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Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw. Jaargang 1991 (1991)

Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw. Jaargang 1991

(1991)– [tijdschrift] Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Paul Benhamou
The reading trade in pre-revolutionary France

In 1835, the Dictionary of the French Academy defined the cabinet de lecture as ‘un lieu où l'on donne à lire moyennant une faible rétribution, des journaux et des livres.’ This definition makes it clear that the cabinet was a commercial institution; but it does not convey its role in the expansion - even, one may say, the development - of the reading public. The cabinet de lecture was as much a cultural as an economic phenomenon.

Certainly, cabinets de lecture have not been neglected by scholars. Maurice Tirol's 1926 article, ‘Les Cabinets de lecture en France, 1800-1850’1.; Harry Whitmore's dissertation, ‘The Cabinet de lecture in France, 1800-1850’2.; and Françoise Parent-Lardeur's Lire à Paris au temps de Balzac: les cabinets de lecture à Paris, 1815-18303., reveal that they have not. On the other hand, it is to be noted that all these authors have focused on the cabinet de lecture as a 19th-century phenomenon. Its roots lie earlier, however.

In England, as Paul Kaufman has shown, the circulating library that was equivalent to the cabinet de lecture began to appear around 17204.; and we have the evidence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions that Geneva had at least one booklender between 1725 and 1728.5. France may have preceded Geneva, since the practice of renting newspapers began concurrently with the development of the periodical press during the reign of Louis XIV. As early as 1647, the bookdealer Nicolas was renting out the Gazette in Grenoble for 5 livres, 5 sous a year, that is to say, for about one-third the price of a yearly subscription.6. And in Paris,

booksellers rented newspapers from their shops, or from stands set up in the streets when the shops became too crowded.7. Since the newspapers actually belonged to the subscribers to whom they would be later sent, the practice reveals how thoroughly both merchants and readers exploited this new product. Many of those readers would have had no other access to printed materials. The public libraries of the time were only nominally public. Reserved to scholars, to men of letters and of note, they had a restricted schedule and, in any case, they offered no periodicals before 1789. There was an economic bar as well. The cost of a short novel, 2 to 4 livres, represented a week's earnings for a laborer; that of a year's subscription to a periodical like the Mercure de France, about 30 livres, two to three weeks' work for an artisan.

That the rental system could make books and periodicals available to men of this class is demonstrated by two writers of modest origins: Rousseau and Marmontel. As a young engraver's apprentice in Geneva, Rousseau had haunted the small library of the booklender called La Tribu: ‘La Tribu, fameuse loueuse de livres m'en fournissait de toute espèce. Bons et mauvais, tout passait; je ne choisissais point: je lisais tout avec une égale avidité [...]. Quand je n'avais plus de quoi la payer, je lui donnais mes chemises, mes cravates, mes hardes; mes trois sols d'étrennes tous les dimanches lui étaient régulièrement portés’.8. Perhaps because he was such a faithful customer, he was sometimes allowed to check out books without paying the rental fee in advance, as was the usual custom: ‘La Tribu me faisait crédit,’ he said. As for Marmontel, he describes in his Mémoires how in Clermont-Ferrand about 1740, he and his fellow schoolboys borrowed books from a circulating library kept by the bookseller Beauvert: ‘A frais communs, et à peu de frais, nous étions abonnés pour nos lectures avec un vieux libraire [...]’.9.

Given Rousseau's enthousiastic use of La Tribu's rental library, it seems especially appropriate that it was the publication of his Nouvelle Héloïse in 1761 that seems to have led French booksellers to make books as well as newspapers available for rent. Let us listen to one of the editors of this best-seller: ‘L'empressement du public pour la lecture de cet ouvrage fut extrême. Je me souviens que les libraires ne pouvaient suffire aux demandes de toutes classes. Ceux dont la modicité de la fortune ne pouvaient atteindre au prix de l'ouvrage, le louaient à tant par jour ou par heure. Tel libraire avide, j'ose l'assurer, exigeait dans la

nouveauté, douze sous par volume pour la simple lecture et n'accordait que 60 minutes pour un tome. L'enthousiasme fut universel’.10.

French bookdealers were very quick to understand the potential for new income in the periodical and bookrental business, for soon after true cabinets de lecture began to appear in both Paris and the provinces. These were essentially commercial establishments, managed by bookstore owners who extended their book trade with what might be called the reading trade, or the rental of reading materials.

In 1761, the Parisian bookseller Jacques-François Quillau opened his Magasin littéraire, which can be considered the prototype for all public cabinets de lecture. For 24 livres a year, 15 livres for six months, or 3 livres a month, all fees to be paid in advance, a subscriber could check out books or periodicals; he also received a free catalogue. Although we have not been able to find the records of Quillau's cabinet de lecture, we can safely assume that the business of renting books and newspapers was successful. An announcement in Fréron's Année littéraire in 1769 showed that Quillau's Magasin littéraire had lost none of its popularity since it had opened a decade earlier. As the commentator put it: ‘Pouvait-on manquer de plaire en formant un établissement qui réunit l'agrément à l'utilité, qui mit pour ainsi dire à la disposition de chaque particulier une bibliothèque nombreuse et choisie dont il jouit à peu de frais’.11.

Quillau, in any case, did not rest on his laurels. He increased his holdings, especially novels and histories ‘pour se conformer au goût général des abonnés’12., published several supplements to his original catalogue, and in 1776 launched a cut-rate service limited to gazettes and journals. Readers choosing this new formula had access to various periodicals including the Gazette de France, the Gazette de Leyde, the Mercure de France, the Affiches de Paris, and to dictionaries in a reading room open every day but Sunday from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m.; the fee was 4 sols a sitting. According to Luc-Vincent Thiery's Guide des amateurs et des étrangers voyageurs à Paris, Quillau's Magasin littéraire was still open for business in 1786.13.

Quillau, or his profits, inspired others. In 1762, two libraires-imprimeurs, Jean-Augustin Grangé and Pierre Dufour joined forces to open what they advertised as a ‘Cabinet littéraire de la nouveauté pour la lecture des brochures nouvelles en tout genre, des journaux, gazettes de France et étrangères, et généralement tous les papiers publics’. In their

prospectus, the two bookdealers downplayed the commercial aspect of their venture: ‘le désir que nous avons de mériter le suffrage du public, nous a engagé d'offrir la lecture de nos livres à nos concitoyens et aux étrangers qui font séjour dans cette ville. La facilité de se procurer une lecture instructive et intéressante ne peut être que très avantageuse, surtout aux jeunes gens [...]’.14. They claimed that the subscription fee was so low that their cabinet littéraire would be accessible to everybody: ‘La modicité du prix de la lecture mettra tout le monde à portée de jouir des livres de notre cabinet’.15. As a matter of fact, a yearly subscriber had to pay 18 livres to rent books or periodicals, and it is rather doubtful that ‘tout le monde’ could afford that ‘modest’ expense, as Grangé and Dufour had claimed. ‘Le beau monde,’ perhaps! At that time, after all, 18 livres approximated the weekly wages of a skilled carpenter. On the other hand, it should be said that the 18 livres subscription for this new cabinet littéraire was lower than Quillau's fee by 6 livres. Moreover, Grangé advertised two features which were to become staples of every cabinet de lecture: it would be heated (‘ce cabinet sera bien éclairé et l'on aura soin d'y tenir bon feu dans l'hiver’) and its holdings would not offend either society or government (‘les livres contre la religion, l'état et les moeurs en seront bannis)’. These conditions seem to have found favor, for according to its last existing catalogue, the cabinet littéraire, now operated by Grangé alone, was still in existence in 1784. Other cabinets de lecture opened in Paris in the '70s and '80s, but few catalogues have been preserved from this time: other than those of Quillau and Grangé, the Bibliothèque Nationale holds only those of Couturier, Lejay and Mérigot.16.

From Paris, the cabinet de lecture spread to the provinces. As the editor of the Affiches de Lorraine acknowledged in 1775: ‘Depuis l'époque de la formation d'un cabinet littéraire à Paris, on les a vus se multiplier avec le plus grand succès dans les principales villes du royaume’.17. In a recent study, Jean-Louis Pailhès has tracked down 36 of them18., but catalogues survive from only those of Reguillat, Cellier, and Morlet in Lyons, and Lépagnez in Besançon. The others are known through announcements published in local newspapers and almanachs, and through references contained in the archives of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel. The correspondence between proprietors of

cabinets de lecture and this Swiss publishing company makes it clear that many dealers sought to acquire livres philosophiques and nouveautés, code words in the underground book-trade for such pornographic, irreligious and seditious publications as Thérèse philosophe, the Dictionnaire philosophique, and L'An 2440.19.

Most cabinets de lecture were opened by booksellers, bookbinders or printers who wanted to supplement their income from the highly regulated book-trade through expansion into the unregulated and profitable reading trade. This was certainly the case with the bookseller Claude Morlet who opened in 1769 a cabinet de lecture in Lyons, a city which boasted at least six such establishments during the second half of the 18th century.20. Let us remember that during the 18th century, the once flourishing Lyons book-trade was in decline because of the monopoly on privileges of publication held by Parisian booksellers, and because of the competition from Avignon, which had become a big center for pirated editions.

So when Claude Morlet opened a cabinet de lecture next to his bookstore in the business district of Lyons, he was not the first to have had the idea. Lyons already had three cabinets de lecture (run by the booksellers Regnault, Reguillat, and Cellier), as well as a store where newspapers could be rented from a mustard salesman named Chométy. Claude Morlet's reasons for entering the reading trade were unabashedly commercial. While he did mention such supporting factors as the usefulness of his establishment and the increase in readership, his catalogue made it clear that what he sought was a new source of income: ‘l'intérêt particulier de l'instituteur est le premier motif de ces sortes d'institutions [...] si nous y étions engagés pour le motif plus noble, nous le lui prouverions en lui offrant nos services gratis, ce qui n'est pas notre intention’.21.

Physically, Morlet's cabinet de lecture consisted of a book-lined reading room furnished with a large, cloth-covered table, chairs, bookstands, small ladders, and a stove. The last was an essential feature. Provincial cabinets de lecture were invariably advertised as ‘bien chauffés et bien éclairés.’ Readers could enjoy these amenities from 8 in the

morning till noon, and from 2 until 8 at night. Next to the reading room was a small office where Morlet conducted business. The organization followed the Parisian model: subscribers paid 24 livres a year for books or periodicals, 15 livres for half a year, and 3 livres for a month. The cabinet was also open to non-subscribers, who could read periodicals for 1 sol each, or consult books and dictionaries for 6 sols a sitting. Annual subscribers could have the Journal des Savants, the Mercure de France, the Gazette de France, the Année littéraire, or the Journal encyclopédique delivered to their homes, but these had to be returned the next day. Subscribers were also given a free catalogue of the book collection for which non-suscribers had to pay 24 sols. City dwellers could check out as many books as they wished so long as they returned them in four to five days. Borrowers who lived outside Lyons could check out as many as six books at a time.

The reading trade seems to have helped many a bookseller, but it was not free of risk. Booklenders in the 18th century experienced the same problems with their customers as do public libraries today: books returned damaged, late, or not at all. Well aware of these problems, Morlet made it clear to prospective patrons that ‘les personnes entre les mains de qui se seront perdus ou auront été gâtés quelques livres, seront tenues d'en payer la valeur’.22.

What were the books that Morlet offered his patrons? According to the 1772 catalogue and its two supplements, his holdings were both varied and significant: 1,941 titles in about 5,000 volumes.

Claude Morlet's 1772 Catalogue by Category

Categories Number of Titles %
Law & Jurisprudence 99 5
Theology & Religion 146 8
History 335 17
Arts & Sciences 582 30
Belles-Lettres 779 40

It is clear that belles-lettres dominated Morlet's booklist, and interesting that about half of this category consisted of novels, among them Marivaux's Paysan parvenu, Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Riccoboni's Lettres de Fanny Butlerd, Rousseau's Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, and French translations of English

works by Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, and Sterne. The amount of fiction was not unusual; and that all existing catalogues of 18th-century cabinets de lecture show a similar distribution demonstrates that the emphasis on fiction widely noted in 19th-century cabinets de lecture was a trend with deep roots.

By 1772, Morlet had more than 200 subscribers; but because his registre des abonnements has not been found, we have no record of their names, professions, and reading habits; and without this information, we cannot determine whether his cabinet de lecture reached new socio-economic layers of the reading public. Despite the testimony of Rousseau and Marmontel, it is improbable that many artisans or Lyonnais textile workers, who earned between 7 and 15 livres a week, could afford a subscription. By the same token, we seem justified in assuming that the majority (if not all) of Morlet's patrons were businessmen, manufacturers, and professionals, men whose occupations allowed them to spend both money and time on reading.

It is known, however, that Morlet's cabinet de lecture was, initially, a commercial success, and that this success carried the seeds of its undoing. In the third edition of his catalogue, published in 1773, Morlet noted that: ‘L'accueil dont le public a honoré ce cabinet littéraire nous dispense de relever les avantages qu'on peut retirer de ces sortes d'établissements. Nous croyons ne pouvoir mieux répondre à l'empressement de nos lecteurs, qu'en nous attachant journellement à faire de nouvelles augmentations’.23. Such an augmentation was the cabinet de musique whose opening was announced in March 1773: ‘nous rassemblerons avec soin tous les livres de musique théorique et pratique des meilleurs auteurs italiens, français et allemands’.24. To cover expenses, Morlet raised his annual subscription fee to 30 livres, the semiannual fee rising to 20 livres.25. He also expanded into publishing, but this venture was not rewarded: underwriting a new periodical called the Journal du monde, he was forced into bankruptcy within a few months. He issued no catalogue after 1773, nor made any announcements in the Affiches de Lyon; but while the exact fate of his cabinet de lecture is not known, it may be inferred from a notice contained in the 1778 catalogue of Lyons' largest cabinet de lecture, run by Pierre Cellier, which said: ‘on prie ceux qui auraient encore des abonnements pris chez Regnault, Reguillat et Morlet de vouloir aussi les faire rendre, les ayant acquis’.26.

Cabinets de lecture were well established in French cities on the eve of the French Revolution. Touring France in the late '80s, Arthur Young visited many to read the latest news.27. And Louis-Sebastien Mercier noted in his Tableau de Paris: ‘N'avez-vous point de bibliothèque? Pour quatre sols vous vous enfoncez dans un cabinet littéraire, et là, pendant une après-diner entière vous lirez depuis la massive Encyclopédie jusqu'aux feuilles volantes’.28. They can be said to have brought financial gain to many a French bookseller, but they did more. They increased the availability of reading materials, and they allowed at least some readers who could not afford to join exclusive literary clubs and reading societies or buy expensive books and periodicals to borrow them for a relatively modest fee. Their popularity indicates not only the growing demand for novels, livres philosophiques, and major authors of the Enlightenment, but the increasing secularisation of the French reading public, trends which continued in the following century. If there are few records that remain from 18th-century cabinets de lecture, the fact that Françoise Parent-Lardeur could identify no less than 463 in Paris alone around 183029. confirms that any history of reading, readership, and the reading trade is incomplete unless it includes the part played by these institutions.


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