Abstract
This chapter uses the remarkable case of the publication of the works of Théodore Rilliet de Saussure by the Société typographique de Neuchâtel in the 1780s to examine how censorship functioned and how ‘illegality’ was constructed across the various regions of francophone Europe in the pre-Revolutionary period. Where previous studies have largely concentrated upon the size of the underground, this chapter shifts the focus to the multiple layers of the underground book market and, especially, the extent to which its operations were widely tolerated. The chapter argues that the limits of the true underground were not imposed from above but instead emerged through the interactions of all book trade actors, from lowly shipping agents to printers and authors.
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Notes
- 1.
The censorship of books in Europe during the eighteenth century has been the subject of many article- and monograph-length studies over the past few decades. For the European context see especially: D. Bellingradt, ‘The publishing of a murder case in early modern Germany: The limits of censorship in the Electorate of Saxony (1726)’, in Quaerendo 45, 1–2 (2015), 62–107; E. Tortarolo, ‘Zensur als Institution und Praxis im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit. Ein Überblick’, in Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Zedelmaier and Martin Mulsow (Tübingen, 2001), 277–294; La censura nel secolo dei lumi: una visione internationale, ed. E. Tortarolo (Torino, 2011); B. de Negroni, Lectures interdites: le travail des censeures au XVIIIe siècle, 1723–1774 (Paris, 1995). For French books, see: R. Birn, Royal Censureship of Books in Eighteenth-Century France (Stanford, 2012); R. Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York, 1995); J. Freedman, Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe. French Cosmopolitanism and German Literary Markets (Philadelphia, 2012); D. Roche, ‘Censorship and the Publishing Industry’, in Revolution in Print: The Press in France 1775–1800, ed. R. Darnton and D. Roche (Berkeley, 1989), 3–26.
- 2.
This account of the affair has been pieced together from the trial briefs cited within, the police and council records of the Archives de l’état de Genève, Rilliet’s correspondence with the Société typographique de Neuchâtel and H. Beraldi’s En marge du Pyrénéisme, notes d’un bibliophile: L’affair Rilliet-Planta (Paris, 1931). On Théodore Rilliet de Saussure see also J.-H. Rilliet, Six siècles d’existence genevoise: les Rilliet (1377–1977) (Geneva, 1977).
- 3.
See M. Cramer, ‘Les trente Demoiselles de Genève et les billets solidaires’, Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 82.2 (1946), 109–138.
- 4.
Archives d’Etat de Genève (AEG), PCN 13559, Procès Criminels et informations 1780 September 12 Libelle intitule: lettres, pièces et écrits concernant le procès civil Planta Rilliet, fos. 1–13. All documents dated 12 September 1780.
- 5.
T. Rilliet de Saussure, Inceste avoué à un mari, ou exposé rapide de l’innocence et de l’honnêteté, tant absolue que relative, de spectable THÉODORE RILLIET (n.p. [Neuchâtel], 1782), v.
- 6.
Rilliet de Saussure, Inceste avoué à un mari, 25, 43–45.
- 7.
Rilliet de Saussure, Inceste avoué à un mari, 14.
- 8.
Rilliet de Saussure, Inceste avoué à un mari, 31.
- 9.
L. Mettra, Correspondance secrète, politique et littéraire (London, 1788), vol. 13, 272–275.
- 10.
Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel (BPUN), STN MS 1025, Copie de Comptes C, f. 171.
- 11.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 31, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 10 December 1782.
- 12.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 16, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 1 October 1782.
- 13.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 50, Rilliet de Saussure to Spineux (STN foreman), 19 February 1783.
- 14.
BPUN STN MS 1209, f. 301, Louis Rosset to STN, 23 June 1784.
- 15.
BPUN STN MS 1036 (Brouillard D), f. 193.
- 16.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 5, Jaques Rilliet Plantamour to STN, 20 May 1783.
- 17.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 14, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 27 September 1782.
- 18.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 22, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 15 October 1782.
- 19.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 32, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 10 December 1782.
- 20.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 16, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 1 October 1782; f. 31, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 10 December 1782.
- 21.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 16, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 1 October 1782; f. 22, 15 October 1782; f. 31, 10 December 1782.
- 22.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 7, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 20 August 1782; f. 10, 3 September 1782; f. 12, 7 September 1782.
- 23.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 33, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 24 December 1782.
- 24.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 20, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 3 October 1782.
- 25.
MS 1025, Copie de comptes C 1779–1783, f. 163.
- 26.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 35, Rilliet de Saussure to Ostervald, 27 December 1782.
- 27.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 31, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 10 December 1782.
- 28.
See BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 44, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 21 January 1783.
- 29.
J.-H. Rilliet, Six siècles d’existence genevoise: les Rilliet (1377–1977) (Geneva, 1977).
- 30.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 58, Rilliet de Saussure to Spineux, 2 April 1783.
- 31.
BPUN STN MS 1207, fos. 60–61, Rilliet de Saussure to STN, 12 April 1783; f. 62, Rilliet de Saussure to Spineux, 12 April 1783.
- 32.
BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 1, Jaques Rilliet Plantamour to Spineux, 26 April 1783.
- 33.
BPUN STN MS 1025, f. 163.
- 34.
See BPUN STN MS 1207, f. 5, Jaques Rilliet Plantamour to STN, 20 May 1783.
- 35.
M. Schlup, ‘Entre Pouvoir Et Clandestinité: L’édition Neuchâteloise Des Lumières’, in Le Rayonnement D’une Maison D’édition Dans L’europe Des Lumières: La Société Typographique De Neuchâtel 1769–1789, ed. M. Schlup and R. Darnton (Neuchâtel, 2005), 78–79.
- 36.
See BPUN MS 1232, 22 August 1771 and 3 September 1771 for the Questions sur l’encyclopédie and BPUN MS 1095, f. 245, Copie-lettres A, Ostervald to Lentulus, for the Système de la nature. Also see C. Guyot, ‘Imprimeurs et pasteurs neuchâtelois: l’affaire du Système de la nature 1771’, Musée neuchâtelois, (1946), 74–81, 108–116 and M. Schlup, ‘La Société typographique de Neuchâtel (1769–1789): Points de repère’, in L’Edition neuchâtelois au siécle des Lumières: la Société typographique de Neuchâtel (1769–1789), ed. idem (Neuchâtel, 2002), 61–105.
- 37.
L. Seaward, The French Government and the Policing of the Extra-Territorial Print Trade, 1770–1789 (PhD thesis, Leeds, 2013), 56.
- 38.
See M. Curran, Selling Enlightenment: The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe, vol. 1 (forthcoming) for the troubles faced by Swiss printers during the 1780s.
- 39.
P.E. Selwyn, Everyday Life in the German Book Trade: Friedrich Nicolai as Bookseller and Publisher in the Age of Enlightenment, 1750–1810 (University Park, 2000), 214.
- 40.
Selwyn, Everyday Life in the German Book Trade, 245.
- 41.
BPUN STN MS1157, f. 509. Quoted in G. Bonnant, Le Livre genevois sous l’Ancien Régime (Geneva, 1999), 130.
- 42.
See S. Burrows and M. Curran, The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Database, 1769–1794. The current chapter owes much to thinking that emerged during the French Book Trade Project’s early years, and the current author would like to thank Prof. Burrows, as well as technical specialists S. Kattau, H. Merivale and V. Hiribarren, for their invaluable contributions.
- 43.
On the complexity of the French book trade see especially T. Rigogne, Between State and Market: Printing and Bookselling in Eighteenth-century France (Oxford, 2007).
- 44.
R. Darnton, The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1769–1789 (New York and London, 1995). For a sometimes similar methodological approach, also see R. L. Dawson, Confiscations at Customs: Banned Books and the French Booktrade during the Last Years of the Ancien régime (Oxford, 2006).
- 45.
See M. Curran, ‘Beyond the Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France’, The Historical Journal, 56.1 (2013), 89–112.
- 46.
Seaward, The French government, 76.
- 47.
La Belle Allemande is equally sometimes attributed to Claude Villaret.
- 48.
See Curran, ‘Beyond the forbidden best-sellers’, 101.
- 49.
See, for example, MS 1103, f. 195, STN to Prevost, 15 April 1777; MS 1103, f. 135, STN to Magerus, 22 March 1777.
- 50.
BPUN STN MS 1131, f. 71, J.-S. Cailler to STN, 19 December 1774.
- 51.
BPUN STN MS 1103, f. 73, STN to Eggendorffer, 10 February 1777.
- 52.
BPUN STN MS 1103, f. 91, STN to Caldesaigues, 25 February 1777.
- 53.
BPUN STN MS 1103, f. 88–89, STN to Thonnet, 25 February 1777.
- 54.
Schlup, ‘Points de repère’, 100.
- 55.
BPUN STN MS 1103, f. 437, STN to Pomaret, 22 July 1777.
- 56.
See B. Plongeron, ‘Aux sources d’une notion faussée: les langages théologiques de la tolérance au XVIIIe siècle’, in Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme française, 134 (1988), 219; F. Weil, ‘Le marché protestant de la STN’, in Le Rayonnement d’une maison d’édition dans l’Europe des Lumières, 405–413.
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Curran, M. (2017). What Killed Théodore Rilliet de Saussure? Censorship and the Old Regime in France, 1769–1789. In: Bellingradt, D., Nelles, P., Salman, J. (eds) Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53366-7_9
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