Recommended websites by our librarians: A Literary Tour de France

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As of now, we will present at irregular intervals interesting scientific websites recommended by our librarians. Today we’ll start with a “literary tour de France” selected by our subject librarian for french literature.

“On September 1, Robert Darnton launched an open-access website devoted to the world of books in eighteenth-century France: Publishing and the Book Trade in France and Francophone Europe, 1769-1789. The site functions as an electronic book, bringing together a large selection of essays, documents, maps, and illustrations. Among the items available: five hundred secret police reports on authors, letters exchanged by publishers and booksellers, inside accounts of the pirating industry, the diary of a traveling sales rep, and the correspondence of smugglers, along with background essays on every aspect of publishing and the book trade. In showing how books reached readers, the website reveals the extent of their penetration into the social order. It contains best-seller lists, studies of the operations of the book market, and a general analysis of the demand for literature on the eve of the French Revolution. It also makes available a selection of Robert Darnton’s previous writing on the history of books and cultural history.”

– The New York Review of Books

For more information, visit robertdarnton.org or send an e-mail to help@findit.lu.