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Robert Darnton. Pirating and publishing: The book trade in the age of the Enlightenment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Hardcover/eBook, 391 p. $34.95. (ISBN: 9780195144529/9780197529737).
In Pirating and Publishing, Robert Darnton aims to resolve an apparent tension in eighteenth-century French history. The proliferation of books, notably the livres philosophiques of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, made the Enlightenment possible. However, Ancien Régime France and the economic framework of pre-modern Europe made participation in the book trade difficult. Atheistic and sexually explicit material was condemned in literal burnings at the stake. The conservative Parisian Booksellers’ Guild exercised a monopoly on the legitimate trade, to the exclusion of provincial dealers. And finally, publishers did not enjoy the protections of banking, specie, and limited liability, and neither were authors able to benefit from copyright or royalties. Despite these obstacles, copies of illicit literature saturated the pre-revolutionary French market. To account for the unexpected success of Enlightenment books in France, Darnton points to the “Fertile Crescent” of French publishers in Switzerland, western Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Avignon. Printers in these regions pirated French works and churned out thousands upon thousands of cheap editions. The “contrefaçons” were then smuggled across the borders of France where they reached provincial booksellers. Thus, affordable books found their way into the hands of middle class readers and added fuel to the illuminating fire of the Enlightenment.
In the introduction, Darnton references Max Weber’s concept of “booty capitalism,” a form of capitalism characterized by speculation and the accumulation of wealth via illegal exploitation, as well as Honore de Balzac’s novel Illusions perdues (1837-1843), which follows the (mis)fortunes of a French printer and his aspiring poet brother-in-law as they attempt to break into high society. He draws inspiration from these concepts to present a nuanced picture of Enlightenment-era book pirates. Far from resting in enjoyment of the fruits of their illicit labor, the contrefaçon printers engaged in fierce competition to stay afloat. Success was often thwarted by changes in the political and economic landscape as well as by going into business with the wrong people. Darnton’s narration of the shifting alliances and rivalries, risky ventures, and games of deceit among the pirates makes for a read that may be every bit as enthralling as a high seas adventure.
The author’s study results from over fifty years of research in Parisian and Neuchâtelois libraries and archives, with a particular focus on the papers of the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), a Swiss firm that specialized in pirating legal Parisian imprints and illegal French literature. With 50,000 letters and dossiers, the collection represents one of the most complete documents of an eighteenth-century publisher. Moreover, the STN documented interactions with other major pirate firms, including the Société typographique de Lausanne and the Société typographique de Berne.
The first three chapters of Pirating and Publishing present an overview of the historical, political, and economic context of the eighteenth-century book trade in France and surrounding Francophone regions. In the remaining nine chapters, Darnton details the biographies and episodes in the lives of the pirate publishers, with the activities of the STN taking center stage. These microhistories show how the pirates operated and detail strategies they used to outplay the competition and avoid financial ruin. Included are chapters devoted to cooperation among pirating firms; relationships with authors; gathering intelligence in Paris; and pre-modern banking systems and money.
Pirating and Publishing is intended to pair with Darnton’s A literary tour de France: the world of books on the eve of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Both studies examine pirating and censorship in pre-revolutionary France and draw heavily on the archives of the Société typographique de Neuchâtel. However, whereas Pirating and Publishing centers the business tactics of the book pirates of the “Fertile Crescent,” particularly the Swiss pirates, A literary tour de France focuses on the French bookseller side of the pirated book trade. The latter follows the diary of Jean-François Favarger, the STN’s head clerk and sales rep, as he visits bookshops throughout eastern, southern, and central France. What is lacking in the French side of the Enlightenment pirating business in Pirating and Publishing may therefore be covered in A literary tour de France.
In Pirating and Publishing, Darnton masterfully recounts compelling stories of the Swiss pirates. Rather than merely painting the publishers with broad strokes, the author zooms in on their paradoxical and fluctuant lives. For example, to illustrate the stratification of the illegal book business, Darnton introduces us to characters such as the following: Jean-Samuel Cailler, an educated and prudent businessman who supplied the STN with pornographic and atheistic livres philosophiques in exchange for inoffensive novels and histories; Gabriel Grasset, an obscure printer and former printshop foreman from the seedy part of Geneva who was the perfect candidate to print Voltaire’s most radical works; and Jacques-Benjamin Téron, a poor math tutor who ran a bookshop and lending library as a front for his real business of trading in illegal books and who suffered imprisonment, public censure, bankruptcies, and legal separation from his wife to protect her assets.
In the chapter that traces the shifting alliances among pirating firms, Darnton recounts in detail how the sociétés typographiques of Neuchâtel, Lausanne, and Bern joined forces in the Treaty of Berne; how they struggled to maintain consistent paper standards as each printed a third of their joint editions; and how they deliberated about which books they ought to put out as a confederation. Darnton’s analysis of the breakdown of trust among the three firms as they found themselves on opposite sides of an octavo-quarto Encyclopédie war is particularly compelling. Letters exchanged among them reveal a complex web of treacheries, suspicions, and truces. Darnton’s history is a history of book pirating at the human level, and he skillfully pulls illustrative stories out of the messiness of personal accounts.
Darnton devoted fifty years to studying the STN archives and related papers, and his efforts clearly show in the ease with which the author analyzes his rich primary source material. He notes the usual professional tone and expressions in the documents of those in the trade, and he knows the conventions well enough to point out and interpret deviations. Even Darnton’s somewhat tangential discussions, such as pre-modern European mailing practices or the vocabulary the French pirates used to describe the moral character of potential business partners, are valuable studies in themselves. Pirating and Publishing flows out of the author’s unrivalled expertise on the archives that Enlightenment-era book pirates left behind.
Recounting and contextualizing the specific ventures that eighteenth-century contrefaçon publishers pursued is useful. Darnton’s talent with crafting narratives makes their individual stories entertaining as well as educational. However, the overall theoretical framework gets lost in the minutiae of the STN archives. Darnton does zoom out enough to note important trends, such as the pre-modern marketing research that pirates performed to gain an edge against competitors, but the theoretical framing of Max Weber’s “booty capitalism” that appears in the introduction is practically abandoned in the subsequent body of the text. The underdeveloped theoretical underpinning is Pirating and Publishing’s greatest weakness. Providing a more robust theory would help readers to get a better sense of the author’s approach to the historical evidence; to evaluate the implicit biases in that approach, which could serve as a launching point for further discussion and scholarship; and to relate the phenomena of the piracy of eighteenth-century French literature to similar practices both past and present.
Another challenge, one which the author readily recognizes, is building a strong case for the connection between pirated books and their readers and a growing acceptance of Enlightenment values. Many of the illicit works flowing out of the Fertile Crescent surrounding France were not penned by the philosophes. There was also a demand for entertaining novels, geographical works, and religious tomes that did not necessarily promote Enlightenment ideals. The pirates did not care so much for the ideological consistency of the books they printed as much as they cared about turning a profit. Moreover, even given that the pirated livres philosophiques landed in the libraries of the middling class of France, it is difficult to prove the effect that those works specifically had on the readers’ worldview. Does ownership necessarily imply ideological alignment with the book owned? Or what of the effects of ideas spread orally rather than textually? Would people have needed direct experience with an “enlightened” book in order to absorb the progressive values of the era? These questions are difficult to address historically given the lack of documentary evidence.
Overall, Pirating and Publishing is a must-read for historians of the book. Even for readers who are not specifically interested in eighteenth-century French book piracy, the methodological approach of weaving together stories based on close reads of archival materials is illuminating. This work would make an excellent addition to the library of rare book professionals working and teaching with collections strong in eighteenth-century French literature. Pirating and Publishing is an instructive study for those interested in the history of intellectual property; the emergence of modern publishing practices; and the economic and political landscape that shaped the eighteenth-century book trade in Western Europe.
Among the other avenues of research recommended by Darnton is the careful study of the exchange trade—the swapping of books among publishers—as a key factor in the economic viability of the book trade. Pirating and Publishing also draws attention to Enlightenment books that never made it to the presses but only exist as ideas left in publishers’ archives. If such papers could be uncovered, the unrealized Enlightenment would make for a fascinating study. Finally, building on the scope of Pirating and Publishing to examine more closely how the Enlightenment pirates interacted with the book trade in the United Kingdom and the American colonies would be beneficial.
— Emily Grover, Texas Tech University