VIRTUAL EVENT: BOOK TALK: PIRATING AND PUBLISHING: THE BOOK TRADE IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Please join us for this virtual event:

Book Talk: Pirating and Publishing: The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment

Robert Darnton in conversation with John Buchtel

Wednesday, February 3, 2021, 6:00pm ET

BA Members and VESP holders FREE | Visitors $5

In the late 18th century, a group of publishers stretching from Holland to Switzerland pirated the works of prominent (and often banned) French writers and distributed them in France, where laws governing piracy were in flux and any notion of "copyright" very much in its infancy. Piracy was entirely legal and everyone acknowledged tacitly or openly that these pirated editions of works by Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot, among other luminaries, supplied a growing readership within France, one whose needs could not be met by the monopolistic and tightly controlled Paris Guild. Pirating and Publishing reveals how and why piracy brought the Enlightenment to every corner of France, feeding the ideas that would explode into revolution.

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