Jeffrey Freedman.Books without Borders in Enlightenment Europe: French Cosmopolitanism and German Literary Markets. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. 382p. $80 (ISBN 978-0-8122-4389-5).

Abstract

Twenty years ago Jeffrey Freedman had the opportunity to spend eighteen months in the archives of the 18th-century Swiss publishing house, Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), housed at the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Switzerland. That research is the foundation of his newest book. Its premise is that book history has traditionally stayed within national or regional borders, but books don’t; they go where they are wanted. The narrative Freedman weaves of the STN’s efforts to sell French language books in Germany shows this quite well; and, though it does help to have some knowledge of 18th-century European history, the . . .