual” works like Sebaldus, which presented itself not as a novel but as a true story based on historical documents. Nicolai’s name, however, did appear prominently on the title pages of the Berlin edition as the publisher. In the STN’s French edition, the link between Nicolai and Sebaldus was severed entirely.

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I am indebted to Dr. Andrew Clark and Dr. Nicholas Paige for pointing out to me the connection between anonymous publication and the genre of “pseudo-factual” works. 95. Rozier to STN, 23 January 1774. 96. The STN’s stock inventory, called Rencontre du magasin (Ms. 1001), indicates that in October 1777, the storerooms in Neuchâtel contained 312 copies of Volume 1; the Livres de commissions indicate that by that date, the STN had sold 765 copies of Volume 1; therefore, Volume 1 must have been printed at a pressrun of at least 1,077. The original Berlin edition of Nicolai’s novel was published in three installments: Volume 1 in 1773, Volume 2 in 1775, and the final volume in 1776. 97. Rencontre du magasin, Ms. 1001. For some reason, the STN seems to have printed eleven fewer copies of Volume 3 than it did of Volume 2. Thus, according to the stock inventory for October 1777, the STN’s storerooms contained 202 loose copies of Volume 2 and only 191 of Volume 3. 98. The figures of 775 and 200 are only approximate, because the stock inventory for 1779 has not survived. According to the Rencontre du magasin, Ms. 1003, the STN’s storerooms contained 690 copies of the two-volume duodecimo and 146 of the three-volume octavo in January 1781. Those figures would have been somewhat higher one year earlier: hence 775 and 200. 99. Banque des ouvriers, Ms. 1055. By November 1779, both Albert and Meyer had worked in the STN’s printing shop for several years, and so qualified as “veterans” in an age when few printing shop workers stayed in any one establishment for as long as a year. See Darnton, Business of Enlightenment, 221. 100. Dupuget to STN, 16 February 1780. Dupuget was not the only one to be fooled by the STN’s title change. I was fooled by it too, much to my subsequent embarrassment. In an article on translation that I published in 1993, I asserted that the STN had printed a new edition of Nicolai’s novel under the title Intolérance ecclésiastique. Wrong! The only thing that was new was the title page. Cf. Jeff rey Freedman, “Traduction et édition à l’époque des Lumières,” Dix-huitième siècle 25 (1993): 79–100. In fairness to the STN, it should be noted that it had in fact told Dupuget of the title change when he unknowingly ordered a copy of the translation under the new title: “L’intolérance ecclésiastique is nothing other than Sebaltus,” it warned him. Dupuget must have overlooked the warning. See STN to Dupuget, 8 September 1779. In a letter of 14 June 1777, Dupuget had indicated to the STN that he was ordering “Wilhelmine” for use in his commercial “reading library” (bibliothèque de lecture). In a small town like Yverdon, it would have made little sense for a book dealer to keep two copies of the same work in his reading library, unless it was a best-seller; and the STN may have taken that fact into consideration when it warned Dupuget of the title change. It does not appear to have extended a similar courtesy to most of the other book dealers who purchased copies of its translation under both the old and the new titles. 101. Bosset must have discussed the imminent title change with Matthias Fontaine when he met with him in Mannheim during the summer of 1779, since he transmitted an order on Fontaine’s behalf for six copies of the two-volume duodecimo with the explicit

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request “to leave him [i.e., Fontaine] the old title.” Fontaine’s request is inscribed in the Livre de commissions, Ms. 1019, folio 139. Apart from Fontaine, few if any of the STN’s correspondents seem to have known what the STN was planning. 102. Bosset to STN, 17 August 1779. 103. Livre de commissions, Ms. 1020, folio 202–203. 104. Ibid., folio 182. 105. Bergeret to STN, 29 September 1781. 106. On Cugnet, Lesenne, and Mauvelain and their orders for L’Intolérance ecclésiastique, see Darnton, Literary Underground of the Old Regime, 83–85, 139–41. 107. Quandet to STN, 4 December 1780. Cited in Darnton, “Le marché littéraire français vu de Neuchâtel,” in Aspects du livre neuchâtelois: Etudes réunies à l’occasion du 450e anniversaire de l’ imprimerie neuchâteloise, ed. Jacques Rychner and Michel Schlup (Neuchâtel, 1986), 64. 108. The figure of fifty-nine is only approximate because it is based on the Livres de commissions, which end in mid-1785. The STN may have sold a few more copies after that date. 109. Weitbrecht to STN, 28 May 1781. Cited in Schlup, “Coup d’oeil sur les relations commerciales de la STN avec Moscou et Saint-Pétersbourg,” in L’ édition neuchâteloise au siècle des Lumières, 110. 110. Rencontres du magasin, Ms. 1003– 9. 111. The data on the sales of complete sets can be derived from the Rencontres du magasin in the following manner. In 1777, the STN owned 1,031 complete sets of the twovolume duodecimo and 312 of the three-volume octavo; ten years later, it owned 397 complete sets of the duodecimo (Intolérance and Sebaltus) and 69 of the octavo (Sebaltus). During that period, therefore, it had sold 634 of the small format and 243 of the large. Add to that the roughly 180 copies of volumes 2 and 3 in-octavo that booksellers ordered to complete their earlier purchase of volume 1, and the total comes to 1,057. 112. As indicated in n. 101, Fontaine asked Bosset to send him copies of Sebaldus with the original title. Clearly, therefore, he wanted his aristocratic customers to realize that the STN’s edition was a translation of Nicolai’s novel. 113. On the crucial conceptual shift from the book as the outcome of a collaborative process to the book as the embodiment of the author’s unique creative genius, see the seminal article by Martha Woodmansee, “Genius and the Copyright,” in The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics (New York, 1994), 35–55, which argues that the conceptual shift owed as much to the conditions in the German literary market and the material plight of German authors as it did to the aesthetic theory of romanticism. It should be pointed out, by the way, that Nicolai, a publisher as well as an author, had little sympathy for the notion that authors were the creators of their works. He tended to view authors as the mere hirelings of publishers. Because he enjoyed a good deal of influence with the draf ters of the Prussian Law Code (Allgemeines Landrecht 174), the provisions of the code dealing with copyright reflected Nicolai’s view of the matter: they did not establish anything resembling an intellectual property right grounded in the

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creative genius of authors (what, in German, would be called an Urheberrecht). On Nicolai’s uncharitable view of authors and his influence on the Prussian Law Code, see Selwyn, Everyday Life in the German Book Trade, 306–11.

chapter 7. from eu rope fr ançaise to eu rope révolutionnaire Note to epigraph: Cited in Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia, and Jacques Revel, Une politique de la langue: La révolution française et les patois (Paris, 1986), 297. 1. Louis Fauche-Borel, Mémoires (Paris, 1829), 1: 12. Fauche-Borel, a native Neuchâtelois and son of Samuel Fauche, performed his apprenticeship in Virchaux’s shop. 2. References to Virchaux are scattered through Brissot’s letters to the STN, which printed Brissot’s works in Neuchâtel at the same time that Virchaux was doing so in Hamburg. Because the STN printed those works on commission for the author, Brissot ran up a large debt to the STN, and, at one point, he tried to pay the STN with notes drawn against Virchaux, who refused to honor them. Brissot took the news of Virchaux’s refusal with remarkable forbearance: “That surprised me all the more as I believe him [i.e., Virchaux] to be very honest” (Brissot to STN, 29 November 1783). One year later, when Virchaux had still not honored those notes, Brissot did lose patience with him, declaring that Virchaux was “notoriously of bad faith” (Brissot to STN, 7 November 1784). But he made that comment when his own finances were about to collapse and he was desperately trying to shift the blame for his financial woes on to other booksellers. All the letters of Brissot to the STN have been published on-line by Robert Darnton, “J. P. Brissot and the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel,” Oxford University Press, SVEC 10 (2001), http://163.1.91 .81/www_vfetc/SVEC01 _10_BRS/home _intro.htm. Since Brissot was in London and Virchaux in Hamburg, it seems unlikely they would have met until their paths crossed in Paris during the Revolution. 3. The reference to Klopstock and his visits to Virchaux’s home is contained in Fauche-Borel, Mémoires, 1:12. 4. Johann Georg Hamann to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 2 June 1787. In Hamann, Briefwechsel, ed. Walther Ziesemer and Arthur Henkel (Frankfurt, 1955– 79), 7: 219. While Hamann said that he found Virchaux to be “a very entertaining man,” he also said that he did not much “trust” him. 5. Pierre Boué to STN, 19 November 1777. 6. On Virchaux’s connection to Roullier, see the discussion later in this chapter. 7. The civil registry of Neuchâtel indicates that Virchaux was baptized on 29 March 1739. On the relation between the demographic expansion of the principality and the increased professional mobility of its inhabitants, see Philippe Henry, “Le pays de Neuchâtel à l’époque de la naissance de la STN,” in Darnton and Schlup, Le rayonnement d’une maison d’ édition, 42. In his letters to the STN, Virchaux made only one, rather enigmatic comment about his early years in Neuchâtel. Speaking of his patrie in a letter of 23 January 1779, he said, “I have little cause to congratulate myself on it as regards the past [de

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m’en louer en égard au passé].” The implication was that he harbored some grievance against his patrie, but he did not spell out what it was. 8. The information pertaining to the death of Virchaux’s Hessian wife is contained in Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Französisch-Reformierte Gemeinde, 23: 49; 22: 322. The information pertaining to his legal status in Hamburg and his marriage to the native Hamburg woman Maria Catharina Flindt is contained in Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Kämmerei I, 214, vol. 128, p. 323; Wedde I, 29, vol. 39, p. 59. 9. Johann Peter Willebrand, Vermehrte Nachrichten von den Annehmlichkeiten in und um Hamburg, mit freundschaftlichen Erinnerungen für Fremde und Reisende (Hamburg, 1783), 125. Cited in Franklin Kopitzsch, Grundzüge einer Sozialgeschichte der Aufklärung in Hamburg und Altona (Hamburg, 1990), 415. On the population of and immigration to Hamburg in general, see Joachim Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529–1819 (Cambridge, 1985), 10. On German “home towns,” see Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971). 10. Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change, 113. 11. Virchaux to STN, 30 May 1778. Virchaux did, however, receive four French Protestant Bibles, which were probably intended for his coreligionists in Hamburg. 12. Boué to STN, 19 November 1777. 13. Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Kämmerei I, 225, vol. 1, p. 88. 14. Admittedly, there is no way of knowing just how “bilingual” Virchaux’s household was or how fluently Virchaux spoke German, but he must have spoken it reasonably well. Hamburg, after all, was a commercial center, not a princely court like Potsdam where a native French speaker could manage without a word of German. In any case, Virchaux read German, for he often recommended to the STN German works that he considered worthy of being translated into French—notably, Lessing’s Nathan der Weise. See, for example, Virchaux to STN, 10 December 1779 and 31 March 1780. The entry in the marriage registry of the French Reformed Church in Hamburg noted explicitly that Maria Catharina Flindt, Virchaux’s wife, was Lutheran— a fact that had made it impossible for the couple to go through the usual engagement ceremony (fiançailles). See Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Französisch-Reformierte Gemeinde, 37: 88. 15. The subject of food—mainly cheese but also dried fruit— came up frequently in Virchaux’s letters to the STN, on 20 November and 22 December 1779, 31 March, 26 May, 29 July, and 2 August 1780, and 1 February 1783. 16. On Colin’s role as an intermediary between Virchaux and the STN, see Virchaux to STN, 27 January 1781. 17. Virchaux to STN, 29 July 1780. 18. Ibid., 24 June 1780 and 27 January 1781. 19. To be a domestic tutor of French was the unenviable and keenly resented lot of many Huguenot refugees in Germany. See Henri Duranton, “Un métier de chien: Précepteurs, demoiselles de compagnie et bohème littéraire dans le refuge allemande,” DixHuitième Siècle 17 (1985): 297–315. 20. Virchaux to STN, 1 November 1780.

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21. Ibid., 23 January 1779 and 19 December 1778. 22. Unlike Virchaux’s cata logue, which listed both old and recent publications, the announcements Virchaux placed in the HC were for new publications (nouveautés) exclusively. Those nouveautés, however, came from the same centers of French publishing as the books in his cata logue: Paris, western Switzerland, London, and the Low Countries. 23. During the early years of its correspondence with Virchaux, the STN directed its shipments to him down the Rhine, despite the advice of Franck frères, a shipping firm in Strasbourg that told the STN in a letter of 14 January 1778 that it would be no more expensive and somewhat quicker if the shipments traveled overland from Frankfurt to Hamburg. The shipments that the STN sent down the Rhine and across the North Sea generated such high levels of faux frais (as high as 20 percent) and took so long (as long as three months) that eventually Virchaux came to the same conclusion as Franck frères. In his letters of 29 July and 30 December 1780, he instructed the STN to use the land route from Frankfurt instead. Compared with the long and expensive shipping route from Switzerland to Hamburg, shipping from London and the Low Countries was a breeze. Virchaux reported that he received new publications from London in “every ship” that arrived in the port of Hamburg from the English capital (HC, 24 May 1783). And he warned the STN not to send him any books that had been printed in the Low Countries: “You can well imagine that I can get them more quickly and at a better price from that country [than from Neuchâtel]” (Virchaux to STN, 24 June 1778). 24. Evidence for all twenty-nine of the shipments that the STN made to Virchaux comes from the entries in the Livres de commissions, Ms. 1018–21. Of the 4,366 books that Virchaux received, 1,428 were of two works. Virchaux received 928 copies of Du gouvernement et des lois de la Pologne by the abbé Mably and 500 of an anonymously published work entitled Pièces intéressantes et peu connues pour servir à l’ histoire. 25. There were two Neuchâtel editions of the Tableau de Paris: one in two volumes published by Samuel Fauche, another in four volumes published by Jonas Fauche and Jérémie Wittel, the son and son-in-law of Samuel Fauche. On Virchaux’s role as distributor of those two editions, see Schlup, “L’édition du Tableau de Paris à Neuchâtel,” cix, cxxix. Virchaux announced the two-volume edition in the Leipzig fair cata logue of spring 1781 and the four-volume edition in the cata logue of autumn 1781. He also announced the four-volume edition in the HC of 1 May 1782 and added that he had “the exclusive sales rights” (le débit exclusif ) “for all of Germany and other countries of the North” (pour toute l’Allemagne & autres pays du Nord). As for Mirabeau’s work, which came from the presses of Jonas Fauche and Jérémie Wittel, Virchaux announced it in the HC of 13 August 1782; but he did not indicate that he had the exclusive sales rights for it, nor did he enter the work under his own name in the Leipzig fair cata logue. Des lettres de cachet was entered in the spring cata logue of 1783 under the names of two Leipzig commissioners, one of whom, J. Ph. Haug, was probably acting as Virchaux’s commissioner. 26. HC, 5 February and 29 April 1783.

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27. Among the German works that Virchaux published was a German translation of Saint-Martin’s Des erreurs et de la vérité. Unfortunately for Virchaux, the Breslau publisher G. Löwe brought out his own translation of the same work just a few months before the publication of Virchaux’s— an event that led Virchaux to place a notice in the Hamburg Buchhändlerzeitung of Johann Heinrich Herold complaining of the ruinous competition among German translators of French works. See Wittmann, “Die frühen Buchhändlerzeitschriften,” 725. The principal sources of information regarding Virchaux’s editions are the announcements that he placed in the HC and the Leipzig fair catalogues. Those announcements usually indicated which books were Virchaux’s own editions and which he had obtained from other publishers. But one has to allow for the possibility that Virchaux may sometimes have used the announcements as trial balloons. Not all of the editions he announced were necessarily published. 28. In the letter he wrote to the STN on 21 March 1781, Virchaux said he was represented at the Leipzig fairs by a commissioner named Friedrich Böhme. 29. Virchaux to STN, 29 July 1780. 30. Ibid., 5 June 1779, 24 June 1780, and 21 March 1781. 31. Ibid., 24 March 1781. 32. Virchaux’s comment about the Kehl edition of Voltaire comes from his letter of 27 January 1781; his comment about the Supplément aux oeuvres de Rousseau from his letter of 9 January 1779. 33. Virchaux to STN, 1 August 1780. 34. Ibid., 19 December 1778. 35. In letters to Gleim and Gerstenberg in Wandsbeck, Claudius made frequent references to books and journals that he obtained from Virchaux. See Matthias Claudius, Botengänge: Briefe an Freunde, ed. Hans Jessen (Berlin, 1967), 259– 60, 274, 279, 287–88, 298, 300, 303, 306, 309, 347. Hamann did not say explicitly that he had bought books from Virchaux; but he wrote several letters to correspondents in 1787 indicating that Virchaux had visited him in Königsberg. It seems unlikely that Virchaux would have gone to see Hamann there if he had not established commercial relations with him beforehand. See Hamann, Briefwechsel, 7: 214, 219, 231. As for Schlözer in Göttingen, Virchaux did, in fact, mention him on one occasion but only because he wanted the STN to send a copy of Mably’s Gouvernement de la Pologne directly to Schlözer in Göttingen. See Virchaux to STN, 14 February 1781. 36. Kopitzsch, Grundzüge, 431–45. 37. Virchaux to STN, 20 November 1779. 38. Ibid., 29 January 1780. 39. Ibid., 29 July 1780. Eventually, Virchaux received 928 copies (nearly the entire pressrun) of the STN’s edition of Mably’s work, which he announced in the Leipzig Easter cata logue, first in 1781 and then again, two years later, in 1783— a clear indication that he was still saddled with unsold copies. The STN’s edition of Mably’s work was an original edition, the manuscript of which Ostervald had acquired during a business trip to

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Paris. On the STN’s acquisition of the manuscript, which it regretted afterward, see Ostervald to Mably, 7 January 1781, and Ostervald to David-Alphonse de Sandoz-Rollin, 7 January 1781. Cited in Robert Darnton, “The Forgotten Middlemen of Literature,” in The Kiss of Lamourette (New York, 1990), 139. 40. Virchaux to STN, 8 May 1782. 41. Ibid., 28 February 1781. 42. Ibid., 24 June 1778, 9 January 1779, 25 October 1777, and 29 July 1780. 43. Ibid., 30 May 1778 and 4 September 1779. 44. Ibid., 23 January 1779. 45. Ibid., 24 June 1780 and 28 August 1782. 46. Ibid., 28 August and 2 November 1782. 47. Ibid., 19 December 1778. 48. Thus Virchaux to STN, 28 February 1781: “It would be desirable, Messieurs, if you could make up your minds to obtain more beautiful paper for your editions. It is usually yellow, like that [in your] prospectus for the Oeuvres of Marmontel and [your edition] of the Théâtre de Mme. de Genlis.” 49. Virchaux to STN, 4 September 1779. 50. Ibid., 20 November 1779. 51. On the importance that eighteenth-century readers attached to the material qualities of books, see Darnton, “Readers Respond to Rousseau,” 222–24. 52. Even today, of course, eating metaphors are sometimes used to talk about the experience of reading. One can say, for example, that a book was “devoured.” I would argue, however, that such metaphors have tended to become dead ones: in other words, they no longer convey an awareness that one domain of experience is being compared to another. According to Erich Schön in his work on the history of reading, that awareness was already beginning to disappear in the eighteenth-century German debate on “taste,” which tended to lose sight of the fact that taste referred to a specific bodily experience—namely, tasting. Such experience had no place in the new ideal of disciplined reading, whose genesis Schön locates in the late eighteenth century—notably, in the German polemic against “reading addiction” (Lesesucht), which castigated the “devouring” (Verschlingen) of literary “sweets” (Leckereien) for the damage that it did to the stomachs of (mainly women) readers. As depicted by Schön, the gradual reduction of the experience of reading to the dimension of sight appears as one part of what Norbert Elias calls the “civilizing process”: the process of bodily disciplining that has elevated visual over other modes of sensory experience. See Erich Schön, Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit oder die Verwandlungen des Lesers: Mentalitätswandel um 1800 (Stuttgart, 1987), 118–19. 53. Virchaux to STN, 29 December 1781, 9 October 1779, 31 March 1780, and 21 March 1781. 54. Virchaux’s typographical aesthetic corresponded to that which the Hamburg Buchhändlerzeitschrift of Johann Heinrich Herold propagated in its book-review section and which it found most perfectly realized in the Leipzig editions of Philipp Erasmus

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Reich: “The printing and the paper are, as one is accustomed from Herrn Reich, adapted to the inner worth of the work [dem inneren Werth des Werkes angemessen].” Cited in Wittmann, “Die frühen Buchhändlerzeitschriften,” 669. 55. Virchaux to STN, 21 March 1780, and 28 February and 14 March 1781. 56. Ibid., 14 March 1781. 57. While the STN usually sent its books to Virchaux in the form of loose sheets, Virchaux claimed on one occasion (HC, 16 February 1782) that he was selling new publications either bound or stitched. But that was the only time he made such a claim. In all likelihood, most of the books in his shop existed in the form of loose sheets. 58. Virchaux to STN, 20 November 1779, and 1 and 2 August 1780. 59. Darnton, Business of Enlightenment, 275. 60. Virchaux to STN, 20 April and 28 August 1782. Virchaux announced the Genevan duodecimo edition of Raynal’s work in the Leipzig catalogue of autumn 1781. On the Genevan edition, which was published in 1780 by Jean-Léonard Pellet, see G. Goggi, “Les contrats pour la troisième édition de l’Histoire des deux Indes,” Dix-huitième siècle 16 (1984): 261–77. 61. Virchaux announced the London octavo edition of Raynal’s work in the HC of 9 October 1781. 62. Virchaux to STN, 31 March 1780 and 27 January 1781. 63. On the concept of “distinction,” see Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement de goût (Paris, 1979). On the library as a symbol of prestige in France, see Jean Viardot, “Livres rares et pratiques bibliophiliques,” in Chartier and Martin, Le livre triomphant, 583– 614. That even merchants in Germany would strive to assemble large personal libraries was a relatively new phenomenon, closely tied to the emergence of the Bildungsbürger as a cultural ideal, which Rolf Engelsing locates in the second half of the eighteenth century. See Engelsing, Der Bürger als Leser: Lesergeschichte in Deutschland, 1500–1800 (Stuttgart, 1974), 206–15. 64. Kleine Charakteristik von Hamburg: Von einem Kosmopoliten, drey Treppen hoch (Hamburg/Leipzig, 1783), 48. Cited in Kopitzsch, Grundzüge, 441. 65. Viardot, “Livres rares et pratiques bibliophiliques,” 594. 66. Heidegger to STN, 30 April 1782. 67. Jean-Henri Samuel Formey, Conseils pour former une bibliothèque peu nombreuse, mais choisie (Berlin, 1766), 5– 6. 68. Viardot, “Livres rares et pratiques bibliophiliques,” 605– 6. 69. Modern scholars who fail to consider the material form of eighteenth-century texts are apt to interpret those texts anachronistically, as D. F. McKenzie shows in his now classic article, “The Book as an Expressive Form,” in Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (London, 1985), 1–21. For an argument somewhat similar to McKenzie’s, though written by a philosopher rather than a bibliographer, see the discussion of the parergon in Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian MacLeod (Chicago, 1987), 64. On Derrida’s reading, it was Kant in his Critique of Judgment who instituted the (factitious) opposition between the essential work of art as pure form and its inessential frame as mere matter.

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70. Cecil P. Courtney, “Les metamorphoses d’un best-seller: L’Histoire des deux Indes de 1770 à 1820,” SVEC 12 (2000): 109–20. Of course, not all the “editions” of Raynal’s work (forty-eight in the period from 1770 to 1795) were new editions in the sense in which bibliographers understand that term today. Most of them were pirated reprints. Scholars have identified three main editions from the Old Regime— the first published in 1770, the second in 1774, and the third in 1780— of which the other “editions” were spin-offs. 71. On the STN’s pirated edition of what bibliographers describe as the “third” edition of Raynal’s work, see Claudette Fortunty, “La troisième édition de L’Histoire des deux Indes et ses contrefaçons: Les contributions de Genève et Neuchâtel,” SVEC 12 (2001): 269– 97. 72. The same complaint about the cluttered type in books printed in small formats appears in Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s chronicle of life in contemporary Paris, Tableau de Paris: Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée (Amsterdam, 1782–83), 4: 80–81. Cited in Chartier, Les origines culturelles de la Révolutuion Française, 114–15. 73. Virchaux to STN, 28 August 1782. Following the condemnation of his work by the Parlement of Paris in May 1781, Raynal fled Paris and took refuge in Liège, where he was, in fact, received by Plomteux. That same year, Plomteux published an edition of the Histoire philosophique (based on what bibliographers call the “third” edition), and he claimed that Raynal had collaborated with him in preparing the edition. Clearly, Virchaux was keeping close track both of Raynal’s whereabouts and of the different editions of Raynal’s work. On Raynal’s stay in Liège and his relations with Plomteux, see Alexandre Stroev, ‘La troisième édition de l’Histoire des deux Indes dans les lettres inédites de Raynal à la comtesse von Wartsleben,” SVEC 12 (2000): 133–41. After his brief stay in Liège, Raynal took refuge in Berlin— a move of which Virchaux was also well informed. 74. In 1773, while the “first” edition was still being printed, two booksellers in Amsterdam published an Atlas portatif pour servir à l’ intelligence de l’Histoire des deux Indes. Thereafter, most of the editions of Raynal’s work appear to have contained some kind of atlas, including the STN’s edition. In their announcement for the atlas, the Amsterdam booksellers underscored just how important it would be for readers of Raynal’s work. See Gilles Bancarel, “Eléments de la stratégie éditoriale de Raynal,” SVEC 12 (2000): 123. 75. Virchaux to STN, 2 November 1782. 76. Henri-Jean Martin discusses the significance of book illustrations, emblems, and allegorical frontispieces during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in his essay “The French Classical Book: Text and Image,” chap. 4 in The French Book: Religion, Absolutism and Readership, 1585–1715 (Baltimore, 1996), esp. 85– 96. On the same subject, see also Michel Pastoureau, “L’illustration du livre: Comprendre ou rêver?” in Histoire de l’ édition française (Paris, 1984), 1: 501–31. 77. HC, 18 June 1783. 78. The notion of “print culture” has become highly contentious, as can be seen from the polemical exchange between Elizabeth Eisenstein and Adrian Johns: AHR Fo-

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rum with contributions by Anthony Grafton, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Adrian Johns, American Historical Review 107:1 (Feb. 2002), 84–128. Here, I am following Johns in arguing against the notion of a unitary, trans-historical print culture. 79. Roger Laufer, “Les espaces du livre,” in Chartier and Martin, Le livre triomphant, 156. On French publishing during the Revolution, see Carla Hesse, Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1810 (Berkeley, 1991). 80. Gert Ueding and Bernd Steinbrink, Hoff mann und Campe: Ein deutscher Verlag (Hamburg, 1981), 57–59. During the period of his association with Hoff mann, Virchaux placed advertisements in the HC and entries in the Leipzig fair cata logues under the firm name “J. G. Virchaux et comp.” He announced the dissolution of his association with Hoffmann in the HC of 4 April 1781. In a letter he wrote to the STN on 20 October 1781 following his separation from Hoffmann, Virchaux complained bitterly of his former associate, who apparently was spreading reports about Virchaux’s financial woes. 81. My description of Virchaux stands in sharp contrast to that offered by Ueding and Steinbrink. For the latter, Virchaux appears as “an honest [biederer] and cautious smalltime dealer whose only goal was to make a decent living.” But Ueding and Steinbrink knew nothing of Virchaux’s correspondence with the STN. Cf. Hoff mann und Campe, 58. 82. HC, 24 June 1783. 83. In the HC of 25 February 1784, for example, Daclin attacked Virchaux over an announcement that Virchaux had placed one week earlier. In that announcement, Virchaux had claimed that he was in possession of a “second, corrected” edition of Réfutation des Mémoires de la Bastille published in London. Daclin countered by saying that he owned the original London edition, that the edition announced by Virchaux had been printed not in London but in Hamburg (presumably by Virchaux), and that it was “truncated and full of errors.” Virchaux allowed Daclin’s attack to go unanswered. 84. Daclin to STN, 12 May 1783. 85. Pierre-François Fauche placed his first announcement in the HC on 29 October 1784 under the firm name “Fauche fils et Stoehr.” 86. Boué to STN, 24 April 1784. Boué indicated that Virchaux was one of three French booksellers in Hamburg, and, though he did not say who the other two were, I am assuming that he meant Daclin and Fauche. I may be mistaken, however, since Fauche did not place his first announcement in the HC until the autumn of 1784. 87. Boué to STN, 11 June and 20 August 1783, and 24 April 1784. 88. When Virchaux made his comment about the steep reduction in prices at public sales, it was in a letter to the STN of 25 November 1778, near the beginning of his career; so he was not talking about his own public sales, but about those orga nized by other booksellers. He announced his plans to hold public sales in the HC of 3 December 1783. 89. Virchaux to STN, 10 January 1784. 90. HC, 26 September 1783. 91. Virchaux to STN, 10 January 1784. 92. Ibid., 1 November 1783.

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93. Virchaux described his relations with Cléricourt in the HC of 8 October 1784. There is also a reference to Virchaux’s “magasin” in Copenhagen in Boué’s letter to the STN from 20 November 1784. 94. HC, 3 September 1784. Of course, it is possible that Virchaux’s announcement of so large a publication was merely a ruse, a smokescreen he threw up to conceal his financial woes and to convey the misleading impression that his trade was thriving. In any case, his edition of Voltaire’s Oeuvres never got past the planning stage, if it even got that far. 95. Virchaux to STN, 10 January 1784. Virchaux claimed that Samuel Fauche had pirated two of his editions: Des erreurs et de la vérité by Saint Martin and Le Nouveau Robinson, the French translation of the Robinson Crusoe adaptation by Joachim Campe. Of those editions, however, only the latter was an original edition. On the whereabouts of Louis-Fauche Borel, Virchaux’s former apprentice, see Schlup, “L’édition du Tableau de Paris à Neuchâtel,” cix, n. 4. 96. Virchaux to STN, 1 November 1783. 97. The STN’s letters to Virchaux from this period have not survived, but their contents can be inferred from the responses of Virchaux and Boué. 98. The STN received word of Virchaux’s proposals both through the intermediary of Boué and directly from Virchaux himself. See Boué to STN, 24 April 1784; Virchaux to STN, 18 February and 5 March 1784. Virchaux’s letter of 5 March consisted of a printed circular addressed to all of his creditors. It was accompanied by a printed list of those books that Virchaux was prepared to offer in lieu of monetary payment. 99. Boué to STN, 24 April and 20 November 1784, and 6 May 1785. 100. Ibid., 28 September 1785. 101. The plan of the Hamburg Senate, dated 28 September 1785, was enclosed with Boué’s letter of the same date. The value of the debts owed to Virchaux was estimated at 23,100 Hamburg Mark (HM), the equivalent of 34,650 livres tournois. The debts were broken down as follows: 7,400 HM, which were reputed to be “good”; 10,500 HM, which were “dubious and contestable”; and 5,200 HM, which were “bad and utterly lost.” 102. Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Senat, Cl. VIII, Nr. X 1785, vol. 1, pp. 300–301a, 303b, 309a. 103. Virchaux to STN, 31 March 1780. 104. In order to identify Virchaux behind Chaidron and the Société TypographiqueLittéraire du Nord, one has to follow the trail of announcements in the HC back to the period just preceding Virchaux’s financial collapse in May 1785. The last announcement that Virchaux placed under his own name appeared in the HC of 18 February 1785. In the HC of 23 February, one finds for the first time an announcement for books “chez les Sieurs Chaidron & Comp. Libraires, maison Virchaux, in der grossen Beckerstrasse.” Then, in the HC of 1 April 1785, one finds the following announcement with the name of “Chaidron” appearing at the bottom: “On trouve chez la Société typographique-littéraire du Nord, le Nouveau Robinson, traduit de l’allemand de M. Campe, 2 vol. in-8.” Since Le Nouveau Robinson was unquestionably Virchaux’s edition, and since Chaidron was oper-

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ating out of Virchaux’s house in the Grosse Beckerstrasse, it follows that he and the new typographical literary society were fronts for Virchaux. Five more announcements for that new society appeared in the HC before Virchaux’s bankruptcy, on 5, 19, and 27 April and on 4 and 13 May, always with the name of “Chaidron” at the bottom and, in one instance, with the indication “maison Virchaux.” They resumed, after a hiatus of five months, on 7 October, 19 November, and 3 December 1785, and 10 February, 22 February, 4 March, and 14 April 1786. The announcement for the Société Typographique-Littéraire du Nord from 7 October carried the indication “Chaidron & Comp”; that from 19 November indicated that orders should be addressed to “J. G. Virchaux” (the only time that Virchaux’s name was directly linked to the new typographical literary society); while the others appeared without the name of either Chaidron or Virchaux. 105. HC, 4 March 1786. 106. When he announced the establishment of his own trade in the HC of 3 December 1785, Chaidron indicated that his shop would be located not in the Grosse Beckerstrasse but on the Neuenburg; and he continued to give the address of Neuenburg in the announcements that he placed on 15 March, 12 April, and 14 April 1786. After Virchaux’s departure from Hamburg, however, Chaidron returned to the maison Virchaux in the Grosse Beckerstrasse, which was the address he gave in an announcement from 10 June 1786. Around the time of Virchaux’s departure, Chaidron also seems to have entered into an alliance with Pierre-François Fauche, for he and Fauche began publishing joint announcements for French books. It seems possible, therefore, that Virchaux had some kind of an association with Chaidron and Fauche together— but it cannot be proved. 107. Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Senat, Cl. VIII, Nr. X 1786, vol. 1, p. 193b. 108. There is no direct evidence about Virchaux’s trip to Saint Petersburg, but we can infer that he went there from a letter that the philosopher Johann Georg Hamann in Königsberg wrote to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi on 2 June 1787: “The Hamburg bookseller Vischamp [sic] has arrived here from Petersburg and seems to be enjoying himself.” Hamann, Briefwechsel, 7: 219. 109. Hamann referred to Virchaux’s visit in three letters: to Johann Friedrich Reichardt on 28 May 1787, and to Jacobi, as indicated in the previous note, on 2 and 9 June 1787. Hamann, Briefwechsel, 7: 214, 219, 231. 110. Jeffrey Freedman, “Publishing Wars and the End of the French Enlightenment: Les Oeuvres posthumes de Frédéric II,” Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte 18 (2009): 109–48. 111. The evidence about Virchaux’s speculation on the manuscripts of Frederick the Great and his attempts to sell them in London comes from a later document, a letter of 21 May 1792 that Georg Forster wrote from Mainz to Christian Friedrich Voss. In that letter, Forster cited a passage from a second letter he had received from his correspondent Heydinger in London: “A few years ago a French [sic] bookseller from Hamburg by the name of Virchaux was here [i.e., in London]. He had a bundle of manuscripts, which he assured were the King’s own, and which included unpublished poems and letters. He went to great lengths to sell them in whatever way possible. But I was not able to learn

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whether he received anything considerable for them.” Georg Forster, Werke: Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe, ed. Klaus-Georg Popp (Berlin, 1989), 17: 119. 112. Ariane Méantis, Le Club Helvétique de Paris, 1790– 91 (Neuchâtel, 1969); G. Tobler, “Das Protokoll des Schweizerklubs in Paris,” Jahrbuch für schweizerische Geschichte 28 (1903): 61–85. 113. Archives Nationales (Paris) DXXIX bis carton 33, dossier 348, folio 1. The report, dated 30 July 1791, was submitted to the comité de surveillance of the National Assembly by a police agent named Champion. It was based on information that an unnamed commis had supplied to Champion. In the report, Roullier is erroneously referred to as “Rouillé.” 114. Roullier exposed his Manichaean political views in two letters that he addressed to the National Assembly, on 19 and 26 July 1791. Archives Nationales (Paris), D/XXIX bis carton 34, dossier 353, folio 16–18. 115. Albert Mathiez, La révolution et les étrangers: Cosmopolitsme et défense nationale (Paris, 1918), 45-46. There is also a reference to Virchaux’s participation in the demonstrations on the Champ de Mars in [Johann Conrad Friedrich], Unsere Zeit, oder geschichtliche Übersicht der merkwürdigsten Ereignisse von 1789-1830 (Stuttgart, 1826), 9: 74: “Lafayette gave the order ‘Fire!’ And more than a hundred in the crowd fell down either dead or wounded. The rest were seized with fear, and, in an instant, the Champ de Mars was cleared. Lafeyette had several persons arrested, among them a Berlin Jew named Ephraim and a Hamburg bookseller named Virchaux.” 116. The order to arrest Virchaux, which was issued in the name of the comités réunis des Recherches et des Rapports de l’Assemblée Nationale, carried the date of 15 July 1791, but it must not have been executed until sometime afterward, since the massacre of the Champ de Mars occurred on the 17th. Préfecture de Police (Paris), AA 9, folio 50. 117. The letter, dated 20 August 1791, was signed by four of Virchaux’s compatriots: D’arbellay, Roullier, Niguille, and Niguily. Archives Nationales (Paris), D/XXIX bis carton 34, dossier 353, folio 16–18. 118. I say “in part” because Roullier was aware that a cloud of suspicion hung over him too. His letters, therefore, had a twofold objective: to secure Virchaux’s release from prison and to clear his own name. References to Roullier’s letters are given in n. 114 above. 119. Virchaux’s letter is contained in the same dossier as the letters that the other members of the Club Helvétique wrote on his behalf. It was addressed to “M. le Prés[ident] Armand, Prés[ident] du Comité des Recherches de l’Assemblée nationale à Paris.” The dossier also contains an unsigned note, presumably written by a police agent, with information about Virchaux, some of it accurate and some of it erroneous. The note reported that Virchaux had been a bookseller in Hamburg and that about eight years earlier (i.e., in 1783), he had fled to Prussia without paying his creditors. It described him as an “enterprising man” (homme entreprenant). 120. Gudrun Gersmann, Im Schatten der Bastille: Die Welt der Schriftsteller, Kolporteure und Buchhändler am Vorabend der französischen Revolution (Stuttgart, 1993), 206. 121. Information on Virchaux’s release from prison comes from Préfecture de Police (Paris), AA 32, folio 42.

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122. F. Aulard, ed., La Société des Jacobins: Receuil de documents pour l’ histoire du Club des Jacobins de Paris (Paris, 1892), 3: 291. The records of the Jacobin Club for the autumn of 1791 also mention Virchaux on two other occasions. At the meeting of 3 October 1791, a speaker representing a delegation from the Société des Amis des Droits de l’Homme addressed the Jacobin Club on behalf of Virchaux, who maintained that a police official named La Borde had stolen from him, during his imprisonment in the Abbaye, a portfolio containing more than a hundred thousand livres. At the meeting of 31 October 1791, Virchaux took the floor himself in order to denounce a government minister; but he indicated that the denunciation would be printed and distributed to the members of the Jacobin Club the following day, so his speech was cut short. La Société des Jacobins, 3: 160– 61, 230. 123. On the Revolution and the aspiration to universality, see Alyssa Sepinwall, The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism (Berkeley, 2005). 124. In fact, Pierre-François Fauche, the younger brother of Virchaux’s apprentice, did conduct a trade in Hamburg selling French books to émigrés from revolutionary France. On Fauche’s Hamburg trade, see Werner Keyser, Hamburger Bücher (Hamburg, 1973), 132–33.

conclusion 1. Goethe, Campagne in Frankreich, 1792 (1822; reprint, Stuttgart: Reclam UniversalBibliothek, 1972), 55. 2. Eisenstein, Grub Street Abroad, 160– 61. On the pre-Revolutionary crisis in the French book trade, see Darnton, “Reading, Writing, and Publishing,” 191– 93. 3. Louis Antoine Caraccioli, Paris le modèle des nations étrangères ou L’Europe française (Paris, 1777), 165 and 81–82. 4. Herder, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (1797), vol. 18 of Sämtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan (1891; reprint, Hildesheim, n.d. [1967/68]), 235. Cited in “Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriff e, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart, 1972– 92), 7: 318. On Herder’s theory of culture and its implications for the possibility of cultural transmission, see also my discussion on translation in chap. 6. 5. Herder, Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, in Werke, ed. Karl Gustav Gerold (Munich, 1984) 1: 628. At the time of Herder’s journey to France in 1769, he did not believe that Germans were producing much in the way of “original works” either. Germans had cut themselves off from their own native traditions, he argued, and would not be able to produce original works unless they drew inspiration from the authentic sources of creativity that resided in the popu lar classes (das Volk). For Herder, German literature was still a project for the future— a project to which he sought to give direction through the collection of essays that he edited for publication four years after his journey to France: Von deutscher Art und Kunst. Einige fliegende Blätter (Hamburg, 1773).

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6. Pierre Pénisson, “Les rapports culturels de l’Allemagne à la France encyclopédiste chez Herder,” in Espagne and Werner, Transferts, 390. 7. The distinction between France and France as reflected in the miniature Versailles imitations of Francophile German princes was of crucial importance to the Marxist Werner Krauss, who wanted to see German nationalism of the eighteenthcentury variety and the anti-French sentiment of middle-class German authors as expressions of class consciousness. See Werner Krauss, “Über die Konstellation der deutschen Aufklärung” and “Der Weg der deutschen Aufklärung nach Frankreich,” in Studien zur deutschen und französischen Aufklärung (East Berlin, 1963), 318, 408. By contrast, G. L. Fink sees the development of German national consciousness as a reaction to the universalist model of French literature— a model that predated the Enlightenment and that went back to seventeenth-century French classicism and the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Cf. Fink, “De l’universalisme au nationalisme: L’évolution des critères de la critique littéraire allemande face à l’hégémonie culturelle de la France (1680–1770),” Recherches germaniques 18 (1988): 3–45. A similar argument to Fink’s is also developed by Jochen Schlobach, “Der Universalitätsanspruch der französischen Aufklärung,” in Europäische Aufklärung(en): Einheit und nationale Vielfalt, ed. Siegfried Jüttner and Jochen Schlobach (Hamburg, 1992), 188– 202. Finally, it should be emphasized that while the German nationalism of the late eighteenth century was a relatively new phenomenon, it certainly was not without antecedents. One can trace its origins as far back as the reception of Tacitus’s Germania among German humanists of the Renaissance. Frequently reprinted and creatively reinterpreted, Tacitus’s work may be said to have supplied a template for the national self-image of Herder’s contemporaries, with the French substituting for the ancient Romans as the implied point of contrast. On the importance of the Germania to the development of German nationalism, see Christopher B. Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (New York, 2011). 8. On the origins of the distinction between Kultur and Zivilisation, see Norbert Elias, “Sociogenesis of the Antithesis between Kultur and Zivilisation in German Usage,” pt. 1 of The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom, and Stephen Mennell, rev. ed. (Malden, Mass., 2000), 5–30. Like Werner Krauss, Elias lays stress on the alienation of the German bourgeois intelligentsia from the world of the princely courts: thus, the “other” of German Kultur in the eighteenth century was not France so much as the Francophile courtier aristocracy in Germany. It was only in the nineteenth century, according to Elias, that the national element supplanted the social element in the antithesis between Kultur and Zivilisation, such that middle-class virtues became German virtues and aristocratic vices became French vices. And yet, even in the eighteenth century, German authors did not always maintain a sharp distinction between the Francophile culture of German courts and French culture. The ease with which criticism of the one could slide into criticism of the other can be seen, for example, in the reaction of Justus Möser to Frederick II’s polemical essay against German literature. Winfried Woesler discusses that reaction in his article, “ ‘. . . ob

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unsere Art der Kultur der fremden vorzuziehen sei?’ Justus Möser antwortet Friedrich II,” in Espagne and Werner, Transferts, 402. On the radicalization of anti-French stereotypes in Germany and their importance to German nationalism from the outbreak of the Revolutionary wars to the end of World War I, see Jeismann, Das Vaterland der Feinde. 9. For a general discussion of the penetration of English literature in the German literary market during the eighteenth century, see Bernhard Fabian, “English Books and Their Eighteenth-Century Readers,” in The Widening Circle, ed. Paul Korshin (Philadelphia, 1976), 119– 96. 10. Conrad Walther to STN, 29 March 1771. Information on the shipments to Walther and Baerstecher comes from Brouillard A, Ms. 1033, folio 95, 111, 133, and 262. On the diff usion of Système de la nature, see Jeroom Vercruysse, “L’édition neuchâteloise du Système de la nature et la librairie bruxelloise,” in Aspects du livre neuchâtelois, 84. 11. Richard von Dülmen, Der Geheimbund der Illuminaten. Darstellung, Analyse, Dokumentation (Stuttgart, 1975), 26, 135. According to von Dülmen, the secret society of the Illuminati occupied a unique place within the German Enlightenment precisely because its members embraced a radical materialism that derived from the works of d’Holbach and Helvétius. 12. Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, pt. 3, book 11, 2: 545. The reaction of Goethe and his friends to d’Holbach’s treatise exposes one of the weak links in the argument of Jonathan Israel, who claims that the works of the radical Enlightenment were politically, philosophically, and religiously “subversive.” Perhaps they were; but the mere fact of their diff usion is not enough in itself to prove that point. Cf. Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton, 2010), 56. 13. Lüsebrink et al., “Kulturtransfer im Epochenumbruch,” 29–86. 14. Mme. de Staël, “La Saxe,” chap. 14 of De l’Allemagne (Garnier-Flammarion: Paris, 1968), 1: 119. Mme. de Stael did not specify how the innkeepers and customs officials whom she met in Saxony had come by their knowledge of French literature, but it was almost certainly through translations. 15. In fact, Moritz did not only read French as if it were Latin; he also taught French to himself by means of Latin, comparing a French translation of Terence to the Latin original. See Karl Philipp Moritz, Anton Reiser: Ein psychologischer Roman in vier Teilen, 3rd part (Düsseldorf and Zurich, 1996 [original ed., 1786]), 224. 16. Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, pt. 1, book 3, 1: 102–4. 17. Stavin, “Cosmopolitisme,” 134; Karl Schwartz, Landgraf Friedrich V von HessenHomburg und seine Familie (Rudolstadt, Germany, 1878), 39–40. The French-speaking religious tutor of the future Friedrich V of Hesse-Homburg was the pastor Roques, the STN’s correspondent in Hanau. 18. Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900 (Paris, 1934), 8: 531– 729; J. Kramer, Das Französische in Deutschland. Eine Einführung (Stuttgart, 1992); G. Sauder, Die französische Sprache in Deutschland in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts,

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vol. 1 of Vermittlungen— Médiations: Aspects des relations franco-allemandes du XVIIe siècle à nos jours (Bern, 1992); W. Dahmen et al., ed., Das Französische in den deutschsprachigen Ländern, Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik, vol. 371 (Tübingen, Germany, 1993). 19. Schlobach, “Französische Aufklärung und deutsche Fürsten,” 330. 20. On Mallet and his opinion of the Landgrave’s library, see n. 100 in chap. 3. 21. On the book purchases of the Landgrave’s library, see n. 99 in chap. 3. 22. Kahlfuss, “Die ‘grosse fürstliche Bibliothek zu Cassel,’ ” 148. 23. Von Dann to STN, 10 June 1777. 24. Information about Daclin’s cabinet littéraire, from which subscribers were expressly forbidden to remove books or journals, comes from the announcement that Daclin placed in the supplement (Beylage) to the Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten of 16 December 1783. Information on the reading societies in Cassel comes from a description of Cassel published in 1789 in the Journal von und für Deutschland. For the full bibliographic reference, see n. 180 in chap. 3. On cabinets littérraires, which enjoyed far greater social prestige than other types of commercial lending libraries, see Georg Jäger and Jörg Schönert, “Die Leihbibliothek als literarische Institution im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” in Die Leihbibliothek als Institution des literarischen Lebens im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Organisationsformen, Bestände und Publikum, ed. Georg Jäger and Jörg Schönert (Hamburg, 1980), 8. On reading societies, see Marlies Prüsener, “Lesegesellschaften im 18. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Lesergeschichte,” Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 13 (1973). 25. Of the 537 books that Hemmerde ordered from the STN between 1781 and 1784, 183 were works of belles-lettres—mainly, novels and plays. 26. For an example of how Germans might have lifted passages from French works to use in conversation, see Krauss, “Der Weg der deutschen Aufklärung nach Frankreich,” 415–16. 27. The polemic against “reading addiction” was simultaneously a polemic against the literature of “sensibility” (sensibilité in French, Empfindsamkeit in German). On women novel readers as the principal objects of that polemic, see Schön, Der Verlust der Sinnlichkeit, 48, 92, 164, 182. 28. Not that one would have to begin such an investigation from scratch. There is already a considerable body of scholarship devoted to the reception of French literature in eighteenth-century Germany. See, for example, Anne Saada, Inventer Diderot: Les constructions d’un auteur en Allemagne au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2003); Martin Fontius, “L’Histoire des deux Indes de Raynal vue par les allemands,” in Lectures de Raynal, ed. H. J. Lüsebrink (Oxford, 1991), 155–87; Pierre-André Bois, Roland Krebs, Jean Moes, Les lettres françaises dans les revues allemandes du XVIIIe siècle (Bern, 1997); Rudolf Vierhaus, “Montesquieu in Deutschland: Zur Geschichte seiner Wirkung als politischer Schriftsteller im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert, 9–32; Roland Mortier, Diderot en Allemagne (Paris, 1954); Jacques Lacant, Marivaux en Allemagne: Reflet de son théâtre dans le miroir allemand (Paris, 1975); and W. Pusey, Louis- Sébastien Mercier in Germany: His Vogue and Influence in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1939).

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29. In fairness to Caraccioli, it should be noted that he also drew attention to the resistance that French books encountered in Germany: “In the eyes of a German, accustomed to reading folio volumes, it was undoubtedly a [strange] phenomenon when he saw for the first time a brochure of a few pages in which one spoke of everything and in which the most abstract and the most imposing subjects took on a charming and light air” (Paris le modèle des nations étrangères, 156). The important point, however, is that Caraccioli never went beyond the antithesis between surrender and resistance to consider the multiple uses of French books. For an extended scholarly treatment of the Europefrançaise thesis, which takes Caraccioli as its point of departure, see Louis Réau, L’Europe française au siècle des Lumières (Paris, 1938). 30. Caraccioli, Paris le modèle des nations étrangères, 3. 31. Virchaux to STN, 23 January 1779.

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bibliography

primary sources Manuscript Sources neuch âtel This book is based primarily on the papers of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), which are housed in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchâtel. The documents cited in the book are too numerous for all of them to be listed individually. The following are those series of documents that the book draws on most extensively. First, the dossiers containing letters from the STN’s principal customers in Germanspeaking Europe: Deinet, Johann Conrad. Frankfurt. Ms. 1140. Fontaine, Charles and Matthias. Mannheim. Ms. 1152. Gerle, Wolfgang. Prague. Ms. 1156. Mettra, Louis-François. Mettra conducted his trade from two locations near the city of Cologne, in Deutz and in Münz, and then from Neuwied, a tiny Rhineland principality roughly fifty miles upstream from Cologne. He corresponded with the STN under a variety of company names. His letters are arranged in two separate dossiers: Ms. 1147, “Editeurs des ouvrages périodiques privilegiés de S. A. Electorale de Cologne”; and Ms. 1219, “Société Typographique de Cologne, Münz, and Neuwied.” Virchaux, Jean-Guillaume. Hamburg. Ms. 1228. Second, the dossiers of the Swiss German booksellers who sold the STN’s books at the Leipzig fairs: Flick, Johann Jacob. Basel. Ms. 1151. Haller, Albrecht Emanuel. Bern. Ms. 1165. Serini, C. A. Basel. Ms. 1215. Serini worked as an employee of the Société Typographique in Bern and later of Johann Jacob Flick in Basel before establishing his own trade. Letters from him to the STN are also contained in the dossiers of his employers. Société Typographique and Nouvelle Société Typographique de Berne. Ms. 1222.

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Third, letters that associates or employees of the firm sent back to the home offi ce during business trips to Germany. The most important such letters are those of Bosset de Luze, one of the STN’s associates, who traveled through the German Rhineland in the summer of 1779, and Victor Durand l’aîné, the STN’s commis voyageur, who journeyed across large areas of German-speaking Europe in the summer and autumn of 1788. Bosset de Luze, Abraham. Ms. 1125. Durand, Victor. Ms. 1145. Finally, in addition to those letters that the STN received, the Neuchâtel archives contain two crucial series of internal company documents, preserved in the form of folio volumes: Copies de lettres. Ms. 1095–1112. These volumes contain copies of the letters that the STN sent to its correspondents. The STN maintained one series of volumes for France, another for countries other than France. The latter have survived, with some gaps, for the period from 1769 to 1781, and without any gaps, from 1786 to 1790. Livres de commissions. Ms. 1016–21. These volumes record, without any gaps, the orders that the STN received and the shipments that it made for the period from early 1774 to mid-1785. h a m bu r g For additional information on Jean-Guillaume Virchaux, the STN’s correspondent in Hamburg, I consulted various documents in the State Archives in Hamburg: Französisch-Reformierte Gemeinde, 22: 322; 23: 49; 37: 88. Kämmerei I, 214, vol. 128, p. 323. Wedde I, 29, vol. 39, p. 59. Senat, Cl. VIII, Nr. X, 1785, vol. 1, pp. 300–301a, 303b, 309a; 1786, vol. 1, p. 193b. pa r i s After going bankrupt in Hamburg, Virchaux established himself in Paris. I discovered various documents in Pa risian archives pertaining to his political activities during the Revolution: Archives Nationales. DXXIX bis carton 33, dossier 348; and carton 34, dossier 353. Préfecture de Police. AA 9, folio 50; AA 32, folio 42. ber lin After publishing a French translation of Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker, the best-selling German novel by the Berlin author and publisher Friedrich Nicolai, the STN sent Nicolai a letter that was not entered in its Copies de lettres. The original of that letter, dated 1 September 1774, is contained in Nicolai’s papers in Berlin: Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbestiz Berlin: Volume 71, Nicolai Briefwechsel, Nachlass Nicolai.

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Printed Sources To supplement the manuscript sources in the Neuchâtel archives, I drew on two series of printed documents: The Leipzig Fair Catalogues: Allgemeines Verzeichniss derer Bücher, welche . . . entweder ganz neu gedruckt, oder sonst verbessert, wieder aufgelegt worden sind. The Leipzig catalogues contained separate sections listing books written in languages other than German and Latin. Those sections, which appear under the heading “Fertig gewordene Schriften in ausländischen Sprachen,” provide an important source of evidence about the overall presence of French books in the German literary market as well as the commerce between Neuchâtel and Leipzig. I studied them for the two decades from 1770 to 1789. The supplements (Beylagen) of the Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten, a widely disseminated newspaper published in Hamburg. The Beylagen carried the advertisements of booksellers, including those of Virchaux. I worked through the Beylagen for the period from 1778 to 1786 in order to obtain additional information about the nature of Virchaux’s trade.

Published Correspondence, Document Collections, Memoirs, and Contemporary Works of Literature Bearing on the Reception of French Literature in Germany Aulard, F., ed. La Société des Jacobins: Receuil de documents pour l’ histoire du Club des Jacobins de Paris. Vol. 3. Paris, 1892. Caraccioli, Louis Antoine. Paris le modèle des nations étrangères ou L’Europe française. Paris, 1777. Claudius, Matthias. Botengänge: Briefe an Freunde. Edited by Hans Jessen. Berlin, 1967. Fauche-Borel, Louis. Mémoires. Vol. 1. Paris, 1829. Formey, Jean-Henri-Samuel. Conseils pour former une bibliothèque peu nombreuse, mais choisie. Berlin, 1766. Forster, Georg. Werke: Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe. Edited by Klaus-Georg Popp. Vol 17. Berlin, 1989. [Friedrich, Johann Conrad]. Unsere Zeit, oder geschichtliche Übersicht der merkwürdigsten Ereignisse von 1789–1830. Vol. 9. Stuttgart, 1826. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Campagne in Frankreich, 1792. Stuttgart: Reclam UniversalBibliothek, 1972. Original edition, 1822. ———. Dichtung und Wahrheit. 3 vols. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1975. Original edition, 1811–33. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, and Johann Caspar Lavater. Goethe und Lavater: Briefe und Tagebücher. Edited by H. Funck. Weimar: Schriften der Goethegesellschaft, 1901. Hamann, Johann Georg. Briefwechsel. Edited by Walther Ziesemer and Arthur Henkel. Vol. 7. Frankfurt, 1955– 79.

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Hansen, Joseph. Quellen zur Geschichte des Rheinlandes. Vol 1. Bonn, 1931. Herder, Johann Gottfried. Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769. In Vol. 1 of Werke, edited by Karl Gustav Gerold, 595– 671. Munich, 1984. Merck, Johann Heinrich. Werke und Briefe. Edited by H. Kraft. Vol. 2. Frankfurt, 1968. Moritz, Karl Philipp. Anton Reiser: Ein psychologischer Roman in vier Teilen. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 1996. Original edition, 1786. Nicolai, Friedrich. Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker, critical edition, edited by Bernd Witte. Stuttgart, 1991. [Riesbeck, Johann Kaspar]. Briefe eines reisenden Franzosen über Deutschland an seinen Bruder in Paris. Zurich, 1783. 2nd edition, 1784. Stael, Germaine de. De l’Allemagne. 2 vols. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1968. Voltaire. Voltaire’s Correspondence. Edited by Theodore Besterman. Vol. 81. Geneva, 1963. Witmann, Hans. Der deutsche Buchhandel in Urkunden und Quellen. Vol. 2. Hamburg, 1965.

secondary liter ature Angelike, Karin. Louis-François Mettra: Ein französischer Zeitungsverleger in Köln (1770– 1800). Rheinisches Archiv. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande der Universität Bonn, vol. 145. Cologne, 2002. Anger, Alfred. Literarisches Rokoko. Stuttgart, 1962. Bachleitner, Norbert. “A Proposal to Include Book History in Translation Studies Illustrated with the German Translations of Scott and Flaubert.” Arcadia 44 (2009): 420–40. Bancarel, Gilles. “Eléments de la stratégie éditoriale de Raynal.” SVEC 12 (2000): 121–31. Barbier, Frédéric. “Der französische Buchhandel und Leipzig zwischen 1700 und ca. 1830.” In Von der Elbe bis an die Seine: Kulturtransfer zwischen Sachsen und Frankreich im 18. und 19 Jahrhundert. Deutsch-Französische Kulturbibliothek, edited by Michel Espagne and Matthias Middel, 256– 75. Leipzig, 1993. ———. “Les transferts culturels et le livre imprimé: A propos d’un ouvrage recent.” Revue de synthèse 3 (July– Sept., 1990): 293– 98. Beermann, Matthias. Zeitung zwischen Profit und Politik: Der Courrier du Bas-Rhin— Eine Fallstudie zur politischen Tagespolitik im Europa des späten 18. Jahrhunderts. Deutsch-Französische Kulturbibliothek, vol. 4. Leipzig, 1996. Berman, Antoine. The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany. Translated by S. Heyvaert. Albany, 1992, Bihl, Liselotte, and Karl Epting. Bibliographie französischer Übersetzungen aus dem Deutschen: Bibliographie de traductions françaises d’auteurs de langue allemande, 1487– 1944. Tübingen, 1987.

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Blackbourn, David. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany. New York, 2006. Blanning, T. C. W. The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660–1789. Oxford, 2002. ———. Reform and Revolution in Mainz. Cambridge, 1974. Bödeker, Hans Erich. “Strukturen der Aufklärungsgesellschaft in der Residenzstadt Kassel.” In Mentalitäten und Lebensverhältnisse: Beispiele aus der Neuzeit— Rudolf Vierhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by “collaborators and students,” 55–76. Göttingen, 1982. Böhm, Ludwig. “Christian-Friedrich Schwan (1733–1815): Ein Mannheimer Verleger der Carl-Theodor-Zeit.” In Mannheim und der Rhein-Neckar-Raum: Studien zu Kunst und Geschichte der Pfalz, edited by E. Gropengiesser and H. Meyer, 77– 98. Mannheim, 1965. ———. “Die Schreibtafel.” In Mannheim und der Rhein-Neckar-Raum 99–102. Bohnengel, Julia. “ ‘Cette cruelle affaire’: Johann Heinrich Mercks Buchhandelsprojekt und die Société typographique de Neuchâtel.” Stand-alone article published by Wehrhahn Verlag, Hanover, 2006. Bois, Pierre-André; Roland Krebs; and Jean Moes. Les lettres françaises dans les revues allemandes du XVIIIe siècle. Bern, 1997. Bourdieu, Pierre. La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement de goût. Paris, 1979. Bräuning-Octavio, H. Foreword to Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen vom Jahr 1772. Bern, 1970. ———. Wetterleuchten der literarischen Revolution: Johann Heinrich Merck und seine Mitarbeiter an den Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen 1772 in Bild und Wort. Darmstadt, 1972. Bruford, W. H. Culture and Society in Classical Weimar. Cambridge, 1962. Brunner, Otto; Werner Conze; and Reinhart Koselleck. “Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse.” In vol. 7 of Geschichtliche Grundbegriff e, 140–431. Stuttgart, 1972– 92. Brunot, Ferdinand. Le français hors de France au XVIIIe siècle. Vol. 8 of Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900. Paris, 1934. Candaux, Jean-Daniel, et al. L’Encyclopédie d’Yverdon et sa résonance européenne: contextes, contenus, continuités. Geneva, 2005. Cassanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters. Translated by M. B. Debevoise. Cambridge, Mass., 2004. Cassirer, Ernst. “Kant and Rousseau.” In Rousseau, Kant, Goethe: Two Essays, translated by James Gutmann, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randal, 1– 60. Princeton, 1945. Cernuschi, Alain. “Notre grande entreprise des arts: aspects encyclopédiques de l’édition neuchâteloise de la Description des arts et métiers.” In Le rayonnement d’une maison d’ édition dans l’Europe des Lumières: La Société typographique de Neuchâtel, 1760– 1789, edited by Robert Darnton and Michel Schlup, 185–218. Neuchâtel, 2005. Certeau, Michel de; Dominique Julia; and Jacques Revel. Une politique de la langue: La révolution française et les patois: l’enquête de Grégoire. Paris, 1986.

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Chapuisal, Edouard. “Voltaire et Mallet du Pan.” Revue des travaux de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques et comptes rendus des séances 105 (1952): 152–164. Chartier, Roger. Les origines culturelles de la Révolutuion Française. Paris, 1990. Chartier, Roger, and Henri-Jean Martin, eds. Le livre triomphant, 1660–1830. Vol. 2 of Histoire de l’ édition française. Paris, 1990. Corsini, Silvio. “Un pour tous . . . et chacun pour soi? Petite histoire d’une alliance entre les Sociétés typographiques de Lausanne, Berne et Neuchâtel.” In Le rayonnement d’une maison d’ édition dans l’Europe des Lumières, 115–37. Courtney, Cecil P. “Les metamorphoses d’un best-seller: L’Histoire des deux Indes de 1770 à 1820.” SVEC 12 (2000): 109–20. Curran, Mark. “Beyond The Forbidden Best- Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France” (forthcoming). Dahmen, W., et al., ed. Das Französische in den deutschsprachigen Ländern. Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik, vol. 371. Tübingen, Germany, 1993. Dammermann, Bernhard, and others. “Continental Versions from c. 1600 to the Present Day.” In Th e West from the Reformation to the Present Day, edited by S. L. Greenslade. Vol. 3 of Th e Cambridge History of the Bible, 339– 60. Cambridge, 1963. Darnton, Robert. The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775–1800. Cambridge, Mass., 1979. ———. The Devil in the Holy Water, or The Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Philadelphia, 2010. ———. Edition et sédition: L’univers de la littérature clandestine au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 1991. ———. Th e Forbidden Best- Sellers of Pre- Revolutionary France. 2 vols. New York, 1995. ———. “The Forgotten Middlemen of Literature.” In The Kiss of Lamourette, 136–53. New York, 1990. ———. “J. P. Brissot and the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel.” Oxford University Press. SVEC 10 (2001), http://163.1.91.81/www_vfetc/SVEC01 _10_BRS/home _intro .htm. ———. The Literary Underground of the Old Regime. Cambridge, Mass., 1982. ———. “Le marché littéraire français vu de Neuchâtel.” In Aspects du livre neuchâtelois: Etudes réunies à l’occasion du 450e anniversaire de l’ imprimerie neuchâteloise, edited by Jacques Rychner and Michel Schlup, 59– 75. Neuchâtel, 1986. ———. “Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity.” In The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, 215–56. New York, 1984. ———. “What Is the History of Books?” In The Book History Reader, edited by David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, 9–26. London, 2002. ———. “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the rue Saint-Séverin.” In Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, 75–104.

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index

Page numbers in italics indicate figures; those with a t indicate tables. Abshoven, Johann Friedrich, 58 Académie Française, vi, 238, 262 Ackermann, Henry, 55 advertisements, by booksellers, 100, 226–27, 235, 236, 246, 251–52. See also faux frais d’Albert, Mademoiselle, 297n37 d’Albon, Claude- Camille-François comte, 127t, 130, 141–43, 240, 267 d’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 134, 136, 189– 90 allegorical frontispiece, 160, 244–45, 259, 262, 344n76 Ammermüller, Joseph Ehrenreich, 55, 273, 275t Amsterdam, 47, 68, 284t; booksellers of, 8, 10, 19, 115 L’An 2440 (Mercier), 127t, 138–39 Andreae, Johann Benjamin, 58, 148 Anecdotes sur Mme. du Barry, 101, 102, 109, 119, 140 Année littéraire (periodical), 168, 329n5 L’Arétin (Laurens), 108, 318n161 auctions: by booksellers, 91, 247; of private libraries, 321n6 Bacon, Francis, 134, 165 Bad Homburg. See Hesse-Homburg Baerstecher, David, 302n13 Baerstecher, J. G., 43, 47–55, 61, 273; book orders of, 275t, 277, 300n74; and d’Holbach’s Système de la nature, 70, 115, 267; promissory note of, 47–48, 49– 50 bankruptcy, 44–47, 55, 249–50, 273 Barbier, Frédéric, 300n75 Barbier de Séville (Beaumarchais), 129–30 Barère, Bertrand, 220 Bartholomai, Albrecht Friedrich, 45–47, 55, 273, 275t

Basedow, Johann, 193– 97, 224 Bassompière (Liège bookseller), 21 Bauer, Johann Gottfried, 133 Bavarian Succession, War of, 82 Beaumarchais, Pierre de, 71, 128t, 129–30 Beccary, Madame, 138 Béguelin, Nicolas de, 39, 179, 181 La Belle allemande, 85 belles-lettres, 121, 123t, 124t, 126t, 127t, 138–39, 144, 270 Bender, Heinrich, 59, 98, 99, 277 Bérenger, Jean-Pierre, 171– 72, 181– 82 Bergeret (Bordeaux bookseller), 213, 280 Berlin, 41, 54; booksellers of, 7, 19, 39, 71, 254, 275t, 276; Huguenots of, 147–48; Prussian Academy in, 5, 11, 61, 170 Bern, 10, 13. See also Société Typographique de Berne Bertrand, Jean-Elie, 12–14, 199; death of, 14, 131, 173– 74; as editor of Arts et métiers, 131; translations of, 169, 171, 175– 77, 187– 88, 202– 8, 214–15, 218–19 van Beughem, Cornelius, 47–48, 50, 301n12 Bible(s), 11, 13, 146–48, 278– 82t; Basel edition of, 157; Bienne edition of, 150, 154, 156, 282t, 327n44; Bosset de Luze on, 146; and devotional literature, 123t, 124t, 144–46; pastors as sellers of, 148–56; price and format of, 99, 149–54, 156– 63, 166, 327n44, 328n51 bibliographic categories, 122–29, 123–27t, 321n6 Bigarrures d’un citoyen de Genève, 103–4, 109 Bilcher (Duisburg bookseller), 58 bills of exchange, 44–46, 48, 49– 50, 71, 72, 91, 154, 249–50, 301n12 bindings of books, 238–39, 269

372

index

Bohemian Censorship Commission, 120 Bohn, Carl Ernst, 36, 39 Bonn, 58, 64 Bordeaux booksellers, 32, 213, 217, 278t, 280t, 283t Bosset de Luze, Abraham, 12, 33; as Bible seller, 146, 148– 49, 163– 64; and l’Encyclopédie, 84, 149, 164, 312n79; on Frankfurt booksellers, 95, 102–3, 293n13; Rhineland trip of, 56– 60, 114 Boubers, Jean-Louis de, 307n20, 308n25 Boué, Pierre, 246–47, 249 Bouillon, Société Typographique de, 10, 19, 21, 293n14 Bourgoing, Jean-François, 296n32 Briefwechsel meist historischen Inhalts (periodical), 89 Brissot, Jean-Pierre, 221, 230, 259, 260, 262, 338n2 Brönner, Heinrich Ludwig, 58, 95, 100, 148, 275t, 316n128 Bruère, Jean-Gérard, 60– 61, 216–17, 269, 276, 282 Brydone, Patrick, 127t, 137–38, 266 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de, 189– 90 Burney, Frances, 138, 266 Burrows, Simon. See University of Leeds STN Project cabinets littéraires, 61, 246, 270, 272, 328n1, 352n24 Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 174, 224, 230, 329n8 Candide (Voltaire), 127 Caraccioli, Louis-Antoine de, 264– 66, 272, 353n29 Caroline Henriette, Countess of HesseDarmstadt, 105 Casanova, Pascale, 288n9–10 Cassel, 11, 64, 86– 92, 130, 152–55, 163; book shipments to, 41, 87, 154, 275t, 276, 282t, 284t; Collegium Carolinum in, 88– 89, 114–15, 269, 270; Museum Fridericianum in, 88, 90, 269 Castiglione, Salvemini da, 84– 85 Le Catéchisme de l’ homme social (DuvalPyrau), 103 Catherine II (empress of Russia), 214–15, 231, 232, 253 Cecilia ou mémoires d’une héritière (Burney), 138, 266

censorship, 4, 69– 70, 115–18, 213–14, 273; in Cologne, 64– 65, 70, 115–17, 305n5, 306n6; in France, 74, 116–17, 254; in Frankfurt, 94– 95, 103–13, 116, 117; Goethe on, 117–18; in Hamburg, 120, 221, 227, 251; in Leipzig, 85, 112; in Mannheim, 83– 84, 312n82; in Neuchâtel, 7, 146; in Prague, 120, 320n2; self, 113, 117. See also livres philosophiques Chaidron (Hamburg bookseller), 251–53, 346n104, 347n106 Chaillet d’Arnex, Jean-Henri, 76, 108 Chambre Syndicale, 117, 173, 324n5 La Chandelle d’Arras, 106 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor), 32 cheese merchants, 235, 236, 241, 270 Chevrier, François-Antoine, 105– 6 La Chronique scandaleuse, 73, 74 chursächsische Freiheit. See Saxon book privileges Claudius, Matthias, 231–32 Cleland, John, 110 Clement XIV (pope): “interviews” of, 127t, 130, 141, 267; “letters” of, 101, 119, 140–41 Cléricourt, J. C., 248 Cleve booksellers, 43, 47, 53–54, 58; STN’s shipments to, 41, 70, 275t, 277, 300n74 Collegium Carolinum, 88– 89, 114, 269, 270 Collini, Cosimo Alessandro, 79, 81 Cologne: booksellers in, 58, 64; censorship in, 64– 65, 70, 115–17, 305n5, 306n6; electorate of, 64; port of, 67– 69, 307n17; shipments to, 41, 67, 275t commis voyageur, 18, 51, 277, 310n38, 310n49 commision book trade. See trade en commission Compte rendu (Necker), 35–37, 230 Condorcet, marquis de, 136 Les Confessions (Rousseau), 128, 129, 230 Les Confidences d’une jolie femme (d’Albert), 297n37 Conseils pour former une bibliothèque (Formey), 241–42 Cook, James, 137–38 Copenhagen, 248, 279, 281, 285t copyright protections, 7, 337n113; and Saxon book privileges, 33, 95– 96, 299n54, 299n64. See also pirated editions Corneille, Pierre, 3, 133 Correspondance littéraire secrète (periodical), 74, 115 Correvon, Gabriel Seigneux de, 172

index Cours complet d’agriculture (Rozier), 233 Cramer brothers, 6, 45, 207 Curran, Mark. See University of Leeds STN Project Daclin, Ambroise, 246, 270 Danckelmann, Freiherr von, 302n25, 303n28 Les Dangers de la calomnie (Beccary), 138 Dann, Graf von, 132, 269 Darnton, Robert, 288n12, 290n22, 291n25, 305n2, 338n2 Decker, Georg Jacob, 66, 254, 329n8 Décombaz, Gabriel, 297n38 Deinet, Johann Conrad, 56, 57, 63, 92–105, 109–14, 116; on Beaumarchais, 129–30; book orders of, 124t, 127t, 140–41, 275t, 277, 279t, 317n143; censorship trial of, 94– 95; as Imperial Book Commissioner, 112–13, 319n178; literary tastes of, 179– 82; on pornography, 110–13 Delaroque, Louis, 52–53 Delavaux (translator), 174, 175 Delisle de Sales, Jean-Baptiste- Claude Isoard, 237, 240 Denmark, 248, 279, 281, 285t Deprée, Maximilian Henry, 51–53 Derrida, Jacques, 343n69 Description des arts et métiers, 54, 98, 99, 130–34, 144, 233–34, 269. See also Encyclopédie Les Deux amis (Beaumarchais), 130 devotional literature, 123t, 124t, 144–46. See also Bibles Dictionnaire philosophique (Voltaire), 108, 127 Diderot, Denis, 3, 6, 196, 323n25. See also Encyclopédie Dieu, réponse au Système de la nature (Voltaire), 84, 89 Diners de M. Guillaume (Duvernet), 73 Discours politiques (d’Albon), 127t, 130, 141–43, 240, 267 Discours préliminaire (d’Alembert), 134, 136 Dohm, Christian Wilhelm von, 114 Don Pedre, roi de Castille (Voltaire), 79 Dorat, Claude-Joseph, 129, 168 Dresden booksellers, 39, 41, 275t Droit des gens (Vattel), 34 Du gouvernement et des lois de la Pologne (Mably), 233, 300n74, 341n39 Dupuget (Yverdon bookseller), 210, 336n100

373

Durand, Victor, 151, 277, 310nn48–49, 318n164 Durichsel (translator), 174– 75 Düsseldorf, 164 Duval-Pyrau, Henri-François Pyrard, abbé, 103 Duvez l’aîné, C. C. (Nancy bookseller), 22, 102, 110 Eichenberg, J. L., 92, 112 Eichenberg, Philipp Wilhelm, 113 Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 287n4, 344n78 Elementarwerk (Basedow), 193– 97 Eléments d’ histoire générale (Millot), 127t, 130, 135–36, 143 Eloge historique de la raison (Voltaire), 79 Emile (Rousseau), 6, 127, 244–45 Encyclopédie, 11, 130, 134–35, 234–35; cost of, 239; plates of, 244; sales of, 82– 84, 149, 164– 65; Voltaire on, 45, 84, 98, 108. See also Description des arts et métiers Entrevues du Pape Ganganelli, 127t, 130, 141, 267 Epistolae ab eruditis viris ad Alb. Hallerum, 78 Des Erreurs et de la vérité (Saint Martin), 229, 230 Errotika Biblion (Mirabeau), 66 Eschweiler, Franz Joseph, 307n22 Espion dévalisé, 65– 66, 73, 90 Essai philosophique sur le monachisme (Linguet), 101–3, 109, 116 Esslinger, Johann Georg, 21–23, 76– 77, 105– 9, 275t, 277; censorship trials of, 106– 8, 115–16; death of, 23, 102; and Hemmerde, 86, 313n88; and Schwan, 76, 293n13 Europe française, 79, 88, 114, 220, 222, 231, 243, 255, 262– 65, 272 exchange trade. See swapping of books Exercises de dévotion de M. Henri Roche (Voisenon), 73, 74 Fanny Hill (Cleland), 110 Fauche, Jonas, 128–29, 227, 296n33, 300n74, 340n25 Fauche, Pierre-François, 156, 246, 349n124 Fauche, Samuel, 12, 98– 99, 279; and d’Holbach, 84; and Hemmerde, 90; and pornography, 66, 110–11, 116; and Simonin, 64, 65; and Virchaux, 225, 227, 246, 248

374

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Fauche-Borel, Louis, 225, 248 faux frais (incidental costs), 68– 69, 78; and advertising costs, 100; calculation of, 307n20, 340n23; and swapping, 97. See also shipping Félice, Barthélemy de, 18, 234, 235, 297n38, 323n23 Fischer, Johann Wilhelm, 48, 51–53, 303n28 Fleischer, Johann Georg, 58 Flick, Johann Jacob, 24, 25t, 33–36, 280, 287n5, 331n33; book orders of, 294n25; and Fontaine, 76; and Serini, 292n8, 294n23, 295n25; and Varrentrap, 293n16 Flindt, Maria Catharina, 223 Fontaine, Charles, 63, 75– 85, 98, 99, 113, 115, 117, 273; book orders of, 13, 83, 124t, 127t, 216, 275t; on Description des arts et métiers, 132; and Encyclopédie sales, 164– 65 Fontaine, Matthias, 63, 76– 82, 83, 85, 115, 216, 273 Formey, Jean-Henri Samuel, 241–42 Forster, Georg, 114 Fouchet, abbé, 177– 78 Fraktur type, 2, 19, 261– 62 Frankfurt on Main, 28, 41, 92–113; book burnings in, 106, 107, 117–18; book fairs of, 1, 8, 16–18, 77– 78; booksellers of, 9, 21, 57–58, 95, 275t; censorship in, 94– 95, 103–13, 116, 117; and Huguenot refugees, 123–24; as imperial city, 114–15; Jewish peddlers in, 98, 111, 114; oversupply of French books in, 98–100; translators of, 170 Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen (journal), 92, 94, 95, 111, 147, 179, 319n177 Frederick II (king of Prussia), 3, 5, 131; Oeuvres of, 253–54; and Ostervald, 54; and Prussian Academy, 5, 11, 170; and Raynal, 244; and Virchaux, 221, 251, 254; and Voltaire, 5, 79; and War of Bavarian Succession, 82 Freemasonry, 11, 72, 84, 123–26t, 224 French Revolution, 245, 262– 63; and Abbaye prison, 256–58; Champ de Mars massacre during, 221, 256, 260, 348n115; and Club Helvétique, 254, 256; and Jacobin Club, 54, 221–22, 258– 60; wars of, 54, 75, 264, 273 Friedel, Adrien- Chrétien, 333n58 Friedrich II, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, 86– 89, 114, 268

Friedrich V, Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg, 149, 268 frontispiece, allegorical, 160, 244–45, 259, 262, 344n76 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 333n63 Ganganelli, Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio, 127t, 130, 141, 267. See also Clement XIV Garbe, Johann Ludwig, 58 Gebler, Baron von, 182, 188– 89 Geheimes Tagebuch (Lavater), 171, 181– 82 Gelehrtenbuchhandel, 121–22 Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott, 172 Genlis, Madame de, 128t, 237, 297n38 Gerle, Wolfgang, 40, 120; book orders of, 124t, 127t, 275t; on Description des arts et métiers, 131, 132 Geschichte der Bulle in Coena Domini (Lebret), 180, 189, 192 Gessner, Salomon, 168, 175 Girard (Cassel pastor), 151 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 6, 92; on Battle of Valmy, 264; on book-burning, 117–18; on d’Holbach’s Système de la nature, 6, 267– 68, 290n19, 351n12; as Diderot’s translator, 196; and Lavater, 95; Leiden des jungen Werthers, 3, 13, 94, 168– 69, 180, 181; and World Literature, 3–4, 288n10 Goldfriedrich, Johann, 1 Göttinger gelehrte Anzeigen (periodical), 179 Göttinger Hainbund (literary movement), 265– 66 Gräffer, Auguste, 277 Gräffer, Rudolphe, 277 Grandmesnil, Karl de, 61, 275t Grimm, Melchior von, 168 Grimoard, Philippe-Henri de, 135 Groschlag, Friedrich Karl Willibald von, 105 Grosely, Pierre-Jean, 33 Günther, Johann Arnold, 232 Gustavus Adolphus (king of Sweden), 135, 231, 237 Haas, Hermann Joseph, 58 Haller, Albrecht von, 78, 154–55, 299n54, 331n36 Haller, Emmanuel, 23–24, 25t, 33–36, 294n24, 297n38 Hamann, Johann Georg, 222, 232, 253

index Hamburg, 41, 223, 241, 270; Bible sales in, 148, 282t; booksellers of, 9, 36, 39, 68, 120, 221, 245–48, 250–53, 275t; censorship in, 120, 221, 227, 251; Freemasonry in, 124, 224; Huguenots of, 147, 223–24 Hanau (enclave of Hesse- Cassel), 64, 98, 99, 110, 115, 148–52, 282t, 325n13; Congress of, 96, 105, 112. See also Cassel Heidegger, Hans Konrad, 241, 242, 278, 294n21, 297n37 Heidegger, Heinrich, 175, 183, 331n33 Heine, Heinrich, 245 Helwing brothers, 58 Hemmerde, Jean-Frédéric, 63, 86– 91, 113–15, 130, 216, 270; book orders of, 124t, 127t, 275t, 282t, 352n25; and Esslinger, 313n88; financial difficulties of, 91– 92 Henri IV (king of France), 136, 317n143 Henriade (Voltaire), 136 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 6, 92; on cultural transmission, 265; on German literature, 349n5; on historiography, 136; on language, 195– 96 Hermann, Paschal Alexis, 309n47 Hermes, Johann, 180 Hesse- Cassel. See Cassel Hesse-Homburg, 41, 88– 89, 216–17, 217, 269, 275; entrepôt in, 60– 61, 276 Hessian mercenaries, 86, 87 Hestermann (Hanau Bible salesman), 150–52, 157 Heubach, Jean-Pierre, 27, 76, 297n38; and Bibles, 157–58, 278t; and Encyclopédie, 164 Hilscher, Gottlob, 299n54 Hilscher, Paul Christian, 331n30 Hirschberg, Charles de, 171 Histoire de France (Velly), 307n20 Histoire de Jenni (Voltaire), 79 Histoire des conquêtes de Gustave-Adolphe (Grimoard), 135 Histoire du patriotisme français (Rossel), 27, 28 Histoire philosophique (Raynal), 134, 234, 239–41, 243–44 Histoires des diables modernes, 70, 115 history books, genre of, 123t, 124t, 126t, 127t, 136–37, 144 History of America (Robertson), 298n52 History of Charles V (Robertson), 32 Hoff mann, G. B., 53–54, 275t, 302n12, 303n32

375

Hoff mann, Gottlob, 245–46 Hofgeismar (Landgrave Friedrich II’s summer residence), 86–88, 270. See also Cassel d’Holbach, Paul-Henri-Dietrich Th iry, baron, 3, 84– 85; Goethe on, 6, 267– 68, 290n19, 351n12; Système de la nature, 38, 47, 70, 115, 267– 68 L’Homme machine (La Mettrie), 110 Hontheim, Nicolaus von, 105 Hörling, Johann David, 277 Huber, Michael, 168, 177, 178, 200, 207– 8 Huguenots, 13, 123–24, 147–48, 152, 163; devotional literature of, 145; diaspora of, 4, 184, 224–25, 273 Idée de la poésie allemande (Dorat), 168 Idylles et poèmes champêtres (Gessner), 168 Ignatius of Loyola, 141 Illuminati, 72, 313n82, 351n11 Imirce, ou la fille de la nature, 106 Imperial Aulic Council, 91, 109, 111, 113, 316n125 Imperial Book Commission, 104–5, 108–13 Les Incas (Marmontel), 99–100, 295n29 incidental costs. See faux frais Intolérance ecclésiastique, ou les malheurs d’un hétérodoxe, 210–15, 212, 283–85t. See also Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker Iselin, Isaak, 172, 331n33 Israel, Jonathan, 351n12 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 5– 6, 115 Jacobi, Johann Georg, 172, 207 Jesuits, 94, 106, 139–41, 181 Jewish peddlers, 98, 111, 114 Johns, Adrian, 301n2, 344n78 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 25, 82, 111–12, 184 Journal et anecdotes intéressantes du voyage de Monsieur le comte de Falkenstein, 25–26, 296n31 Journal étranger, 168, 329n5 Journal helvétique, 93, 330n19 Junges Deutschland (literary movement), 245 Kant, Immanuel, 6, 13, 290n10, 292n26, 343n69 Karl Theodor, Palatine elector, 79– 82, 312n70; censorship by, 83– 84, 312n82; chateau of, 80

376

index

Kessler, Johann Joachim, 58, 95, 97 Kindervatter, Johann Paul, 45–47 Kleemann, Ernst, 175– 76, 183 Kleine Charakteristik von Hamburg, 241, 242 Kleve. See Cleve Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 221, 224 Kommissionsbuchhandel, 19–23, 29. See also trade en commission Krauss, Werner, 288n13, 350n7 Krieger, Johann Christian Konrad, 318n164 La Mettrie, Julien Off roy de, 110 Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de, 127t, 138–39, 143 Lafayette, marquis de, 255–56, 262 Lagisse, Isaac Maurice, 86– 87, 152–57, 276, 282 Lamey, Andreas, 83– 84 Langen, Johann Godschalk, 58 Latin books, 1–3, 97, 316n128, 321n7; of Charles Fontaine, 78; versus French books, 147 Laue (Frankfurt banker), 87, 91 Laurens, Henri-Joseph, 106, 107 Lauriers ecclésiastiques, 85 Lausanne, Société Typographique de, 157–58. See also Heubach, Jean-Pierre Lavater, Johann Caspar, 93– 95, 171, 181– 82 Le Clerc, Philippe, 80 Le Roux (Mainz bookseller), 58, 164– 65, 312n79 Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker, 14, 94; French translation of, 171, 175– 76, 183, 185– 88, 197– 219, 211, 267; as L’Intolérance Ecclésiastique, 210–15, 212, 283– 85t; popularity of, 180, 209–10, 215–19, 217, 283–85t; spurious editions of, 180; synopsis of, 185– 87, 198, 200–202. See also Nicolai, Friedrich Lebret, Johann Friedrich, 180, 189, 192 Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Weltgeschichte (Schröckh), 189 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 13 Leiden des jungen Werthers (Goethe), 3, 13, 94, 168– 69, 180, 181 Leipzig, 5, 41, 47, 59– 60, 275t; censorship in, 85, 112; printing shops of, 33; translators in, 168 Leipzig book fairs, 8–10, 16–40, 58, 81, 85, 102, 230; cata logues of, 24–26, 25t, 28–29, 30– 31, 105, 116, 122, 178, 230, 321n7;

Frankfurt fair versus, 77; in Nicolai’s novel, 186; Saxon book privileges at, 33, 95– 96, 299n54, 299n64 Lemgo (Duisburg bookseller), 58 Lentulus, Robert Scipio, 276, 304n34 Lesenne, abbé, 214 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 172, 201, 224, 339n14 letters of exchange. See bills of exchange Lettres de cachet (Mirabeau), 26, 66, 230, 296n33 Lettres d’Elisabeth Sophie de Vallière (Riccoboni), 38, 300n74 Lettres du pape Clément XIV, 101, 119, 140–41 Lettres françaises et germaniques (Mauvillon), 168 Lettres persanes (Montesquieu), 184 Lettres philosophiques (Voltaire), 127 Liaisons dangereuses (Laclos), 127t, 138–39, 143 libel, 66, 101, 221, 251. See also censorship Libertin de qualité (Mirabeau), 66 libraries: cata logues of, 121, 321n6; in Frankfurt, 114–15; of German scholars, 5– 6, 290n19; in Hamburg, 232; as prestige symbol, 241–42; of princes, 79, 82, 88– 89, 269; sales of, 78, 242, 321n6 Liège booksellers, 10, 19, 21, 32, 243 Linguet, Henri, 101–3, 109, 116, 230 Livres de commisions, of STN, 26, 121–29, 275– 79, 306n15, 311n65 livres philosophiques, 64, 181, 183, 305n2; and Deinet, 109–11; and Esslinger, 105– 8; and Fontaine, 84– 85; and Hemmerde, 89– 90; and Mettra, 65– 67, 70, 72– 74; novels as, 139, 213, 215, 218–19; in the Reich, 116–18; reworking of, 243; and Virchaux, 227. See also censorship Locke, John, 134, 165 Logan, Johann Zachariah, 215 London, 221, 254; French books published in, 7, 33, 227, 340n23; French booksellers in, 1, 284t, 287n4; French expatriates in, 4, 221, 259, 338n2 Louis XIV (king of France), 135, 136, 152, 272 Louis XV (king of France), 66, 101, 109, 140, 233 Low Countries, 47, 68, 142, 279t, 284t, 285t; French booksellers of, 6, 8, 10, 19, 71– 72, 105, 115; Huguenots in, 147; pirated editions from, 10, 71

index Luchet, Jean-Pierre Louis de la Roche du Maine, marquis de, 88– 89, 314n101 Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, 131–32 Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen, 289n16 Lyon, 208, 217, 278t, 283t; Chambre Syndicale in, 213, 324n5 Ma conversion (Mirabeau), 66, 90 Mably, Gabriel Bonnot, abbé de, 7, 230, 233, 300n74 Machuel, P., 207– 8, 278 Macklot (Karlsruhe bookseller), 57, 114 Maintenon, Madame de, 184 Mallet du Pan, Jacques, 88, 269, 314n101 Mangot, Jean-Baptiste, 277 Mannheim, 9, 22, 41, 59, 75– 86, 83, 114, 273; censorship in, 83– 84, 312n82; chateau of, 80; Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour of, 62, 81– 82, 148, 275t, 277, 282 Mariage de Figaro (Beaumarchais), 71 Marie-Antoinette (queen of France), 182 Marmontel, Jean-François, 99–100, 233, 237–38, 295n29 Martin, Gabriel, 321n6 Martin, Henri-Jean, 344n76 Masonry. See Freemasonry Maupeou, René-Nicolas de, 139 Mauvillon, Eléazar, 168 Mauvillon, Jacob, 114 McKenzie, D. F., 343n69 Mémoires d’une fille de joie (Cleland), 110 Mémoires historiques et géographiques sur la Valachie (Bauer), 316n128 Mendelssohn, Moses, 172 mercantilism, 56 Mercier, Louis-Sébastien, 7, 128t, 129; L’An 2440, 127t, 138–39; Portraits des rois de France, 127t, 135, 136; Le Tableau de Paris, 128–29, 166, 213, 230, 340n25 Merck, Johann Heinrich, 61, 95, 147, 304n42 Mettra, Louis-François, 63– 72, 113–14, 305n2; book orders of, 124t, 148, 275t, 277, 282t, 284t, 306n15; as diplomat, 63, 75; as publisher, 72– 75, 97, 115 Meuron-Tribolet, Jean-Jacques, 76 Miller, Johann Martin, 174, 180, 192, 332n36 Millot, Claude-François-Xavier, abbé, 65, 99; Eléments d’ histoire générale, 127t, 130, 135–36, 143; popularity of, 128t Milton, John, 3

377

Mirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de, 128t, 130; Lettres de cachet, 26, 66, 230, 296n33, 340n25; Ma conversion, 66, 90 Molière, 3, 133, 192 Molitor, Johann Friedrich, 57 monetary system, 44–45 Montesquieu, 184 Montpellier booksellers, 157, 278, 280, 284t Monument du costume physique et moral de la fin du dix-huitième siècle, 73, 74 Moritz, Karl Philip, 268 Mort d’Abel (Gessner), 168, 175 Moscow booksellers, 215, 284t, 287n4 Müller, Johannes, 114 Müller, Karl Wilhelm, 215 Münz (in the electorate of Cologne), Société Typographique de, 64, 305n3. See also Mettra Museum Fridericianum, 90, 269, 314n100 Nancy booksellers, 22, 277 Nantes, Edict of, 4, 147, 184. See also Huguenots Napoleon Bonaparte, 264– 66, 272, 273 Naufrage et avantures de M. Pierre Viaud, 27–29, 31, 32–33 Necker, Jacques, 35–37, 230 Neorberg, Karl von, 82– 83, 134, 164– 65 Neuchâtel. See Société Typographique de Neuchâtel Neuwied, 41, 72– 73, 275t, 277; Bible sales in, 148, 282t; Société Typographique de, 73– 74, 97, 115 Neveu de Rameau (Diderot), 6 Nicolai, Friedrich, 19, 39; on Fontaine, 83; on Lavater, 181; on translation, 167, 197. See also Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker Niebuhr, Carsten, 192, 332n36, 334n71 nouveautés, 33–34, 37, 119, 140, 142; as revised editions, 213; of Voltaire, 79– 80, 130 Nouvelle Héloïse (Rousseau), 127 Nouvelle Librairie de la Cour, 62, 81– 82, 148, 275t, 277, 282t Nuremberg booksellers, 41, 55, 120, 275t Observations sur le gouvernement des Etats-Unis (Mably), 230 Observations sur le Système de la nature (Castiglione), 84– 85

378

index

Orell, Gessner & Fuessli (Zurich publishing firm), 32 Ostervald, Frédéric-Samuel, 12, 14, 56–57; business deals of, 60– 61; and Frederick II, 54; and French translations of German works, 177– 78 Ostervald, Jean-Frédéric: Bible of, 99, 149– 65, 159– 62; catechism of, 156; portrait of, 158, 161 Paine, Thomas, 143 paper, used by publishers, 132, 157–58, 234–35, 237 Penserot, Pierre, 47–48, 301n12 Périsse (Lyon bookseller), 208 Perregaux, Jean-Frédéric, 158 Pfl ichtexemplare (deposit copies), 104– 5 Philosophie de la nature (Delisle de Sales), 237, 240 physiognomy, 93– 94, 181 pièces du jour, 35–37, 140, 152 pietism, 185, 202–3, 324n4 pirated editions, 96, 177, 291n25; by Samuel Fauche, 248; at Leipzig fair, 295nn29–30, 299n54; from Low Countries, 10, 71; by STN, 7, 37, 45, 128. See also copyright protections Pitra, Samuel, 55, 71, 275t, 276, 304n34 Plato, 196 Plomteux, Clément, 243, 344n73 Poland, 10, 139, 233, 281, 285t political works, genre of, 123t, 124t, 126t, 127t, 139–40, 144 Pompadour, Madame de, 184 Pope, Alexander, 199 pornography, 11, 66, 110, 291n25; Deinet on, 110–13; and Esslinger, 105– 6; Fontaine on, 85; and Mettra, 66, 72– 74, 75; Virchaux on, 223–24 Portraits des rois de France (Mercier), 127t, 135, 136 Portugal, 78, 285t Prague: booksellers in, 9, 40, 41, 120, 124, 275t; censorship in, 120, 320n2 Preiswerck, Luc, 309n47 promissory notes. See bills of exchange proofreading, 237–38 Prus sian Academy (Berlin), 5, 11, 61, 170 Pucelle d’Orléans (Voltaire), 74, 108

Questions sur l’Encyclopédie (Voltaire), 45, 84, 98, 108 Rabener, Gottlieb Wilhelm, 172 Racine, Jean, 3, 133 Ranson, Jean, 158, 280 Raynal, Guillaume-Thomas, abbé de, 3, 7, 134, 234, 239–41, 243–44 Réflexions d’un Suisse (Heidegger), 175, 183, 331n33 Reich, Philipp Erasmus, 200, 275t, 300n68, 321n7 Reichardt, Rolf, 289n16 Reichshofrat. See Imperial Aulic Council Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, 224 “republic of letters,” 2–3, 179, 196, 224 Restif de La Bretonne, Nicolas, 7 Rey, Marc-Michel, 6, 115, 290n19 Riccoboni, Marie-Jeanne, 38, 129, 271, 300n74 Riga, 10, 18, 291n24 Rigaud, Isaac-Pierre, 157, 278, 280, 327n45 Rivarol, Antoine de, 5 Robertson, William, 32, 298n52 Robespierre, Maximilien de, 221, 259, 260, 262 Robinson der Jüngere (Campe), 174, 230, 329n8 Röder, Friedrich Jacob, 60, 61, 157, 276, 282 Roman type, 2, 19, 261– 62 romans philosophiques, 139, 213, 215, 218–19. See also livres philosophiques Roques (Hanau pastor), 149–53, 157, 165, 276, 282 Rouen booksellers, 207– 8 Roullier, François, 222, 254–58, 260– 62, 348n113, 348n118 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 3, 5– 7, 99; works attributed to, 103, 317n151; and Kant, 6, 290n19; popularity of, 125–28, 128t; “Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard,” 174– 75; Confessions, 128, 129, 230; Emile, 6, 127, 244–45; Nouvelle Héloïse, 127; Oeuvres, 89– 90, 127 Rozier, François, abbé, 170– 71, 190– 91, 233 Rüdigger, Christian, 215 Ry, Simon-Louis du, 88, 90, 269 Sack, August Friedrich, 172 Sack (STN’s lawyer in Cleve), 52–55, 302n25 Sacken, Graf von, 131

index Saint Martin, Louis-Claude, marquis de, 230 Saint Petersburg, 253, 284t; booksellers of, 214–15, 218, 287n4 Sandoz-Rollin, David-Alphonse de, 182 Saxon book privileges, 33, 95, 299n54, 299n64. See also copyright protections Schauplatz der Künste und Handwerke, 131–33, 269. See also Description des arts et métiers Scheben, Franx Xaver von, 111 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von, 196 Schlegel, Johann Heinrich, 131 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 196 Schlözer, August Ludwig von, 89, 232 Schmieder, Christian Gottlob, 57, 114 Schneider, Karl Friedrich, 299n54 Schröckh, Johann Matthias, 189 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, 79, 81 Schulenburg, Baron von, 54, 131 Schwan, Christian, 22, 57, 76– 77, 81, 82; on atheistic books, 84; on Esslinger, 107; book orders of, 275t, 276 Serini, C. A., 24, 25t, 26, 276, 292n4; debts of, 55, 295n25; and Flick, 292n8, 294n23; and Leipzig fairs, 17, 29, 33 Seven Years’ War, 86, 268 Shakespeare, William, 3, 196 shipping, 273; of Bibles, 154; to Hamburg, 120, 227; to Leipzig, 17, 28; to Prague, 120; in the Rhineland, 51, 67– 70, 77, 119; weight requirements for, 276. See also faux frais Siècle de Louis XIV (Voltaire), 135 Siegwart, eine Klostergeschichte (Miller), 174, 180, 192, 332n36 Sienen, Albrecht von, 232 Sieveking, Georg Heinrich, 232 Sillem, Garlieb, 232 Simonin (Cologne bookseller), 58, 64– 65 Smollett, Tobias, 173, 329n13 Société Typographique de Berne, 16–18, 32–34, 58; Félice and, 297n38; and Leipzig fairs, 294n23; and STN, 23–26, 38–40, 296n32, 296n34, 297n37; translations of, 174, 189, 192 Société Typographique de Bouillon, 10, 19, 21, 293n14 Société Typographique de Lausanne, 157–58. See also Heubach Société Typographique de Münz, 64, 305n3. See also Mettra

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Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), 6– 8; archives of, ix, 6, 7, 11–12; Bibles of, 146, 157– 63; books ordered from, 122–43; books sent en commission by, 22–23, 100–103, 149, 155; directors of, 12–13; French translations of German works by, 13–14, 175– 77; and insolvent booksellers, 45–55, 249–50; and the Leipzig fairs, 23–32, 37–40; Livres de commisions of, 26, 121–29, 275– 79, 306n15, 311n65; pirated editions by, 7, 37, 45, 128; studies on, 290n22; swapping of books by, 10, 23, 73– 74, 310n49, 97, 103 Société Typographique de Neuwied, 73– 74, 97, 115. See also Mettra Société Typographique-Littéraire du Nord, 252, 346n104. See also Virchaux Solms-Laubach, Elise von, 105 Spalding, Johann Joachim, 172 Spanisch-Jesuitische Anecdoten, 106 Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten (newspaper), 227, 230, 236, 244–47, 251–52 Staël, Germaine de, 14, 169, 192, 268, 333n58, 351n14 Stahel, Joseph, 277 Steiner, Johann Heinrich, 24, 178, 189, 190 STN. See Société Typographique de Neuchâtel Strasbourg, 22, 68, 77, 133, 278, 284t Sturm und Drang (literary movement), 13, 178, 192, 265– 66; journal of, 92, 94, 95, 111, 147, 179 Sulzer, Johann Georg, 172 Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (Diderot), 323n25 swapping of books, 96– 98, 103, 121, 316n128; abandonment of, 96, 103; by Deinet, 103; at Leipzig fairs, 23, 27, 294n22, 297n37; by Mettra, 73– 74, 310n49; among Swiss publishers, 10, 23 Tableau de Paris (Mercier), 128–29, 166, 213, 230, 340n25 Tacitus, 266, 350n7 Teschen, Treaty of, 82 Théodicée (Leibniz), 13 Thirty Years’ War, 1, 135, 163, 184 Thümmel, Moritz August von, 175, 198–202, 207– 8

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Thurneysen, Johann Jacob, 36 trade en commission: by Bruère, 60– 61; definition of, 20–21; by Deinet, 100–103; Kommissionsbuchhandel versus, 22–23; by Lagisse, 155; by Röder, 60– 61; by Roques, 149 translated works, 144, 175– 76; approaches to, 188– 97; Basedow on, 193– 95; from English to French, 32, 144, 266– 67; from French to German, 2, 5, 6, 32–33, 36, 37, 131–33, 268, 289n16; Gadamer on, 333n63; from German to French, 3, 13–14, 167– 88, 218–19; Nicolai on, 167; Sandoz-Rollin on, 182; STN’s marketing of, 13–14, 209–18 transnational histories of the book, 6, 287n2 Trattner, Johann Thomas von, 232, 277 travel books, 123t, 124t, 126t, 127t, 136–38, 144, 295n30; Deinet on, 180, 181; translations of, 175– 76 Tscharner, Vinzenz Bernhard, 294n23 Turkheim, Jean, 171 “typographical luxury,” 6, 163, 240 Tyrberg, Antoine-Adolphe, 213 Ulm booksellers, 41, 45–47, 120, 275t United States Revolution, 86, 87, 141–43 University of Leeds STN Project, 277, 290n22, 291n25, 321n5 Valmy, Battle of, 264 Van Düren brothers, 57–58, 108– 9, 117, 141, 318n164 Varrentrap, Friederich, 21–22; Bosset on, 57, 58, 293n13; and Flick, 293n16; translations of, 170, 175, 183 Vattel, Emer de, 34 Velly, Paul-François, 307n20 Verdi Duvernois, A. M. F., chevalier, 61 Vienna, 9, 19, 47; French book sales in, 277; French literary cabinet in, 61; Imperial Aulic Council in, 109, 111, 113, 316n125 Virchaux, Jean-Guillaume, 68, 120, 221– 63, 269– 70; bankruptcy of, 221, 245–51, 257, 273, 338n2; book orders of, 124t, 125, 127t, 142, 275t, 282t, 300n74; cata logue of, 227–30, 228–29; as cheese merchant, 235, 236, 241, 270; death of, 260; on Description des arts et métiers, 133; on devotional

literature, 145; and Samuel Fauche, 225, 227, 246, 248; and Frederick II, 221, 251, 254; during French Revolution, 254– 60, 262– 63; libel trial of, 251; on Millot, 130; on political works, 139, 143; on pornography, 223–24; as publisher, 230, 248, 251 Voght, Caspar, 232 Volksgeist, 195– 97, 265 Voltaire, 3, 6, 7, 81, 99, 111, 135; and Frederick II, 5, 79; Haller on, 155; and Landgrave Friedrich II of Hesse-Cassel, 88, 89; in Mannheim, 79– 80, 312n70; and Nicolai, 213; popularity of, 125– 28, 128t, 130; protégés of, 269; and Wieland, 185, 333n58; Candide, 127; Dictionnaire philosophique, 108, 127; Dieu, réponse au Système de la nature, 84, 89; La Henriade, 136; Lettres philosophiques, 127; Oeuvres, 109, 112, 214, 230, 233, 237, 240; Pucelle d’Orléans, 74, 108; Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, 45, 84, 98, 108; Siècle de Louis XIV, 135 Voss, Christian, 36, 196, 254 Voyage en Sicile et à Malte (Brydone), 127t, 137–38, 266 Walther, Conrad, 38–39; book orders of, 275t, 300n74; on d’Holbach’s Système de la nature, 267 Wappler, Friedrich, 277 Wechsel. See bills of exchange Weitbrecht, J. J., 214–15 Wesel booksellers, 157 Wied, Friedrich Alexander von, 72 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 172– 75, 183– 85, 190– 91, 208; and Voltaire, 185, 333n58 Wilhelmine oder der vermählte Pedant (Thümmel), 198–202, 207– 8 Winterthur booksellers, 24, 178, 189, 190 Wittel, Jérémie, 340n25 Wittmann, Reinhard, 292n4, 341n27 women readers, 138, 242, 270– 72, 342n52 Woodmansee, Martha, 337n113 World Literature, 3–4, 288n10 Wuest, Heinrich, 172– 73, 330nn19–22 Wyttenbach, Jacob Samuel, 331n36 Zollverein, 68 Zurich, 32

ac know ledg ments

The research for this book began more than two decades ago when I spent eighteen months working in the archives of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel at the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Neuchâtel. I owe a large debt of gratitude to all the librarians who assisted me with my research, above all, to Jacques Rychner and Michel Schlup, the directors of the library, and to Maryse Schmidt-Surdez, the curator of manuscripts. After having completed my initial research in Neuchâtel, I had the good fortune to receive help and guidance from numerous colleagues in Europe: Mark Lehmstedt in Leipzig, who taught me a great deal about the history of the German book trade and who supplied me with several invaluable leads in my research on the Hamburg bookseller Jean-Guillaume Virchaux; Anne Saada in Paris, who sent me a copy of Virchaux’s catalogue, which she had unearthed at the State and University Library of Lower Saxony in Göttingen; Jürgen Sielemann in Hamburg, who helped me locate documents about Virchaux in the State Archives of Hamburg; Renato Pasta in Florence, who provided me with references to studies of the French book trade in Italy; James Raven in Essex, who read and critiqued an earlier version of my book and to whom I owe the idea for the title; Pamela Selwyn in Berlin, who dug up and transmitted to me an important letter from the Berlin bookseller Friedrich Nicolai to the STN; Christine Haug and Johannes Frimmel in Munich, who helped me locate illustrations for the book; and Simon Burrows and Mark Curran in Leeds, who are preparing a database on the STN. My thanks to both of the latter for agreeing to share some of their data with me and to Mark Curran for his astute and careful reading of my manuscript. On this side of the Atlantic, I have incurred a large debt of gratitude to Gary Hentzi of Baruch College (City University of New York), a stalwart friend who patiently read through my manuscript at various stages of its evolution; to Madeleine Dobie of Columbia University; to William Stenhouse of Yeshiva University; to Andrew Clark and Thierry Rigogne of the Fordham

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Eighteenth-Century Seminar; and to Jerry Singerman, Caroline Winschel, and Noreen O’Connor, my editors at the University of Pennsylvania Press. Special thanks are due to my former professors at Princeton University, the late Lawrence Stone, Natalie Davis, and to Anthony Grafton, who has been unwavering in his support of this project. The largest debt of all, however, I owe to my mentor Robert Darnton, who introduced me to the riches of the STN archives and whose pioneering work on the literary market and the circulation of ideas in Old Regime France has been a model for my own work. Finally, in addition to the debts that I owe to individuals, I would like to acknowledge the generous support of several institutions: the Social Science Research Council and the Fulbright Program, which supported my original research trip to Switzerland; the Annenberg Foundation, which awarded me a fellowship so that I could spend a semester at the University of Pennsylvania working under the direction of Elihu Katz; and Yeshiva University, my home institution, which granted me several sabbatical leaves. It seems fitting that a book about cultural mediation and linguistic border crossing should have evolved out of collaboration with friends and colleagues in so many different countries. This book, however, is not only about those subjects; it also exemplifies them. To write in English on the literary transfer between France and Germany is, in itself, a work of translation. As I was writing the book, I would often think of my mother, Njuty Greenberg Freedman, for whom the challenge of translation was not a scholarly exercise but an aspect of her daily existence. Born in 1923 in the Baltic port city of Riga, where she attended German schools, she spoke German with her Rigaborn mother, Russian and Yiddish with her Saint Petersburg–born father, and Latvian with her Latvian governess. Her quadrilingual household was a microcosm of polyglot Riga, which, in turn, was a microcosm of the nowvanished world of prewar central and eastern Europe. Growing up in that environment, she mediated between cultures and crossed linguistic borders with an ease and assurance that I could never hope to match. The inspiration for this book I owe to her example.