Robert Darnton, “A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution” (Oxford UP, 2018)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Mar 15, 2018 · 59m

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…