Fifty Thousand Letters

Fifty Thousand LettersIn 1965, while searching for the correspondence of the revolutionary leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot, the historian Robert Darnton followed a path to the papers of a Swiss publisher, which contained several veins of pure gold: 50,000 letters, a remarkable source for the study of the book trade – and also of authors, booksellers, and readers. It was a historian's dream. For many years he read through the publisher's archives, working patiently, summer after summer, in the library on the banks of Lake Neuchâtel. This discovery, reinforced by extensive research in French archives, made it possible for Darnton to explore the operations of the literary market, the relations between publishers and authors, the repression of booksellers by French authorities, and especially to appreciate what the French read in the eighteenth century.In his brilliant career, which forms the subject of this engaging book, Darnton has reconstructed the inside story of how books in early modern France came into being – a matter of secret alliances among publishers, of commercial warfare, of feuds and dirty tricks, and of the artisanal labor that went into the production of the volumes. His outstanding contribution has been to enlarge our understanding of the age of Enlightenment and to enrich our understanding of intellectual struggle and debate. By removing philosophers from their pedestals, he has captured the vitality of intellectual life and embedded it in lived experience and all the social and material contradictions of its time. In doing so, he makes it possible for us to see the Enlightenment as a concrete reality – not as an inaccessible summit of modern consciousness but as a struggle, which must be constantly renewed, to improve the lot of humanity.