How Swiss was the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel? A Digital Case Study of French Book Trade Networks

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Should the famous Société typographique de Neuchâtel (1769-1794) (STN) be viewed as a typical and representative ‘European’ publisher-bookseller, a ‘print shop across the border’ that offered the latest product of the mud-raking underground to the French market, or a provincial, peripheral, and Swiss-focused distraction? The question needs revisiting before we both trumpet the value of our recently published French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (FBTEE) database — which recreates the society’s entire knowable bookselling business — and assess its potential for substantially revising scholarly understanding of the eighteenth-century French book trade and, dare we dream, the enlightenment.¹

The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Project and the STN Database

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (FBTEE) database maps the trade of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), a celebrated Swiss publishing house that operated between 1769 and 1794. The database was published online on June 25, 2012 and is available here. It is intended to be a major new tool for literary and historical research in Enlightenment studies, book and business history, and bibliography.¹

Sburrows on Journal of Digital Humanities

How Swiss was the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel? A Digital Case Study of French Book Trade Networks

The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Project and the STN Database