New Books In French Studies

Five decades ago, a young scholar named Robert Darnton followed up on a footnote that took him to the archives of the “Typographical Society of Neuchatel”(S.T.N.) in Switzerland, not far from the French border. Many years, and thousands of documents later, Professor Robert Darnton has published a new book, A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2018). Apart from illuminating the everyday life of the trade that enabled and shaped French reading practices, the book is a methodological feat that mines an impressive array of sources to access the financial, legal, political, and cultural history of book distribution before the French Revolution. Following the trail of Jean-Francois Favager, a sales rep of the S.T.N. who toured France in 1778, Darnton’s thirteen chapters trace his journey from Neuchatel, across the border into France, down the southeast to Lyon and Marseille, west towards Bordeaux, then north before crossing bac