The Literary Underground of the Old Regime

Just finished [The Literary Underground of the Old Regime] by Robert Darnton. This is the fourth work of Darnton's that I've read, the last one being [George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century.] Just when I think I’ve read enough, Darnton finds another aspect of 18th c. France to pull me back in! This book delves into areas of 18th c. French Enlightenment that largely remains untouched by other historians and academics. The work explores not only the underground exporting and importing of forbidden books, but also book production, the struggles of the lowly and revolutionary writers of Grub Street, as well as the labor and jargon of the journeymen and typographers in the print shops. But what surprised me the most was to learn about the unexplored "ecclesiastical underground," an anticlerical intelligentsia within the Church itself. When learning about the years immediately prior to the Revolution, we never expect to hear of the Church as a purposeful cause of its own downfall. The author describes how "Book production soared under Louis XVI", which is noted by most historians, but Darnton explains that this is often misconstrued as proof of widespread reading and book ownership. Seventy years ago, Daniel Mornet counted titles in 500 catalogues of private libraries in the Paris area between 1750 and 1780. "He found one lonely copy of Rousseau's Social Contract. Eighteenth-century libraries contained a surprisingly small percentage of the other Enlightenment classics, he discovered. Of course, Darnton points out that there are several flaws with this study, but names Robert Escarpit's Sociologie de la Litterature as the most influential attempt to formlate a new methodology. Escarpit concentrates instead on the study of writers, and produces a demographic history of authorship. Although, as Darnton points out, Escarpit still had no idea how many writers went uncounted. Without granted royal "privileges," common writers could not hope to rise above monopolizing book publishing guilds or pass royal inspection. Darnton points to this as the major difference between "basse littèrature" and "haute littèrature." For the "haute" philosophes of the Enlightenment, the select few that we wish to remember today, public opinion was something to be controlled, to cause reform. But for the "poor devils" of Grub Street, followers of Diderot and Voltaire, the Enlightenment became an outlet, a way to make a living, and most "put themselves up for hire and wrote whatever was ordered by the highest bidder." And we learn that the biggest bidder for writers, smugglers and printers was the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel in Switzerland. But did all this pamphleteering and illegal importation of forbidden works encourage the message of Revolution? Did the endless struggle for free speech ultimately lead many to answer the call for political upheaval? By studying what 18th century Frenchmen read, can historians even begin to determine what these men were thinking? You'll have to read Darnton's amazing book (and my new favorite) to find out! ( )

This study of the writing and publishing scene in France and nearby countries in the late 18th century is thoroughly engaging. Robert Darnton, a celebrated scholar, writes in a straightforward and delightful prose style, and his subject-matter is decidedly down-to-earth -- you will have no idea just how grubby Grub Street can be until you read this book. Sample choice bit that made me laugh out loud: "Charles Theveneau de Morande, one of Grub Street's most violent and virulent pamphleteers, lived in a demimonde of prostitutes, pimps, blackmailers, pickpockets, swindlers, and murderers. He tried his hand at more than one of these professions and gathered material for his pamphlets by skimming the scum around him. As a result, his works smeared everything, good and bad alike, with a spirit of such total depravity and alienation that Voltaire cried out in horror." ( )

EURW/FRAN/France - History - Revolution, 1789-1799 - Causes/Underground literature - France/France - Causes - Revolution, 1789-1799

In the mid-eighteenth century, “provincials flocked to Paris in search of glory, money, and the improved estate that seemed promised to any writer with sufficient talent. They did not necessarily share the motivations of the early philosophes, who were often nobles and clergymen enjoying enough leisure to write when the spirit moved them and who wrote before the time when ‘literature became a métier.’”

“Although publishers offered somewhat better terms than earlier in the century, authors were caught between the masters of the publishing bookselling guilds, who paid little for manuscripts, and pirate publishers, who paid nothing at all. None of the great mid-century philosophes relied much on sales except for Diderot, who never fully extricated himself from Grub Street. Mercier claimed that in his day only thirty hard-core ‘professionals’ supported themselves by writing. The open, ‘democratic’ market that could feed large numbers of enterprising authors did not appear in France until well into the nineteenth century. Before the day of the steam press and the mass reading public, writers lived by…scavenging along the road to riches…or they dropped by the wayside, in the gutter.”

“To explain why Grub Street had no exit and why its prisoners felt such hatred for the grands at the top it is necessary” to understand “that word…one meets everywhere in the Old Regime: privilege. Books themselves bore privileges granted by the grace of the king. Privileged guilds, whose organization showed the hand of Colbert himself, monopolized the production and distribution of the printed word. Privileged journals exploited royally granted monopolies. The privileged Comédie Française, Académie Royale de Musique, and Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture legally monopolized the stage, opera, and the plastic arts. The Académie Française restricted literary immortality to forty privileged individuals, while privileged bodies like the Académie des Sciences and the Société Royale de Médecine dominated the world of science. And above all these corps rose the supremely privileged cultural elite who kept le monde all to themselves.”