URBAN READING HABITS DURING THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT

When one considers the subject of urban readers and their reading habits in the France of the Enlightenment, one is struck by a development which is usually associated with the evolution of the 18th century as a whole. Sebastien Mercier in a portrayal of Parisian booksellers and readers in his Tableaux de Paris writes: “. . . I t is certain that in Paris people read ten times more now than they did a hundred years ago; when one surveys the multitude of small bookshops scattered everywhere, which, confined in small booths at street corners and sometimes out in the open air, sell old books or some of the new pamphlets that are constantly pouring forth . . . (one notices groups of readers) who stand around the counter as though magnetized; they get in the way of the bookseller who has got rid of all the seats, so as to keep them standing; but this does not stop them from staying for hours on end leaning on the books, and going through the pamphlets, giving their opinion on their merits and their future . . . ” I . I t is clear to the informed observer that Parisians did read, thus confirming an urban tradition which is worthwhile examining over the country as a whole in the light of recent research.

But first we must determine precisely what is meant when we refer to readers and their reading habits. What the historian usually works from is essentially the books to be found either in a bookshop, and the basic document here is the bookshop’s catalogue or inventory; or in private libraries or small collections, most often he works from sale catalogues which represent a selected social level, or better still, from inventories drawn up on the death of the owner, which despite some preliminary sorting correspond more broadly to the original holdings.2 However, urban reading habits cannot be reduced to these common assumptions. There is a whole area of spontaneous reading that

I S. Mercier, Tableaux de Paris, Amsterdam, 1783-1788, 13 vols., vol. 12,

2 P.. Dupront, ‘Livre et culture dans la socikti. francaise au 18ime siecle’, in Livre er SociPIP dam la France du XVIIIE SIECLE; Paris-lhe Hague, 1965, 212-217.

I 5 1-155.

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neccls to be looked at again, since the written word is not limited t o the circulation of books and the printed word appears in many guises. The modern literate town-dweller is exposed t o a number of ininiediate appeals to his attention which should not be neglected: among the street furniture, posters, notices and signs constitute iiiimediate reading media capable of conveying innumerable messages whose efficacy needs to be assessed if we are to gain a better knowledge of forms of cultural behaviour. An army recruiting poster may have inspired a young man “of promise and five feet three inches tall” with dreams of social advancement more effectively than the writings of the Chevalier d’Arc. The administrative regulation posted up at street corners no doubt conveyed a sense of the individual’s relations t o authority just as much as did the manuals of the experts. In the playhouse at the fairs the board on the stage announced a forest o r a palace with striking immediacy and the spectators deciphered for each other the signs necessary to their common theatrical experience. For most people reading in the town was contained within the general visual character of the street to which words and images made a significant contribution.’ The growth of the town, the need t o improve the movement of goods and ideas was instrumental in the widespread adoption of certain modes of reading; street names, which during the Revolution the Abbk Grkgoire wanted to use t o standardize urban topographies, and the numbering of houses, which took a long time t o become established, both made common the practice of deciphering which would not form part of urban education proper until the 19th century. Both methods of location have a considerable educational importance.

Just as the reading media cannot be restricted t o the book or even the printed word, it is equally certain that hand-written books and the countless manuscripts constantly being accumulated in the fields of professional and administrative activity must be taken into account. The pen was still a valiant rival t o the printing press; a fact fortunately borne out by the archives! But the familiarity of the town-dweller with this kind of reading has barely been

3 J.C’. Perrot. Genese d’une ville moderne, Caen au XVIIIe siecle, Paris-The Hague, 1975, 2 vols.. vol. 2, 664-667; J . Pronteau, Les numerotages des rues de i ‘uri,~, Paris, 1966.

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investigated, although i t is decisive in clarifying our understanding of everyday usage. Educational emancipation was also the consequence of the careful preservation of family papers: marriage contracts, wills, personal or business correspondence, sometimes accompanied by the possession of a great deal of specialized material. I f we limit our attention to the lower sections of Parisian society i t is of interest to note a contrast between the behaviour of wage-earners, labourers and casual workers, and that of servants.“ Among the former in the time of Louis XIV, less than a quarter of the inventories drawn up at the time of death show that they kept legal and other papers; in the reign of Louis XIV i t is barely a third. By contrast, in the latter group the indications of regular involvement with reading and writing are present in more than half of the wills from 1700 onwards and in two thirds on the eve of the Revolution. Here, then, is a practice recognizably connected with a profession - reading and writing can alone secure a good position, said Madame de Genlis - and one whose general adoption varies within the social spectrum. This yardstick allows us to qualify the rough-and-ready indications provided by the study of signatures, which shows that more than three-quarters of servants were literate at the beginning of the century and 90% by the end of it; over the same periods 45% and 60% of wage-earners respectively could sign their own names. The agreement of these results emphasizes the progress that took place in the course of the century, and perhaps indicates the wide-spread aspiration among the people for promotion through the skills of reading and writing.

In the urban community the hierarchy of the signature, itself the sign of a basic education if not of belonging to the privileged world of knowledge, was the result of professional specialisation, of economic position and family origin each of which gave an

4 D. Roche, F. Ardellier, R. Arnette, ‘Inventaires aprPs deces parisiens er culture materielle au XVll le siecle’, in Actes du Colloque, /es AcfesNofaries du XVe. au XlXe siecle, Strasbourg, 1978 (awaiting publication) for the method; F. Ardellier, Les dornesriques parisiens d’apres les invenlaires apres deces au XVIIfe siecle, Memoire de maitrise de I’Universite Paris V11, 1977, and R . Arnette, Les classes inferieures parisiennes d’aprPs les inveniaires aprPs deces au XVfIIesiPcle, Mernoirede maitrise de I’Universite de Paris Vl1, 1977, for the principal results.

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advantage to the traditions of a particular trade.5 Can the same be said to be true of reading? The variety of uses to which reading is put is infinite, professional and practical, the gathering of commercial and political information, the concern for knowledge and promotion, the wish to dream or be entertained, all stimulate in a complex fashion the desire to have access to books if not to possess them. In other words, are there not certain types of reading that define educational levels, and how far does the presence of books determine a certain threshold of education more precisely than does a form of literacy which is often no more than a basic necessity of work? I t is possible to attempt a partial answer to these questions if, to the two variables affecting reading which have already been emphasised is added a third essential dimension which is usually neglected or unrecognised, that of the spaces for reading in the towns.

The relationship between the presence of books and the space in which they are put to their diverse uses casts light upon the manner in which social, political and educational organisations exist as invisible and abstract entities, and structure the practices of the educated and of the mass of the people. Three models for reflection propose themselves: the spaces of production and sale, those of private or semi-private reading, and finally the place which is proper to the book, the privileged space of conservation and circulation, the library. There is, of course, no clear division between these three models, and their definition is above all a convenient way of establishing an order of priority between the questions to be discussed.

Since the spaces of production - the workshop, and of sale - the shop - constitute the feature common to both production and consumption, it may be of interest to enquire how they accommodate reading. From the beginning the rational ordering of motions was necessary in the printer’s workplace and it brought about a certain number of processes which modified habits with regard to spelling, punctuation, and hence the readability of texts as it was determined by the quality of the characters, page-setting

5 R . Chartier, M . M . , Compere, D. Julia, L’educulion en France du XVIe au XVIllr s.. Paris, 1976, 102-104.

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and corrections.6 From the incunabulae to the books of the 18th century typographical space, hence a certain manner of reading, grew more aired and rationalised, the analytical spirit gradually grew more dominant in the display of the title, page lay-out, the setting of the text and of the system for registering the impression. The innovations which in the course of three centuries became general in typography brought about new silent and speedy forms of reading, and consequently the promotion of new attitudes towards the book which from then on tended to be seen less as a ritual object of meditation than a means to utilitarian experience, and thus a consumable and perishable product. I t is evident that this general tendency was not equally sharp in every workshop, and we must examine closely habits and practices in places as different as the workshop at Auxerre described by Restif and the printing firm in Neuchitel studied by R. Darnton and J . R y ~ h n e r . ~ Less known still the bookshops have other functions, the display and sale of books naturally, but also a sociable atmosphere and direct access to them. These have been described by Mercier, and the reading rooms in Paris and the provinces and the role of some booksellers at the beginnings of learned societies can also be quoted. Thus in Caen the founders of the academy “to read the gazette and see new books”, Moysant de Brieux, Grentemesnil, de Primont, Hallery and de Vignemand could be found at Le Bourgeois’s bookshop.u Altogether it would be possible to reconstitute the presence of books in towns and see how the spaces devoted to books were modified. A geography of booksellers and its relations to basic education revealed by signatures, and to the presence of books as revealed in the inventories of wills would allow us to gain a better knowledge of the channels around which books circulated daily and their social ramifications. Thus in Paris almost all points of production and sale were permanently concentrated for more than

6 H . J . Martin, ‘Pour une histoire d e la lecture’. Revue Francaise d’Histoit-e du Livre, no. 16, 1977, 583-610.

7 R . Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment, A publishing history of the Encvclopedie (awaiting publication); J . Rychner, ‘A I’ombre des lumieres : coup d’oeil sur la main d’oeuvre d e quelques imprimeries du XVIlle siecle’, Revue Fruticuise d’Histoire du Livre, no. 16, 1977, 61 1-642.

E. de Formigny de la Londe, Documents ine‘dits pour servir a I’Hisioire de I’unc~ierrnc~ Acudetnie Royule des Belles Lelires de Caen, Caen, 1854, 9-10.

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three hundred years in the heart of the capital, in the rue St. Jacques, on the quays of the Seine and the slopes of the Montagne Ste G e n e ~ i e v e . ~ Urban growth and the extension of new and rich quarters did not bring about any substantial change in this distribution which saw a coincidence of educational geography in the presence of schools and university colleges and the localisation of bookshops. In contrast, in a medium-sized town like Le Mans, the location of bookshops and printers’ shops changed over the years; concentrated in the parish of St Julien and the main street in the 17th century, around 1700 they became dispersed throughout the business and professional quarters of the new town. There is a precise correlation between the high educational levels (the literacy rate always greater than 2/3); the presence of numerous libraries in estates (2/3 of the books inventoried come from parishes which are rich in booksellers), the implantation of cultural institutions and the location of Le Mans bookshops.lo

The private spaces devoted to books raise other questions. Where are they read and how? Where are they kept and how? These questions raise a different type of consideration of their utilitarian role, books as worktools, their function as an object of prestige which confers upon it a ritual cultural value, and their use as a means of escape and devotion. In the intimate and specific relationship that each reader entertains with his books the setting in fact counts for little.11 Obviously it is shown by painters where it expresses the sense of what is shown, whether it be the validation of a bare and enclosed space as the ideal place for meditative reading (Carpaccio and St. Jerome), or, inversely, the grasp of the world that books read and written in the privacy of the study provided (Aved and the Marquis de Mirabeau). But in ordinary everyday life, as it can be perceived through reading a series of notarial

9 H . J . Martin, Livre, pouvoirs el sociklk u Paris au XVIIe siecle, Paris-Geneva,

10 J .P. Epinal, L’imprzmerieef la tibrairie au Manspendant le XVl l l e s., Memoire

11 R . Chartier and D. Roche, ‘L’Histoire quantitative du Livre’, in Revue

1969, 331-345, 394-395, 699-721.

de maitrise de I’Universite du Mans, 1975.

Fruncarse d’Hisloire du Livre, 1911, no. 16, 471-502.

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inventories, books are to be found all over the house.l2 Only the rich and minutely detailed collections are kept apart, usually in specially made furnishings which interest the historian of presentation and conservation technology; far less frequently are they kept in a room reserved for study. Commonly the single book or one represented by a number of copies has no pre-determined resting place, and wanders into the kitchen among the piles of crockery, hides in cupboards among the linen or remains where its reader knows to find it . The patient mapping out of these locations and refuges allows us to determine several uses: a professional use which groups books in use in a corner of the shop or on the shelves of the office; a devotional use which places books of hours and missals near to objects of piety, and the head of the marriage bed - or less often, and at the homes of the rich only, in the chapel; and finally, for entertainment, a use which scatters in disorder the commonplace volumes of novels, plays and stories so rarely found in the lists drawn up by the greffier.I3

In the towns of the Enlightenment educational and cultural investment paid particular attention to books. Four privileged places became centres of efficacious cultural development: the school, the bookshop, the library and the society devoted to learning.

Elementary schools, colleges run by the religious order and universities were each in their own right the arenas in which an urban superiority in cultural matters was first acquired. Under the eye of the Church to begin with, then under pressure from the town councils and notables, and finally in response to the requirements of urban administrative and professional practice, the towns of the modern world accumulated an unrivalled educational heritage. The charitable impulse, together with the desire to control and repress which characterises the relief work of the Catholic reformation

12 M . Marion, Recherches sur les bibliolhPques privPes a Paris uu milieu du XVll les . , 1750-1759, Paris, 1978; D. Roche, ‘Les lectures de la Noblesse dans la France du XVll le sickle’, paper read to Dusseldorf colloquium, 1977 (awaiting publication).

13 D. Roche. op. CII. Among the Parisian nobility of filty inventories analyced a quarter show books everywhere, in the kitchen, in the drawtng-room, in differ- ent rooms; one third show them to be in studies and libraries, another third in bedrooms and adjoining rooms, and the rest in the antichambers.

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added to what had already been achieved a tight network of charity schools and the age of the Enlightenment inherited the whole.14 Thus in Paris in the middle of the 18th century there were six hundred institutions devoted to elementary education: 3 16 small fee-paying schools run by the Chapter, a hundred or so charity schools, some fif ty choir schools attached to parishes, another hundred-odd run by master writers, to which must be added the houses opened by the religious orders. Although this is already a substantial investment, it is not exceptional: La Rochelle, a town of less than 20,000 inhabitants, had at that time some twenty elementary schools; Privas in Languedoc with less than 3,000 inhabitants had a parish school and a school run by friars; in the nine towns in Western France studied by J . Queniart, educational provision existed everywhere but was uneven: schools were numerous in Caen and Rouen, they were coming on well in Rennes, St Malo, Brest and Nantes, but they were stagnating at Le Mans, Angers and Quimper.I5 Here the decisive factor at the end of the 18th century was the ability of the religious orders to face up to the crisis affecting them, a crisis which brought about a decline in the education of the poor.

This fact proves the difficulty of linking directly the density of the school network to the growth of a potential reading public and bookshop clientele. The relation between access to the rudiments of knowledge and entry into the world of readers and owners of books is not easily defined. In the eyes of the revolutionary administration there was a simple opposition between town-dwellers 1s a whole, educated by the very demands of urban life which was dominated by cultural exchange, and country-dwellers who remained ignor- ant.Ih The statistics of school attendance and the rates of literacy which, when drawn up for the country as a whole confirm this calm certainty, d o not however appear to indicate anything more than a very imprecise state of affairs, for there is no equality of resulls between schools in different towns, nor in a single town. Urban

14 K . Chartier, M.M. Compere, D. Julia. op. cii., 4 5 4 5

15 I . Queitiart. Culrrtre ei Socic'tP urbalnes dmis la France de /'Otre.cr ail XVl l l c 5 . .

L.ille. 1Y77. 2 vols.. vol. I , 282-334.

16 F. € w e t and I . Ozoiif. Lire el Ecrire : alphaheii.soiion dcs Fruytris dt, Calviti u J i i k c F e r r ~ . Paris, IY78. 2 vols. . v o l . I . 229-26Y.

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superiority erases the differences between men and women, but does not efface the influence of social background. The size of the town, its activity and its socio-professional hierarchies complicate considerably a picture in which the large towns are favoured over the small ones, the towns with a traditionally dominant administrative, judicial, religious and university function are better educated than the commercial and industrial centres, and in which the towns where the social groups used to writing are numerous perform better than d o those into which the illiterate immigrants crowd. Within the towns the geography of literacy opposes the inner parishes where the upper-class citizens lived, t o the outer quarters and outlying districts populated by the poor, the semi-rural and those dwelling on the margins of urban society.” The capitalisation of elementary knowledge is a necessary but insufficient condition for identifying the contours of the body of readers with that of the entire urban population. As a general rule it points to the privileged position of the native town-dwellers in contrast with the country-dwellers of nearby areas and the immigrants who increased urban population. This is the case in Lyon and Bordeaux,I8 but this advantage is not always the case, as is shown by Caen, the towns of Upper Provence and of Northern France, and the Breton ~ 0 r t s . I ~ The make-up of urban readers is thus determined by many factors, in which the history of each town and the state of educational development play a complex role. The study of elementary education can however determine the maximum diffusion achieved by books: 50 to 60% in the case o f the male population and 30 t o 40% in the case of the female population.

17 R . Chartier, M . M . Compere, D. Julia. op. cit., 94-96,98-99; F. Furet, J . Ozouf, op. cit., 240-245.

18 M . Garden, Lyon et les Lyonnais au XVIIIe siecle, Paris, 1970, 247-248; J .P . Poussou, ‘Recherches sur I’alphabetisation de I’Aquitaine au XVIIle sikcle’. in

F. Furet and J . Ozouf, op. cit., vol. 2, 294-351, J .P. Poussou discerns in the second half of the 18th century a stagnation similar to that discovered in Western France after 1750 by J . Queniart.

19 J.C. Perrot, Genese d’une ville moderne, Caen au XVIIIe si8cIe. 2 vols., Paris, 1975, vol. 2, 310-31 I. M . Vovelle, ‘Y a-t-il eu une revolution culturelle au XVllle siecle?’ (Concerning popular education in Provence) Revue d’flistoire el con- trmporurne, 1975, 89-141; F. Furet and J . Ozouf, op. cit., vol. I , 242-243; J . Queniart, op. cii. , vol. I , 109-205.

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The colleges, faculties, specialised institutions and seminaries mark the upper limit at which the consumption of books was in principle a part of daily educational habit. Their almost exclusively urban situation reinforced the advantage of the towns, even if there existed notable differences from region to region, town to town, and between districts of the same town. The most significant feature at this level is that education is identified with reading which is indispensable to the knowledge of Latin, antiquity and rhetoric, the rules of law, medicine and science, and the requirements of theology. Only a minority of the population which is in a position to receive an education has access to it at this level and will comprise the main body of the cultural ruling class. I t may seem a risky business to try and evaluate it , but this must be tried if we wish to maintain a correct perspective. The figures known for the last years of the Ancien Regime allow us to tackle the matter, even if they do not remove all the uncertainties. Let us consider the colleges. D. Julia has counted something under 350 of which 175 provided a complete course, preparing their pupils for the universities; their position was to the advantage of the large towns (90% of towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants had a college, but only 10% of those with 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants) but thus recognised the weight of administrative, judiciary and religious traditions (all those colleges offering a complete course were found in towns which were the seats of sovereign courts, intendants and universities). After a history of more than two centuries the Charter of the colleges expressed the logic of a permanent dual purpose: to produce clerks and administrators, and to transmit to the heirs of the ruling classes and the happy few chosen from the ruled the awareness of belonging to the same group who possess both power and knowledge, as well as a sense of social hierarchy.20 Altogether the totality of colleges of every order, of military and technical schools and the numerous boarding and private schools which flourished after 1750-60 accounted for between 150,000 and 200,000 pupils throughout the kingdom, hardly 1% of the whole population, and between 10 and 15% of the population able to

20 R. Chartier, M . M . Compere, D. Julia, op. cif., 179-196; W. Frijhoff and D. Iulia, Ecole el SocietP duns la France d’Ancien Regime, Paris, 1975, 35-40.

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attend school.21 In this group the urban proportion shows the towns have the advantage but less decisively than at the elementary level: the college pupil is often a stranger to the town and to a significant extent comes from the country or from the smaller towns that form the catchment area of the colleges. So it can be presumed that the probable number of urban readers can be fixed at the numbers of pupils graduating to higher grades and of pupils leaving the small schools, that is to say between 500,000 and 600,000 and 150,000 to 200,000 persons respectively. The reading public of France only exists at the apex of the population pyramid.

It is among this more or less cultivated public that the customers of the booksellers and printers are to be found. Urban supremacy in this area and even more so the increasing importance of Parisian booksellers are well-known facts. The requirements of a centralising monarchy, the progress made by education under the Crown, the desire to limit economic risk and control the circulation of printed material as effectively as possible, all favoured the prospects of publishers and booksellers in Paris from the end of the 17th century. An analysis of the investigations carried out by the Chancellory of the years 1701, 1764 and 1777 defines the centres of concentration and emphasises the massive advantage enjoyed by large towns in the field of publishing.22 Throughout the century some 150 towns had at least one active printer’s shop, but only those with a population in excess of 10,000 inhabitants - about sixty - had a publishing record which went beyond the provincial norm and offered for sale anything other than religious books, litigants’ pamphlets, school books and popular literature. Most of the production came from some ten centres and the capital which was only rivalled in the field of pirated editions by the commercial tenacity of Lyon and Rouen, to a lesser degree by Bordeaux, Caen, Troyes, Toulouse and Strasbourg, and lastly, on the frontiers by Avignon. The fact that all towns were not equally well equipped

21 D. Roche, Le SiPcle des LumiPres en Province, Paris-The Hague, 1978, 2 vols., vol. I , 189-192.

22 F. de Dainville, ‘La geographie du Livre en France de 1764 a 1945’. L e Courrier Gruphiyue, 1951, 1 and 2, 43-52 and 33-36; C. Lammette-Claverie, ‘La librairie frantaiseen 1700’, RevueFran$aised’HistoireduLivre, no. 3 , 1972, 3-43, no. 6, 1973,207-233; R . Chartier, ‘L’imprimerie en France a la fin de I’Ancien Regime, I’tiat general des imprirneurs de 1777’, ibid., no. 6, 1973, 253-279.

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creates a hierarchy among them which deserves to be studied on a national level. I n Western France Rouen and Caen came at the head of the list because they were heavily populated and had a cultivated elite, but Rouen had the advantage because it was favoured by its commercial traditions. Rennes, with its parlement and its institutions, was penalised by its geographical position, removed as it was from the main thoroughfares. Le Mans, Nantes and Angers formed a middle group, Quimper, Brest and St Malo came far behind because of the lack of importance of facilities. In this network set up at the end of the reign of Louis XIV things changed little in the course of the century, Rouen alone having a substantial production, both official and prohibited; the other centreg served as relays for the Paris booksellers, in particular Lyon and Rouen, and distributed local daily printings. The urban market varies according to the requirements of the local clientele and a wider distribution in which the different factors of urban influence over the surrounding region and beyond combine. This classification can be found in the composition of booksellers’ stock. Some, more common in provincial centres and towns with a large book trade, remain abreast of scientific and philosophical trends, add to their holdings of up-to-date works on economics and politics, and keep up with the latest titles of Parisian and foreign literature; others, remain completely traditional up to the Revolution and are happy to satisfy the requirements of the majority. So in the towns as in the countryside the extent of popular literacy and the existence of a cultivated klite are the indices which determine a geography of reading habits which must however take into account other means of access to books.

Daniel Roche University of Paris I

Translated by A. Strugnell University of Hull

(Thk article wil l be concluded in our Autumn number. Editor.)

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