Invention of Free Press

Edoardo Tortarolo was born in Italy in 1956. Educated at the University of Turin, he has taught at several Italian universities, at the University of Leipzig (1997-8), and at Northwestern University (2010 and 2011). In 2006 he was a member of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. In 2012-13 he is a member of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany, where he is writing a book on the impact of the revolutionary transition from the 1770s to 1820s on the European political and religious beliefs. He is the author of several books on the political culture of the European Enlightenment and most recently a co-editor of volume III of The Oxford History of Historical Writing (Oxford University Press 2012).

“Tortarolo (humanities, Univ. of Eastern Piedmont, Italy) has produced a welcome addition to the rapidly growing literature on book and censorship history. He provides an excellent summary of the growing controversy over censorship amid the 18th-century Enlightenment, including the views of such luminaries as Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, Marie-Jean de Condorcet, Baron Paul d'Holbach and (French censor) Lamoignon de Malesherbes. … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” (R. J. Goldstein, Choice, Vol. 54 (3), November, 2016)

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Was Control of the Press Inevitable?.- 3. The English Paradigm.- 4. The Functional Ambiguity of Censorship and the French Enlightenment.- 5. The Royal Censors as Guarantors of Freedom of the Press.- 6. Equivocations and New Meanings.