Jean-Francois Favarger And The Book Markets In Pre-Revolutionary South-Central France

At the end of Ancien Regime,along with the French's demand for books was growing gradually,there were many book publishers and wholesalers who pursued of interests beyond the border.They sold a large number of books into France and gained a huge amount of profits,the Societe typographique de Neuchatel is one of them.In 1778,Jean-Frangois Favarger travelled in France under the arrangement of the company.The main purpose of this business travel is to research the French book market,to expand the company's French market,and to plan for a book smuggling.During this five-month travel,Favarger visited almost every city in south-central France.He communicated with local booksellers to investigate the market demand,sell the company's books and ask the dealers to pay for their debts which left lots of letters and diaries.These are still well preserved,which is objective and abundant,and can be used to study the French book market at that time.This paper attempts to use his letters and diaries as the main historical materials to study the book market in pre-revolutionary France.The travel occurred on the eve of the French Revolution.During that time,the French government implemented strict supervision on the book market and he just witnessed the implementation of regulatory decrees.His works for the smuggling which makes us understand the supply mode followed by overseas printers and wholesalers.we can also find that the essence of their book business is to seek profit and the books they printed and sold were fitted with the French market demand.By analyzing the purchase orders recorded by Favarger and the dialogues between Favarger and local booksellers,we can dig out the types of bestsellers at that time:books on compiled knowledge,sentimental literature,the Protestant,and America.By contrast,the political and philosophical books which written by the philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment were not so popular.The customers and readers were mainly from the upper-and-middle class of the society.The people from lower-class rarely had the opportunity to read books.It is not enough to impact the whole society.This paper concludes that in the pre-revolutionary France,bestsellers did not express so many radical revolutionary opinions,and the readers were mainly from the upper-and-middle class in France.Therefore,Enlightenment and book reading failed to directly lead the French Revolution,and book reading has impacted social change in a gradual pace.