the Endpapers: Five French Texts with Paper Using Printed Waste as Endpapers, and the Influence of on the Eighteenth-century Trade

Margaret Lock*

Before the nineteenth century, virtually all paper was handmade, and relatively more expensive than it is today. As a cost-cutting measure, bookbinders routinely reused paper that others had discarded, such as pages from account and other manuscripts; ‘spoils’ (sheets rejected by printers due to overruns, serious misprints or other errors); pages from unwanted printed books; old newspapers and the like. On leather bindings, such paper might be used for lining the boards, and would be hidden under plain or marbled endpapers. On cheap bindings, however, which used paper as the covering material, the binder sometimes did not disguise the use of waste paper for endpapers and covers. When they were made, many paper bindings were intended to be temporary (a reliure d’attente). The French book trade used the term carton for paper bindings using boards, and broché for bindings using a sheet of paper as a cover, irrespective of whether they were sewn through the fold or stitched through the margin.1

* Margaret Lock is an independent scholar. She has written Materials and Techniques 1700-1920 (Toronto: Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, 2003), and Trade Bookbindings in Cloth, 1820-1920 (Kingston, ON: Queen’s University , 2005). She is currently researching Pinnock’s Catechisms and other English school-books c. 1800 to 1850. She is grateful to Professor Nicholas Pickwoad for kindly reading the manuscript of this essay and making valuable suggestions and corrections and would also like to thank the three anonymous readers for their comments. 1 Michèle Valerie Cloonan, Early Bindings in Paper: A Brief History of European Hand-made Paper-covered Books, with a Multilingual Glossary (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1991), 108, 109. Paper bindings vary in structure, style and quality; some were meant to be permanent bindings. There is still no precise and universally accepted terminology for the various types of bindings that use only paper as a covering material. Those bindings described as carton or “paper over boards” have two boards (as in a leather binding). These boards may be made of sturdy paper (about as thick as the box-board used in modern packaging); or a pasteboard, made from laminating (with paste) sheets of already-made paper; or millboard (manufactured in various thicknesses). In contrast, cartonnage

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This essay examines five paper bindings dating between 1742 and 1794 which use old manuscripts or printed waste as endpapers, and which are preserved in the W.D. Jordan Special Collections and Music Library at Queen’s University, Kingston. Relatively few eighteenth-century paper bindings survive in public collections, as many of these books have been rebound. Books in paper bindings have sometimes been admired and exhibited for the decorative paper on their covers, but those with commonplace covers have generally been ignored. Those with waste paper as endpapers are generally regarded as being particularly low grade bindings, unworthy of study. Setting aesthetics aside, is there any knowledge to be gained by reading waste paper endpapers? If they can be identified, they may shed light on where and when the binding was done. Yet there are problems in identifying the source of the binder’s waste, where and when this paper was first printed. Other information, such as when it was discarded, is needed for an understanding of how the book trade operated, but can only be conjectural. Even when the waste paper can be identified, and there is a plausible link to the text block, it is impossible to be certain that the explanation is correct. There are many imponderables. For example, the waste paper merchant may have stored the paper for years before transporting it many miles to the buyer. So although some of these endpapers illustrate aspects of eighteenth-century book , and some even add to our knowledge of the book trade, many bindings remain inexplicable. However, there is a bonus in this study of waste paper as endpapers. Occasionally the endpapers themselves contain texts of unexpected

bindings are made from a single sheet of hand-made cover paper which was sometimes laminated to make a thicker board, folded around the text block. The text block of paper bindings using boards were usually sewn through the spine folds onto cords or tapes (supported sewing). To be done neatly and efficiently, this technique requires a sewing frame. Many of these bindings show a level of skill that suggests that they were made at a bindery. The text blocks of broché bindings could be sewn in the same way, but were more often sewn through the folds without cords (unsupported sewing), or stitched, (stabbed through the inner margin). Both types of paper bindings (those using boards and broché bindings) which were intended as temporary bindings had the deckle edges of their text blocks left uncut. (Information on terminology from Nicholas Pickwoad, Feb. 2010). Broché bindings could be produced by booksellers or their assistants at the back of a shop: David T. Pottinger, The French Book Trade in the Ancien Regime, 1500-1791 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 330.

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interest. An intriguing example is on my last book, whose endpaper is a cancelled leaf of Saint-Simon’s Mémoires.

Figure 1. Histoire critique de la philosophie (1742), showing the upper cover of vol. 2. Height: 18.3 cm.

My first example is a 1742 London imprint with endpapers from at least one discarded account book (Figures 1 and 2).2 Histoire critique de la philosophie, ou l’on traite de son origine, de ses progrez, & des diverses révolutions qui lui sont arrivées jusqu’à notre tems by “Mr. D***” [André-François Deslandes]3 had been first published in Paris in 1737. Although this first omitted the more controversial part of Deslandes’ treatise, it was nevertheless banned by the French government in July 1737.4 Prohibiting the reading of a text usually

2 Rare B74 .D4 1742, English Short Title Catalog (hereafter ESTC) n33280. 3 Deslandes is also called André-François Boureau-Deslandes (1689 or 1690-1757). 4 Françoise Weil, Livres interdits, livres pérsecutés, 1720-1770 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999), 34-5, No. 108. A complete edition (4 volumes) was published in “Amsterdam” in 1754-56. Weil does not list a 1742 edition, nor are there copies of this edition in the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale, or major

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Figure 2. Title-page.

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stimulated demand for the book. However, it is initially surprising that a London bookseller would finance the of a three- treatise in French on the history of philosophy. Although some in the middle and upper ranks of English society could speak and read French fluently, the number likely to buy such a book would be small. A few of them might have remembered meeting Deslandes when he had visited London in 1713 (he mentions meeting Newton in the Histoire critique).5 However, a more likely local audience was the French-speaking population in London, of merchants, diplomats, and Huguenot refugees (Protestants, many of them artisans, who had fled France to escape persecution after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685).6 The bookseller-publisher, Jean Nourse, had been active as a bookseller in London from 1731,7 so could assess local demand. He cannot have hoped for sales of more than 200 copies in London.8 There is also a possibility that the imprint is false. Eighteenth-century French bookseller-publishers of texts which they knew would not pass French censors routinely had the printer substitute a false location and bookseller’s name on the title-page in order to protect the author, the printer and the bookseller.9 The first

French . Deslandes’ two earlier books, published in Amsterdam and Cologne, had also been declared “prohibé” by French government censors. 15 A.-F. Deslandes, Réflexions sur les grands hommes qui sont mort en plaisantant, ed. Franck Salaün (Paris: Champion, 2000), 11. 16 David J. Shaw, “French-language Publishing in London,” Foreign Language Printing in London, 1500-1900, ed. Barry Taylor (London: British Library, 2002), 101-122; on 120. The number of French booksellers in London was highest in the decades around 1700. 17 H.R. Plomer, G.H. Bushell, E.R. McM. Dix, Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1726 to 1775 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932, reprinted 1968), 183. Nourse took over the bookshop of W. Mears, who had been in business at the “Lamb without Temple Bar” (at the east end of the Strand) from 1713 to 1727. Nourse specialized in French literature and scientific works; he died in 1780. In the fifty years that he was in business, he participated in at least 1138 imprints: James Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450-1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 160. 18 In 1753, Nourse published a children’s school-book, Education complète ou abrégé de l’histoire universelle by Marie Le Prince de Beaumont in an edition of 1250 copies, of which he kept only 240. He immediately sold 860 copies to a publisher-wholesaler for export to Holland: John Feather, “John Nourse and his Authors,” Studies in 34 (1981): 205-226; on 215. Nourse’s usual edition size was 1000 copies; Feather, 214. 19 Books which were expected to be banned by the censor were published anonymously so that the author could deny that he had written the book. A

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edition (1737) of Histoire critique de la philosophie had been given the false place of publication of “Amsterdam” by the publisher, François Changuion of Rouen.10 Nourse occasionally financed the publication of such books for the French market, but his name was also falsely used by French publishers of clandestine books.11 However, probably Nourse was indeed the publisher. His situation in London was that of many provincial French booksellers: he needed a wide-ranging, varied stock, a few copies of many titles. The most economical way to acquire such a stock was through exchanging sheets of his own publications with those of other bookseller-publishers, by individual trades or perhaps through a book wholesaler. The typography of Histoire critique suggests that it was printed in Holland.12 Both Amsterdam and The Hague did a brisk trade providing “philosophical” (banned) books for the French market.13 Dutch printers were not only more experienced in printing

false location would allow him to claim that his manuscript had been stolen, and somehow found by an opportunistic printer-publisher. Both arguments could be used to avoid imprisonment. 10 Weil, 34. The text may have been printed in Amsterdam: the paper’s watermark is the arms of Amsterdam, used by papermakers of Angoumois for paper exported to Holland; Raymond Gaudriault, Filigranes et autres caractéristiques des papiers fabriqués en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1995), 81; the woodcut decorations are signed “Bernard Picart,” a Frenchman who worked in Amsterdam from 1711 until his death there in 1733; and there is a dedication to “Monsieur Henri Bicker, Bourgemaitre Regent de la ville d’Amsterdam” in vol.1, [iii]. 11 During 1739-42, Nourse published Mémoires du duc de Villars, pair de France, by Guillaume Plantavit de La Pause in 1739 (Weil, 82, No. 344; the title had been published in Avignon, Rouen and Trévoux in 1735). The false Nourse imprints are Institution d’un prince by abbé Jacques-Joseph Duget, published in Rouen in 1740 (Weil, 51, No. 195); and Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l’esprit humain by Pierre-Daniel Huet, published in Trévoux (north-east of Lyon) in 1741; Weil, 75, No. 297. 12 Printers in Holland commonly used asterisks plus Arabic signature numbers for the preliminary pages, and the signature letter A for the start of the text. Printers in London very rarely used asterisks on the preliminary signatures, and commonly used the letter B for the first text signature. The form of the date on the title-page (in Roman letters, aligned, and without spaces or punctuation between the letters) was far more common in Holland than in France or in England. Also, the page catchwords indicate that it was probably not printed in France; French printers preferred quire catchwords: R.A. Sayce, “Compositorial Practice and the Localization of Printed Books, 1530-1800,” The Library, 5th Series, XXI, 1 (March 1966): 1-45; on 3-4, 6, 17, 38-9, 30-31. 13 Of the 589 clandestine titles listed by Weil for which a location is known and which were published 1720-1770, 148 (approximately one-quarter) were

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French-language books than their London counterparts, they were also cheaper.14 The Anglo-Dutch book trade was well-established, and of some importance to Dutch printers and publishers. Of the total books imported by England from 1700 to 1740, 30% of bound books and 61% of unbound books originated in Holland.15 Nourse had an officially exclusive agency contract with Pieter Gosse, a bookseller at The Hague, and visited him in 1742. However, Nourse also bought books by exchange account from other Dutch booksellers, such as the Lutchmans in Leiden.16 These trade ties make it probable that Nourse had his edition of Histoire critique printed in Holland, imported some of the sheets for his own bookshop, but traded or sold most of the edition to continental publishers, who might substitute their own title-page.17 Although booksellers usually sent books to other booksellers in sheets, some books were sent “stitched”.18 Does the binding on this copy suggest that it was produced in London or in Holland? The three volumes are bound in paper over thin boards (about a millimetre thick), cut flush with the text block.19 It is difficult to determine

published in Amsterdam, and a further 28 had the false imprint “Amsterdam”; 81 (more than one-sixth) were published in The Hague, and a further 14 had the false imprint “La Haye”. 14 Max Fajn, “Marc-Michel Rey: Boekhandelaar op de Bloemmark (Amsterdam),” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 118, 3 (1974): 260-8; on 265. Marc-Michel Rey, a Huguenot from Geneva who was a prominent bookseller- publisher in Amsterdam between 1746 and his death in 1780, exported approximately 75% of his books to France. 15 Giles Barber, “Book Imports and Exports in the Eighteenth Century,” Sale and Distribution of Books from 1700, ed. Robin Myers and Michael Harris (Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1982), 77-105; on 87. In the late 1740s, the embargo on trade with France during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) would have increased British reliance on Holland as a source for French-language books. 16 Barber, 79, 84. Gosse was a bookseller at The Hague from 1710 to 1744; he visited England in 1745 or 1746. A.M. Ledeboer, Alfabetische lijst de boekdrukkers, boekverkoopers em uitgevers in Noord-Nederland (Utrecht: J.L. Beijers, 1876), 64. 17 The half-title and title-page form a separate bifolium. 18 Within France, the most economical means of transport was in bales weighing 50 pounds. Individual customers sometimes ordered books to be sent already “stitched”: Robert Darnton, “Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensibility,” The Great Cat Massacre (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 215-256; on 222. 19 The boards resemble a thick sheet of grey watercolour paper. Such a board (carton bis or brown board) was made from coloured paper and recycled board. It is a lower quality than the carton blanc. Jane Eagan, “Board Making in Lalande’s

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A

B

Figure 3. Cross-section of endpaper construction: (A) Histoire critique de la philosophie (vol. 3, front board). (B) Analyse des ouvrages de J. J. Rousseau (front cover).

the structure without taking the binding apart, but it seems to be as in Figure 3A. The text block was sewn two-up on two cords. The endpaper bifolium was sewn with a stub on the outside; the board was inserted between it and the endpaper.20 The cords were pasted onto the outer surface of the boards. The boards were then covered by a sheet of lining paper (made from a discarded manuscript, probably from the same source that provided the endpapers) which was also pasted to the back of the sections. Then a decorative paper was pasted over this lining paper. On one of the volumes, the two outer papers come a little short at the head, and curl under the boards at the tail; on another, the reverse is the case. The covering paper has a stylized floral design printed in a single colour from a woodblock.21 The ink,

Art de cartonnier,” in Looking at Paper: Evidence and Interpretation: Symposium Proceedings, 1999, ed. John Slavin et. al. (Ottawa: Canadian Conservation Institute, [2001]), 95-8; on 96. These boards were cut slightly crooked; that of volume 2 is 2mm higher than the other volumes. The text block edges were not trimmed, but the bolts have been opened. 20 However, on volume 3, the back board was pasted on top of the stub, rather than between the pastedown and the stub. Outside-hook endleaves are not uncommon (information from Nicholas Pickwoad, Feb. 2010). All the other books in this study have the endpaper stub folded around the adjacent text block signature (see fig. 3b). 21 The paper with its design resembling those for cotton fabric (chintzes) was called “blumen papier” or “kattunpapier.” German firms made a range of decorative

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a purple paste, has since faded to brown in parts; on the spine, the pattern is almost invisible (Figure 1). The paper was likely made in south Germany; many such decorative papers were exported to the Low Countries and northern France, as well as elsewhere. The endpapers themselves are pages from one or more account books. Most of the endpapers are blank, or have only a diagonal line drawn through them. But on three of the endpapers, there are several lines of handwriting, though it is difficult to decipher, and the entries are abbreviated. The entries on the front flyleaf of volume 1 refer to transactions between Maitre Vinault(?) and Grégoire (whose last name has been cut off) on 30 December, 24 January 1686, and 2 March.22 The recto of the back flyleaf of volume 2 may be from the same account book; it too has an entry dated 1686.23 The front flyleaf of volume 2 is more legible than the other endpapers (Figure 4).24 The manuscript text starts with a statement that the shopkeeper owes money for the remaining item(s); this statement is crossed out, followed by a note of the books traded to even the account, “2 dictionnaire royal 4to [quarto format] blanc [in sheets].”25 Next is an entry for M. Bluignard, made on 13 March 1710, with a list of three books. The first may be part of an earlier deal, an “arven [?] de boniface.” This is followed by two folio volumes, “cornelius in

papers, from simple paste papers to the famous brokatpapier (Dutch gilt paper), as shown by the sample book of Georg Christoph Stoy of Augsburg, 1730, now in the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, reproduced in J.F. Heijbrock and T.C. Greven, Sierpapier: marmer-, brocaat- en sitspapier in Nederland (Amsterdam: De Buitenkant, 1994), 37, 38. The pattern on this copy of Histoire critique slightly resembles that of a swatch in the Stoy sample book, third from the top on the second column, reproduced on 37; and a bronzfirnispapier from south Germany of 1720, reproduced as pl. 56 in Ernst Wolfgang Mick, Altes Buntpapier (Dortmund: Harenberg Kommunikation, 1979). 22 The entries seem to refer to objects painted with “orpin” (yellow arsenic). 23 The chain lines of the paper are the same distance apart; the handwriting is similar. The paper is probably French. The watermark on the front endpaper of volume one is: crown/ I, quatrefoil, M in a cartouche/ a bunch of grapes. The papermaker may be related to one listed in Gaudriault, pl. 146, No. 4169: crown/ IM, lozenge, AC in a cartouche/ a bunch of grapes. 24 This is probably from another account book, as the paper is different: the chain lines are 3mm further apart than on the front endpapers of volume 1 and the back endpapers of volume 2. 25 All the entries are followed by “blanc.” The English book trade called books in sheets “white books” or liber albus (information from Nicholas Pickwoad, Feb. 2010).

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Figure 4. Verso of the front flyleaf of vol. 2.

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paulum,” traded for twelve “dictionnaire royal”.26 The next entry is for Madame Thomas, who on 14 March 1710 traded twelve “rudiment” (eight plus four idem [the same]) for two “dictionnaire” and two “apparat royal.”27 Booksellers kept two sets of accounts: one for exchanges with other booksellers, the other for cash transactions.28 This seems to be a page from a French-speaking bookseller’s exchange account. The bookseller had a stock of dictionaries (in sheets), which he traded for a few scholarly Latin volumes (from M. Bluignard) and a dozen of what are possibly school-books (from Madame Thomas, also in sheets). London is the only likely British location for a French-speaking bookseller in 1710. However, I have been unable to identify either a Bluignard or a Mrs Thomas as a London bookseller.29 Waste paper from England was routinely shipped to continental Europe, so locating them in London in 1710 would not be decisive evidence that the binding was done there thirty years later.30 France

26 I have been unable to identify these works. If the entry is “arres de boniface”, it may be a copy of Arrests [or Arrêts, Decrees] notables de la cour de Parlement [law court] de Provence by Hyacinthe de Boniface (published in Paris, 1670, in 2 folio volumes; and subsequently in Lyon in 3 vols. in 1689, and in 5 vols. in 1708). The “cornelius in paulum” may be Commentaria in omnes divi Pauli Epistolas by Cornelius van den Steen (Cornelius à Lapide). 27 Probably either Apparat royal ou nouveau dictionnaire françois et latin, enrichi des meilleures façons de parler, en l’une et l’autre langue, or the more popular Petit apparat royal. Both were printed in octavo format. The former had reached its 7th edition by 1697 (Paris: Chez la Veuve de Claude Thiboust, et Pierre Eclassan). The Petit apparat royal was printed in Paris (for example, 9th ed., C. Thiboust, 1698, and in 1700, 1703, 1704, and 1710), and in Rouen (for example, chez Richard Lallement, 1705; the authors are given as Nicolas Lallement/ Lallemant and Claude-Louis Thiboust). 28 Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: Norton, 1995), 54. Exchange was the most economical way for a bookseller to acquire a varied stock (a few copies of many titles). The exchanges were calculated by the number of printed sheets. 29 Neither Bluignard nor Mrs Thomas is listed in Henry R. Plomer et al., A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers who were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725, ed. Arundell Esdaile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922, reprinted London: Bibliographical Society, 1968). It is unlikely that Mrs Thomas is the widow of Hugh Thomas, who “sold grammars and devotional works” at St. Asaph, north Wales, in 1699, 286. Bluignard is not mentioned in Katherine Swift, “‘The French-Booksellers in the Strand’: Huguenots in the London Book Trade, 1685-1730,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, XXV. 2 (1990): 123-139. Neither Bluignard nor Mrs Thomas is listed in Ledeboer. It is probable that both are booksellers in France. 30 Printed waste was used not only by bookbinders, but by shop-keepers as wrapping paper (particularly for food), and by box-makers and trunk-makers: William

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is a more plausible source for this manuscript waste. Furthermore, the decorative cover paper was more likely to have been used by a binder in Germany, Holland, the Austrian Netherlands, or northern France than in London.31 The owner’s signature indicates that he was a Frenchman (Figure 5),32 but does not give a location or date. Where this copy of Histoire critique was bound thus remains a mystery, but the evidence points tentatively to northern France rather than to London or to Holland.

Figure 5. Owner’s signature, front flyleaf of vol. 1.

The next example could be categorized as either a cartonnage or a broché binding. It is on an anonymous political pamphlet, Influence du despotisme de l’Angleterre sur les deux mondes [1781],33 which was written by Charles Gilloton de Beaulieu (Figures 6 and 7).34 The text

St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 26-27. 31 Information on the trade in waste paper, and that eighteenth-century London bookbinders used marbled papers, not woodcut-printed papers, as decorative paper from Nicholas Pickwoad, August 2009. However, some pamphlets were bound in London using English woodblock printed papers, as well as German papers printed from engraved plates (brokatpapier). 32 The front endpaper pastedowns of all three volumes bear the signature “Champvieux”. 33 Rare DA507 .1781 I6, ESTC w6414. 34 Gilloton (1734-1804) was secretary of the Société littéraire et militaire de Besançon. He was a Freemason; he joined the lodge Les Neuf sœurs in Paris in 1779. His anti-British stance may have been influenced by Benjamin Franklin, who had joined the same lodge in May 1778, and was made Venerable on 21 May 1779. Franklin was in Paris to negotiate loans and military support from France for the American War of Independence. C. Meyer and T. de Morembert, “Guilloton de Beaulieu,” Dictionnaire de biographie française, ed. M. Prevost, Roman d’Amat, and H. Tribout de Morembert (Paris: Letouzey, 1985), vol. 16, 91, 1527. The pamphlet has also been attributed to Beaumarchais.

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Figure 6. Upper cover of Influence du despotisme de l’Angleterre (1781). Height: 20.3 cm.

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Figure 7. Title-page.

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criticizes French foreign policy, particularly what the author sees as French appeasement of British imperialism in North America. Copies of Influence du despotisme were issued with three different title-pages, giving the place of publication as Boston (as in this copy), London, and Paris.35 The back endpaper of this copy, however, provides evidence that the text was likely printed at Neuchâtel (now part of Switzerland), then a principality belonging to the king of Prussia and a centre for the printing of clandestine books for the French market; and that its title-page was likely printed at Besançon, the capital of the province of Franche-Comté (now in Doubs). The explanation for this hybrid lies in the French system of censorship. Under the ancien régime, all texts were supposed to be passed by the censeurs royaux before they were allowed to be printed. Nothing detrimental to religion (such as criticism of the Roman Catholic church, or debate about controversial religious issues), to the king’s authority (such as criticism of the king, the court, and his ministers), or to public morals, was allowed.36 The book trade was subject to frequent inspections by the police, and by designated members of the chambre syndicale or guild of printers and booksellers, to ensure that only approved books were printed.37 Imported books were subject to inspection either at the chambre syndicale office or

Brian N. Morton and Donald C. Spinelli, Beaumarchais: A Bibliography (Ann Arbor, MI: The Olivia & Hill Press, 1988), 225 (as possibly by Beaumarchais). 35 Emil Weller, Die falschen und fingierten Druckorte (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970; reprint of Leipzig, 1864 edition), vol. 2, 214. 36 The avocat général, Joly de Fleury, in a letter of 18 December 1768 to the Chancellor, Maupeou, added that the works of philosophes, by advocating free- thought and changes to the established order, attacked all three bases of public peace: religion, king, and morals. Nicole Herrmann-Mascard, La Censure des livres à Paris à la fin de l’ancien régime (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 45. 37 According to the Code de la librairie, 28 February 1723, print shops, book binderies, and booksellers’ premises and storage areas in Paris were to be inspected every three months. This regulation was extended to the provincial book trade in March 1744, but many cities did not carry out the inspections. Thierry Rigogne, Between State and Market: Printing and in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2007), 38. Police were sometimes involved in demarcation disputes with other local authorities. As well, some provincial printers and booksellers relied on producing pirated editions of new works whose copyrights were held by Paris booksellers. Frequent raids to seize illegal books would have led to bankruptcies in the local printing trade. Officials often preferred to preserve local manufacturing rather than to follow orders from Paris.

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at customs posts (at designated city gates).38 The director of the book trade from December 1750 to October 1763, Lamoignon de Malesherbes, accepted that the government would be unable to eliminate all the clandestine editions. He therefore encouraged the censors to give more “permissions tacites,” and the police inspectors oral permission (“simple tolerance”) to many titles. The police could then concentrate on those publications that were considered most damaging to the government.39 This practice was continued by subsequent directors of the book trade. Periodically, the government increased the penalties for involvement in the illicit book trade (as in 1757).40 Despite these unfavourable conditions, many “underground” presses operated in Paris, and in some cities in the French provinces. As well, printers in countries bordering France produced books for this lucrative market.41 Once they were printed, these “philosophical” books (as they were called by the trade) needed to be smuggled into France, and between cities in France. Booksellers arranged for unbound illegal books to be hidden in the packing or at the bottom of a crate, or to have the books wrongly identified on the bill of lading. Sometimes crates of legitimate books had their sheets interspersed with sheets of illegal ones, a practice called “marrying” or “larding.”42 Porters also

38 Initially, parcels of imported books sent to Paris booksellers were inspected at its chamber syndicale. After 1760, such books were scrutinized by book trade inspectors at customs, who set aside all new titles for the censor(s) to decide if they should be allowed into the city, sent back to the sender, or destroyed. Robert L. Dawson, Confiscations at Customs: Banned Books and the French Book Trade during the Last Years of the Ancien Régime (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006), 3-4, 23, 48. 39 Raymond Birn, “Malesherbes and the Call for a Free Press,” in Revolution in Print: The Press in France, 1775-1800, ed. Robert Darnton and Daniel Roche (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 50-60; on 57. By 1788, more than half the books in circulation in France were those with ‘permission tacite’; Birn, 61. Dawson, 100, lists five kinds of tacit permissions. 40 Following Robert-François Damien’s attempt to kill Louis XV, the Paris parlement passed a number of severe laws against sedition; the death penalty was reinstated for a number of book trade crimes; Dawson, 148. 41 The cities which were centres for printing illegal books included Paris, Rouen, and Lyon (in France); Cologne (Germany); Geneva, Neuchâtel and Lausanne (Switzerland); Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Maastricht (Holland); Brussels and Antwerp (Belgium); and London. These centres also produced pirated editions, as did Limoges, Toulouse, Avignon (then a papal territory), and Lorraine (an independent duchy until it was annexed by France in 1766). 42 Darnton (1995), 17-18.

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evaded customs officials by traveling by back roads. Other booksellers bribed the officials. For example, Jean-Felix Charmet (d. 1782), the most important bookseller in Besançon, cultivated the intendant, M. Bourgeois de Boyues. De Boyues gave Charmet “special passes” for shipments of books, so that they would not be inspected. De Boyues was himself interested in “philosophical” books: Charmet’s bribes to him included illegal books bound in gold-tooled morocco.43 Besançon booksellers depended upon imports from Basel, Neuchâtel, and Lausanne. Such books should have entered France via an official port of entry, the nearest ones being Strasbourg and Lyon. However, the inconvenience of paperwork, and the delay and cost in sending crates of books via these cities meant that many books were transported directly across the border instead.44 Influence du despotisme de l’Angleterre seems to have been printed by two different printers. The title-page is a bifolium (with the cover pasted to the outer leaf); it was printed on a different paper, inferior to that used on the rest of the text. This low-quality paper has no watermark, whereas the paper of the rest of the text bears the watermark of Rémond Caseau, a papermaker near Besançon.45 The title is repeated on page five, as a heading for the introduction, following the table of contents (Figure 8). The leaf containing pages five and six is a cancel; it was printed on the same paper (containing beige-coloured particles) as was used for the title-page. The eleven printers’ flowers used on the title-page and on page five do not match any of the twenty-eight flowers used on the tailpieces in the rest of the text.46 Pages five and six, and another tipped-in leaf (pages 101-2, also on the same inferior paper) were printed in a different type-face

43 Darnton (1995), 35. 44 Rigogne, 212, 60. In 1772, the intendant of Besançon complained of the large number of books being smuggled into the city from Switzerland; Rigogne, 209. Neuchâtel is about 90 km east of Besançon. Legally, as a new foreign imprint, a copy of the work should have been sent to Paris to be examined by the censors there before the work was sold in France. It is unlikely that this was done. 45 The watermark is a bunch of grapes beside a circle enclosing a bird, a banderole with the words “S. Joannes,” and a hand emerging from a sleeve (?); the counter- mark is “Caseau Besançon”, and the dates 1778 and 1779. Rémond Caseau was a papermaker at Tarragnoz, Besançon, from 1775 to 1780; Gaudriault, 184. 46 I have counted each pair of right- and left-leaning floral sprigs as two ornaments. None of these seven tailpieces is made up of ornaments that occur only in that tailpiece. There are such decorations on pp. 4, 34, 47, 59, 66, 76, and 111.

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Figure 8. Pages 4 and 5; page 5 is a cancel.

from the rest of the text.47 These eight pages could have been printed on a single sheet of paper measuring about 40.5 × 27.5cm, well within the capability of any provincial printer’s press. These cancels suggest that the edition was printed in two locations, but where? If most of the sheets were printed in Neuchâtel, they could have been shipped from Switzerland to France with no title-page, or a false one. Inspectors regularly used lists of banned books arranged alphabetically by title.48

47 The cancelled pages refer to events of 28 May 1754: the murder of Captain Jumonville and eight of his men by a militia from Virginia commanded by the young George Washington; a month later, de Jumonville’s brother, Coulon de Villiers, captured the American fort “la Necessité” (illegally built on French land in the Ohio Valley). The local commander, M. de Contrecoeur, would not allow de Jumonville’s death to be avenged. This incident remained a burning issue in France for the next twenty-five years, epitomizing French weakness and Louis XV’s policy of appeasing the British. The usual way to indicate a cancel was an asterisk in the lower margin. Page 5 (signature A2) has such an asterisk, but page 101 (G2) does not. 48 Daniel Roche, “Censorship and the Publishing Industry,” in Revolution in Print, 4, reproduces the first page of such a list. Censors in Paris sent lists of banned books to book trade inspectors in the provincial cities. In practice, these lists were never complete.

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By giving a false title on the title-page, a pamphlet could masquerade as a legitimate one when it crossed the border or when it reached a wholesale bookseller in France (in this case, probably in Besançon). There, after the shipment was inspected, the proper title-page (albeit with a false place of publication) could be printed and inserted before the pamphlet was sewn. If the sheets had been printed in Besançon, they could have been transported to a bookseller-publisher in a larger distribution centre in France, preferably one where the pamphlet (when provided with a title-page, etc) could be sold directly to customers. However, the endpaper (see below) makes it likely that the pamphlet was bound in Besançon, and that the bookseller-publisher and printer of the cancels was therefore also from that city. Many of the printers of clandestine books in Switzerland were involved in a perpetual struggle to pay their creditors, fend off competition, and evade the law. They produced books and pamphlets between bankruptcies and prison terms. Many of the bookseller- publishers who employed them were in similar straits, some eking out a living by bookbinding, teaching, and running commercial lending libraries.49 These distractions did not result in badly printed books. The audience for banned books and pamphlets was mostly members of the educated urban élite: government officials, bureaucrats, clergymen, lawyers, doctors, and wealthy merchants. They expected a readable, professional product. Indeed, these illicit publications cultivated an air of legitimacy by their production values. Influence du despotisme is embellished with attractive arrangements of printers’ flowers, and was printed with large margins, and well-leaded lines, on good quality paper.50 What of the binding of this copy of Influence du despotisme ? The text block was sewn through the fold with thick, pale brown thread,

49 Darnton, 9. 50 The cost of this paper-bound pamphlet was 36 sols/sous (1 franc=20 sous). A provincial lawyer or a magistrate earned approximately 2000 livres (or francs) annually; F.N. Furbank, Diderot: A Critical Biography (New York: Knopf, 1992), 475. Such a pamphlet would have been too expensive for a skilled artisan: in the 1770s, a master tapestry weaver at the Gobelins factory earned only 23 sous daily; Claude Manceron, The French Revolution, vol. 1: Twilight of the Old Order, 1774- 1778 (New York: Knopf, 1977), 433. Some compositors and pressmen earned between 40 and 50 sols a day, but the amount varied with their ability and the availability of work. Nicolas Contat dit Le Brun, Anecdotes typographiques, où l’on voit la description des coutumes, mœurs et usages singuliers des compagnons imprimiers [1762], ed. Giles Barber (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1980), 143-4.

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without cords. (The next three examples also use this unsupported sewing method, which was cheaper than sewing on cords.) None of the text block edges has been trimmed. The cover is slightly too small for the text block: the paper sticks out beyond the cover at the head, fore-edge and tail, and the boards were cut crookedly. Although this looks like careless work, a simple modification in its construction allows the pamphlet to open well, with less strain on the hinge than there would be to other tight-back, multi-layered paper covers (Figure 9). The cover seems to have been built up by pasting six sheets of paper one on top of each other, starting with a sheet pasted onto the back of the sections and both endpaper pastedowns. However, when the binder pasted the third and fourth sheets of paper, he did not brush paste on a vertical strip in the middle of each sheet. When positioned on the cover, this strip was centred on the spine, and extended about 15 mm to either side of it. As a result, when the booklet is opened, this part of the cover arcs away from the back of the sections and the hinge area. (This procedure created a vertical wear mark on the marbled paper, just visible in Figure 6.) The sixth sheet was of marbled paper to provide a decorative exterior.

Figure 9. Cross-section of the open book, showing the construction of the spine.

Political pamphlets needed to be distributed as soon as possible after they were printed, while the subject remained topical. It is therefore likely that the binding of Influence du despotisme was done in 1781. As political pamphlets were sold by colporteurs as well as by booksellers, at least part of the edition needed to be sold already sewn (as in this example), or stitched, and given a protective cover. At least some of these bindings would have been done where the pamphlet was printed. The binding materials of Influence du despotisme suggest that this copy was bound in Besançon. The back endpaper is of printed waste. Although the leaf has been pasted face-down, the impression has come through on the other side. It can therefore be identified as the title-page of another anonymous pamphlet, La Boussole morale et politique des hommes et des empires,

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dédiée aux nations, by Nicolas-Gabriel Leclerc (1726-98). La Boussole (The Compass) was first published in either 1779 or 1780 in “Boston”; the actual location of the bookseller-publisher has been identified as either Neuchâtel or Besançon.51 Except for the words of the title and the price, the title-page of Influence du despotisme de l’Angleterre is identical to that of La Boussole.52 The same printer was probably responsible for both title-pages. The presence of the cancels suggests that this printer worked in Besançon rather than Neuchâtel. Although the title-page of La Boussole could have been discarded anywhere in France, the most likely location of this printed waste, and of the bookbinder, is Besançon. My next three examples are broché bindings with paper covers using printed waste as the endpaper pastedowns. The first, Tableau de l’Angleterre, et de l’Italie (1788), was published by J.G. Treuttel in Strasbourg in Alsace (now in Bas Rhine) in north-eastern France, and by Volland in Paris.53 It is a translation by Baron Ludwig Benedick Franz von Bilderbeck of England und Italien, written by Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz (1742-1812), and first published in Leipzig in 1785. Treuttel sometimes dealt in illicit books, but this title is legitimate. Its critique of the constitution and economy of the ancien régime is indirect: French readers were invited to compare the situations of Britain and Italy with that of France, and draw their own conclusions. Even so, a French censor had not given it his stamp of approval (which would have allowed the publisher to add “cum privilege” on the title-page, and confirmed his copyright). Instead, it was published with “permission tacite.” The book was probably printed in Strasbourg: the paper, which is of poor quality, bears the watermark “Johan Jacob.” The unsupported sewing was done with fairly thick, dark brown thread through the fold. The cover of each volume is rudimentary, a sheet of marbled paper with a hand-written paper spine label (Figure 10). The interesting feature of this binding is the printed paper waste of the pastedowns, which are made from discarded newspapers. These allow the binding

51 ESTC t1230637/ t165920. Emile Fourquet, Les hommes célèbres et les personnalités marquantes de Franche-Comté du IVe. siècle à nos jours (1929), suggests 1779 at Neuchâtel (the Bibliothèque nationale dates it to 1779); Weller lists two editions: at Besançon in 1780, and in Neuchâtel in 1781. Leclerc (1726-98) was a medical doctor, an author and a diplomat who worked in France and Russia. His Education physique and morale was published in Besançon in 1777. 52 La Boussole had the same number of pages (146) as Influence du despotisme de l’Angleterre, but cost only 30 sols. 53 Rare DA620.A6514 1788.

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Figure 10. Tableau de l’Angleterre, et de l’Italie (1788), showing lower cover of vol. 1. Height 18.7 cm. to be confidently dated to late 1793 or early 1794, about five years after publication of Tableau de l’Angleterre, et de l’Italie. The front pastedown of volume 1 reports that the National Convention had been informed early in September of the loss of Toulon to the English (Figure 11, see final paragraph).54 The back pastedown mentions the negotiations of the two French commissioners at Port-au-Prince, St. Domingo (now Haiti), in a letter of 12 July, received at Amsterdam on 14 September.55 The front

54 This was reported in the Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel No. 247, Paris, 4 September 1793: on 2 September, Soulès (the commissaire du pouvoir exécutif from Marseilles) reported to the National Convention that the Federalists in Toulon had handed the city over to the English navy on the night of 24 or 25 August. Further details followed in the Moniteur for 6 September. 55 The French deputies, Félicité Sonthonax and Etienne Polverel, had arrived in St. Domingo in September 1792. In April 1793 the royalist revolt in Port-au- Prince was crushed, as was another uprising at Le Cap in June. Chronicle of the French Revolution 1788-1799 (London: Chronicle Communications, 1989),

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Figure 11. Title-page and front pastedown of vol. 1, showing book-seller’s label.

pastedown of volume two describes the French campaign in the Rhine Valley in mid-September 1793 (Figure 12, see second column, a bulletin dated 18 September from General Landremont, commander- in-chief of the army of the Rhine).56 By 24 September, Landremont had been relieved of his duties as general, because he had said that the French forces could not hold the Wissembourg lines (Wissembourg is on the border with the Palatinate, Germany). This last event was of great interest to anyone in Strasbourg, about 50 kilometres to the south. The Imperial army under Wurmser broke through the French defenses on 13 October 1793, directly threatening the city.57 The back pastedown of volume three prints an address about the

332, 346. News of these events would have taken at least six weeks to cross the Atlantic. 56 According to the Moniteur No. 268, 25 September 1793, Landremont’s letter was read out in the National Convention on 23 September. It described the attack on the French encampment at Nothweiller, formerly commanded by Darlande (which the newspaper used as the pastedown spells d’Arlande) who had defected to the enemy at the end of August; the destruction of the fort and village of Kehl; and the French attack on Boudenthal (which the Moniteur sometimes spells Botendal, and the newspaper pastedown spells Bunthenthal). 57 Chronicle, 298, 368, 372.

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Figure 12. Front pastedown of vol. 2.

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situation at Port-au-Prince in 8 April 1793. The page number is 1063 (that of volume one’s endpaper is 1002; of volume two’s, 1054), so it is probably from early October.58 Since newspapers are unlikely to have been kept for more than a few months, the binding was probably done between October 1793 and March 1794. If it was bound for Treuttel in Strasbourg, it is an instance of the book trade there persisting under daunting conditions. During this time (particularly in November and December), the city was undergoing the political turmoil of the Terror. Anyone with ties to the émigrés (now allied to the Austrians and Prussians) could be condemned and guillotined. Nor were Jacobins safe. Representatives of both the radical Ultras, who were followers of Hébert; and their rivals, the followers of Robespierre, set up their own revolutionary tribunals and guillotines, and accused each other of treason.59 The disorder of invasion and civil war was not the bookseller’s only worry: there were food shortages;60 and the government’s paper currency, the assignat, had fallen to less than half its face value.61 Moreover, the reading public was deluged with political pamphlets, song sheets, and newspapers, published by both revolutionaries and counter- revolutionaries.62 France had changed radically in the past four years. Did anyone want to read three volumes describing England and Italy

58 The declaration of the former French colony’s independence on 29 August 1793 emancipated the slaves in Haiti. The French commissioners hoped that this would end the fighting, enabling the Haitians to defend themselves against the Spanish and British, as the French navy could no longer do so (Chronicle, 363). 59 R.R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941, 1964), 185-9. The revolutionary court run by one of the radicals, Eulogue Schneider, guillotined thirty people, and fined and imprisoned many more. Schneider himself was guillotined in Paris on 1 April 1794 (Chronicle, 414). The tribunal set up by Saint Just (as a representative of the Committee of Public Safety, and Commissioner of the Army), sentenced 60 people in Alsace from 22 October until the first week of January 1794. Altogether, about one hundred and twenty people were guillotined in Alsace during the Terror (Palmer, 192). St. Just was guillotined in Paris on 28 July 1794. 60 The shortages were due partly to large requisitions for the army and partly to hoarding, exacerbated by the official enforcement of low prices for basic foodstuffs legislated by the Convention on 29 September 1793. 61 The actual value of a 100-livre assignat note was 85 livres (in coin) in July 1791, less than 30 livres from July to October 1793, rising to approximately 45 livres by December 1793, before falling again in the first half of 1794. J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959), 337. 62 Michel Vernus, “A Provincial Perspective” [about the Franche-Comté], in Revolution in Print, 124-38; on 128-32. It was now monarchists and nonjuring

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as they were more than a decade ago?63 The bookseller responsible for having Tableau de l’Angleterre, et de l’Italie bound spent the absolute minimum on the binding. The front pastedown of the first volumes bears the label of G.J. Manget of Geneva.64 The label must postdate 23 April 1794, when he set up as a bookseller on his own. This raises the possibility that the volumes were bound for a bookseller in Geneva. Revolutionaries with strong connections to radical politicians in Paris had taken control of the city at the end of 1792. Until 1795, Geneva was suffering from the Terror, so if Tableau de l’Angleterre, et de l’Italie was bound in Geneva, it was under conditions almost as unfavourable to the book trade as those in Strasbourg. As Manget’s label indicates, he sold books, newspapers and periodicals, vocal and instrumental music, and wine, a not unusual combination for a bookseller (Figure 9). My fourth example has a cover of blue paper, a common cover paper for chapbooks in Europe. In eighteenth-century France, popular literature sold by pedlars was called bibliothèque bleu. Sometimes the endpapers of paper bindings are narrower than the text block, but on this copy, the endpapers fit the text block and the cover paper does not. The latter is about 2cm too narrow at the front and at the back. The text is Analyse des ouvrages de J.J. Rousseau, de Geneve, et de M. Court de Gebelin, auteur du Monde primitive, “par un Solitaire” (actually, by the abbé Charles-François Legros, 1712-1790).65 It was published jointly by Barthélémy Chirol in Geneva,66 and by la Veuve Duchesne, rue Saint-Jacques, au Temple du Goût, in Paris, in 1785 (Figure 13). As the paper’s watermark is a bunch of grapes,

clergy who had their “seditious and libelous” books and tracts printed in Switzerland, to be smuggled into France. 63 No other French edition was published, but Von Archenholz’s book was translated into English twice, and published in 1789 in London, and in 1790 and in 1791 in Dublin. 64 The bookseller and printer Gaspard Joël Manget (1755-1831), after being in partnership from 1784 until 22 April 1794 with his brother-in-law, Jean Paul Barde (as Barde, Manget et Cie), established a bookshop in his own name. He took over the bookshop (and presumably part of the stock) at Rue de la Cité, maison Labat. He sold the printshop in September 1794. J.R. Kleinschmidt, Les imprimeurs et libraires de la république de Genève, 1700-1798 (Geneva: Journal de Genève, 1948), 138-9. 65 Rare B2137.L43. 66 Chirol may have been in financial difficulties. In December 1785, he tried to sell his bookselling business to Jean-François Bassompierre for 50,000 livres. On 24 January 1786, it was bought by Barde, Manget et Cie, for 14,000 livres less than Chirol’s asking price; Kleinschmidt, 88-89.

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Figure 13. Analyse des ouvrages de J. J. Rousseau (1785), title-page and front pastedown. Height: 21.7 cm.

in the style used by papermakers in Caen, Normandy, the book was probably printed in Paris rather than in Geneva.67 Do the endpapers suggest a location for the binding? The printed waste used as the front endpaper pastedown has the word “Frédégonde” in capitals at the tail; this is the catch-word from the prelims of another book, Frédégonde et Brunehaut. The other side (which is pasted to the paper cover) contains an Avertissement (commonly printed at the front of the book, here immediately preceding the title-page) for this historical novel by Jacques-Marie Boutet de Monvel (1742-1812). This is just legible due to the impress of the type through to the verso of the sheet. Monvel was a popular dramatist and actor. Frédégonde et Brunehaut was his only novel, published by Duchesne in 1775. Duchesne also published Boutet de Monvel’s plays in multiple editions in the period 1772 to 1781; but after this, his works seem to have been published by other Paris booksellers. The Legros endpaper thus suggests that the

67 Gaudriault, pl. 105, No. 969, p. 152. The paper bears two dates, 1782 and 1784. After 1780, the typographic style of books printed in Geneva was similar to those of Paris.

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widow Duchesne in 1785 was getting rid of unsaleable stock that had been sitting in the warehouse for ten years, by an author who was no longer one of her stable. The endpaper can therefore be described as being publisher’s waste. However, as other booksellers may have been discarding their stock of Frédégonde et Brunehaut at about this time, we cannot be sure that the binding was made for Duchesne, or in Paris.68 My final example is again in a simple broché binding, with a plain grey paper cover. This political pamphlet, J.-N. Moreau’s Exposé historique des administrations populaires, was published in Paris in 1789.69 Moreau (1717-1804) worked as a librarian and archivist for Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI; he owed his career to a stream of publications supporting royal absolutism. This pamphlet was probably published in the first few months of 1789; it seems to have been designed to influence members of the Third Estate who were choosing their deputies to the Estates General.70 The front pastedown is blank,71 but the back pastedown is of interest, particularly to bibliographers of the duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755), for it is a cancelled leaf of the first octavo edition (1788) of his famous Mémoires.72 This rejected leaf

68 Duchesne’s shop was in an area traditionally occupied by the book trade in Paris. Waste paper discarded by a printer or bookseller could easily be sold and utilized by a nearby bookbinder or bookseller. 69 Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, Exposé historique des administrations populaires, aux plus anciennes époques des notre monarchie ; dans lequel on fait connoître leurs rapports, & avec la puissance royale, & avec la liberté de la nation. Paris, Chez Briand, Libraire, Hôtel de Villiers, rue Pavée Saint-André-des-Arts, No. 22, 1789. Rare DC60.8 M67 1789t. Pierre-César Briand (1763-1834) had become a member of the Paris booksellers guild only in August 1787. He was active as a publisher: in 1788, he asked for 47 “permissions tacites” and 8 “privilèges”. Frédéric Barbier, Sabine Jaratic, Annick Mellerio, et al., Dictionnaire des imprimeurs, libraires et gens du livre à Paris, 1701-1789 (Geneva: Droz, 2007) vol. 1, 304-06 ; on 304. 70 The pamphlet argues that Louis XVI is a patriot king. Traditionally, French kings have not been despots, but have acted for the welfare of their people. The tyrants are the nobility, those privileged remnants of feudalism, who had transferred the entire tax burden to the Third Estate. If Louis is given more power, he (like Charlemagne) will listen to the people’s representatives and redress this wrong (131). In reality, although Louis needed the support of the deputies of the Third Estate in order to reform the French taxation system, he gave them a cold reception on 2 May 1789, three days before the opening of the Estates General. The watermark includes the date 1788. 71 The pastedown and the title-page are a bifolium. 72 Mémoires de Monsieur le duc de S. Simon, ou l’observateur véridique, sur le Règne de Louis XIV, & sur les premières époques des Règnes suivans. A Londres et se trouve, a Paris, chez Buisson Libraire, rue des Poitevins. Et a Marseille,

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may be a unique survival, one of twenty leaves which the censor cut from this edition. Certainly, the French bibliographer J.-C. Niel, in his articles on the 1788 edition of the Mémoires,73 did not locate an octavo with the cancelled (rejected) pages intact, only ones with the cancels (replacement leaves) bound in. Because Saint-Simon’s Mémoires is a classic of the genre, and an important source for the history of the court of Louis XIV and of the Regency, its publication has been more thoroughly researched than that of many other eighteenth-century texts. The publisher of the 1788 edition of the Mémoires was the Paris bookseller François Buisson.74 He must have known of the success of several recent books which had included anecdotes taken (without acknowledgement) from Saint-Simon’s still-unprinted manuscript.75 Buisson decided to

chez Jean Mossy Père & fils, Imprimeurs-Libraires. M.DCC.LXXXVIII. The second state of the title-page of the octavo gives Buisson’s address as: Hotel de Coetlosquet, rue Hautefeuille No. 20, près la rue des Cordeliers. Described in Gérard Formel, Bibliographie descriptive des éditions anciennes et des principales éditions modernes des « Mémoires » du duc de Saint-Simon, de la publication des premiers extraits jusqu’à l’édition du tricentenaire, preface by Edmond Pognon (Paris: Éditions Contrepoint, 1982), 114-8; the first edition of the duodecimo format is described on 111-3. Buisson moved to the Rue Hautefeille sometime in 1788; Formel, 107-8. Although most bibliographers list the duodecimo format as the first edition (preceding the octavo), all four extant copies of the duodecimo examined by Formel give the Rue Hautefeille address on their title-page. Formel thinks that their title-page was printed and inserted along with the cancels; Formel, 108. 73 J.-C. Niel, “L’Édition Princeps des Mémoires de Saint-Simon,” Bulletin du bibliophile et du bibliothécaire (June 1946): 247-61; J.-C. Niel, “Recherches complémentaires sur l’édition princeps des Mémoires de Saint-Simon,” Bulletin du bibliophile et du bibliothécaire, No. 3 (Paris: Giraud-Badin, 1954): 117-41. 74 Buisson (1753-1814) had arrived in Paris about 1782; he became a member of the Paris booksellers’ guild in July 1785. He was one of the most active publishers in Paris: between 1785 and 1788, he asked for more than 100 “permissions tacites” and 30 “privilèges.” Barbier, vol. 1, 350-55; on 351. His open support for the revolutionary movement from the spring of 1789 (as a publisher, and later also as a printer of radical periodicals) suggests that he cared little for traditional authorities and regulations: Carla Hesse, Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 188. 75 [Pierre-Antoine de La Place], Pieces intéressantes et peu connues, pour server a l’histoire (Brussels, 1781); [“Bouffonidor”, perhaps Chevalier Zeno], Les Fastes de Louis XV, de ses ministres, maitresses, généraux, et autres notables personnages de son regne (“Ville-Franche: chez la Veuve Liberté”, 1782); [possibly Armand Baschet], Galerie de l’ancienne cour ou Mémoires anecdotes pour servir a l’histoire des regnes de Louis XIV et de Louis XV (no location, 1786). Formel, 11-64. Pieces

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publish more extensive extracts from the Mémoires; his version would not only include the author’s name, but have official authorization. By having the text passed by the censors, he would ensure that he would hold the copyright on this edition. Even if he could not obtain the appellation “avec approbation et privilege du Roi,” a permission tacite would allow him to advertise the book and sell it widely.76 Buisson’s optimism that the Mémoires would be registered and that the censor would not make cuts was based on a recent relaxation in the censorship office. Since January 1784, books published with tacit permissions had been increasing, in number and as a percentage of the books read by the censor for this purpose.77 As well, Buisson may have been influenced by a decision made at the royal council meeting of 5 July 1788. Immediately afterwards, Louis had invited scholars to comment on the appropriate procedures for convening the Estates General. In order to minimize delay, these pamphlets would not be read by the censor before publication, nor would the authors be prosecuted.78 Even though Saint-Simon’s Mémoires was not a political pamphlet, such a decision suggested that the censorship office was becoming more liberal. Buisson planned to publish the Mémoires in two formats, a duodecimo and an octavo. The existence of both formats with cancels has led to controversy as to which was the first edition. Did the publisher have the two-volume duodecimo typeset, printed and published first (as was usual) and then use it as the copy text for the three-volume octavo?79 Or were both being typeset and printed

intéressantes was based on extracts from Saint-Simon’s manuscript made by Charles Duclos about 1760 in preparation for writing his memoirs (1761-1763). The latter were eventually edited by abbé Soulavie, and published as Mémoires historiques, and then Mémoires secrets by Buisson in 1791; Formel, 13, 78-80, 87. 76 Dawson, 99-100. Royal authorities had more control over new titles printed in Paris than over foreign imports and piracies. Holding the copyright for the Mémoires would not ensure that it was not printed in the provinces, but that the inspectors at the Paris customs barrier would prevent other Paris booksellers importing piracies of this title; Dawson, 35, 139-41. 77 While Camus de Neuville was director of the book trade (6 August 1776-January 1784), only 39 to 41% of requests were granted tacit permission. Under the next two directors, Laurens de Villedeuil (Jan 1784-August 1785) and Vidaud de La Tour (14 August 1785-October 1788), the percentage increased to more than 70% in 1785, and rose to 90% in 1788; Herrmann-Mascard, 37, 115. 78 Hesse, 20. 79 The cheaper format was printed in small type on inferior paper. Once it had been passed by the censor, the more expensive octavo edition could be printed; J.-C. Niel, note on the first edition of Saint-Simon’s Mémoires, Bulletin du

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concurrently? Niel believed that the duodecimo was the first edition, but that very few copies of this edition were distributed. The octavo, though technically the second edition, was the only one to reach the public. Only the octavo edition was advertised.80 Niel inferred that immediately after the duodecimo had been typeset, Buisson decided to have the octavo typeset as well. A censor looked at the text only after the first volume of both formats had been printed. He required changes to the text; these were made. Because Niel had located a copy of the pre-censored duodecimo, he could compare this text with that of the duodecimo and octavo editions as issued with their cancels. For the duodecimo, complying with the censor’s cuts and modifications entailed the rejection of thirteen leaves, and the substitution of twelve leaves; for the octavo, the rejection of thirteen leaves and the substitution of fourteen leaves.81 However, after these cancels were printed, a censor (probably a different one) required further cuts and changes. Discouraged by this expense, Buisson decided not to proceed with the duodecimo. He had the additional changes (the replacement of a further six leaves) made only to the octavo.82 Altogether, censorship required approximately one-tenth of the first volume of the octavo to be reprinted. There are no cancels in volume two of the duodecimo, or in volumes two and three of the octavo. After the first censor had cut so much of volume one, Buisson probably submitted the rest of the manuscript, or a proof, to the censorship office.83 Niel points to the second volume of the duodecimo having 78 fewer pages than the first, and the second and

bibliophile et du bibliothécaire, (Paris: Giraud-Badin, August 1946): 470-3; on 471 and (1954), 140. 80 The publication of the Mémoires was announced in the Année Littéraire for 30 September 1788: 3 octavo volumes, priced at “12 liv. brochés & 13 liv. 10 francs de port par la poste.” Cited by Dr. J. Messine, “A Propos de ‘L’Édition Princeps des Mémoires de Saint-Simon’”, Bulletin du bibliophile et du bibliothécaire, (August-September 1946): 425-6; on 425. Copies of the duodecimo edition are very rare. 81 Niel (1954): 122-33, lists changes for the duodecimo on pp. [title-page], [3]-8, 25-30, 51-2, 67-72, 85-6, and 217-8; on the octavo, 1-6, 31-8, 63-4, 85-90, 105-6, 265-6. Most of the cancels have an asterisk beside the signature letter. 82 The additional leaves were pp. 157-8, 209-10, 237-8, 265-6, 289-90, 299-300, described in Niel (1954), 134-7. 83 Authors could consult censors to ascertain whether certain passages would be accepted; censors routinely read manuscripts before they were type-set: Daniel Roche, “Censorship and the Publishing Industry” in Revolution in Print, 3-62; on 11, 3.

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third volumes of the octavo having 64 and 17 pages respectively fewer than the first, as evidence that the censor made substantial cuts. Niel’s conclusions are partially supported by other evidence, namely, the statement of abbé Soulavie84 in the preface to his edition of Saint-Simon’s Oeuvres (1791).85 Although Soulavie does not mention two separate rounds of censorship, he states that the censor of the Mémoires asked for the assistance of four members of the court nobility in deciding on the version of the text that would be printed. (Presumably this was in order to spread the blame should anyone object to the Mémoires.)86 Soulavie accuses them of being more concerned with protecting the good name of their relatives than with the integrity of the text, and of making cuts that were so excessive that the book lacked a coherent narrative line. If Soulavie’s claim that several courtiers read and made additional cuts to the text is correct, this would probably have happened in September or early October 1788.87 Although Soulavie complains that their greatest concern was to protect the reputation of their fellow nobles, the six additional cancels of the first volume show that more

84 Jean-Louis Girard Soulavie, 1752-1813. Soulavie is generally considered to be a genial hack, a compiler rather than an historian. For example, in 1789, in addition to four more volumes of Saint-Simon’s Mémoires for Buisson, he edited Correspondance particulière du comte de Saint-Germain, minister de la guerre, and Correspondance du maréchal de Richelieu (2 vols); collaborated with the duc de Luynes on Histoire, cérémonial et droits des états généraux de France (2 vols); and wrote Traité de la composition et d’étude de l’histoire. 85 Œuvres complettes de Louis de Saint-Simon, Duc et Pair de France, Chevalier des Ordres du Roi et de la Toison d’or, etc. etc. Pour servir à l’Histoire des cours de Louis XIV, de la Régence de Louis XV. Avec des Notes, des Explications et des Additions à la fin de chaque volume, extraits des Correspondences et des portfeuilles de l’auteur et de plusiers Princes et Seigneurs ses comtemporains [edited by Soulavie]. A Strasbourg chez J.G. Treuttel, libraire et se trouve a Paris chez Onfroy, rue St. Victor no. 11. 1791. 13 vols in 8vo.; vol 1, pp. iv, v; as quoted in Formel, 105. 86 Each work which a censor recommended for publication contained the statement of permission with the name of the censor responsible for it. However, books with tacit permission did not print the censor’s name. 87 The Mémoires seem to have been published at the end of October. In the Correspondance littéraire, Grimm’s report on the Mémoires appears after a theatre review of a comedy at the théâtre italien on 21 October, and the performance of another comedy on 11 November. Grimm-Diderot, Correspondance littéraire philosophique et critique, adressée à un souverain d’Allemagne, pendant une partie des années 1775-1776 et pendant des années 1782 à 1790 inclusivement (Paris: F. Buisson, 1813), Part 3, vol. 4, 627 and 643 respectively. Grimm would probably have reviewed the Mémoires soon after its appearance as it generated “une grande curiosité” (632).

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passages were removed that were critical of the royal family, than of the nobility.88 Soulavie may be referring to cuts in volumes two and three (about which nothing is known). Nobles were highly sensitive to slights upon themselves and their ancestors, and determined to gain satisfaction from the offender. One family had already taken issue with one of Saint-Simon’s anecdotes which had been included in Pièces intéressantes (Brussels, 1781). At the request of the heirs of Guillaume de Lamoignon (whom Saint-Simon’s story aspersed), the publisher printed a retraction, explaining that Saint-Simon’s story was completely untrue.89 The use of temporary, ad hoc censors was not unusual. The director of the book trade could assign a manuscript to be read by someone in the administration who was particularly concerned with its subject matter. Malesherbes used about one hundred such “censeurs de la première distinction.” He found them far more apt to refuse permission to publish a text than the regular censors.90

88 The additional cuts in volume 1 of the octavo removed material which denigrated Louis XIV and undermined his authority, such as his credulity in believing the Jesuits, 158, and an ironic comment about him on 209; and was critical of other members of the royal family, such as Monseigneur’s extravagance, 290. The only passage which the censor removed which criticised a specific noble described a mistake in court etiquette made by the duc de Gesvres, later the duc de Tresmes, 238. The censor also excised a reference to the nobility’s disloyal attitude (the rejoicing of the provinces, Parliaments and judicial bodies [i.e. the landed nobility and nobility of the robe] on the death of Louis XIV, 265; in the same paragraph, the censor retained a sentence describing the relief felt by the common people). 89 Formel, 17-18. In his story about Balthasar de Fargues, Saint-Simon presented Lamoignon (1617-77; first president of the Parlement) as willing to fabricate evidence in order to ingratiate himself with Louis XIV and gain Fargues’ confiscated property. The Lamoignon family had continued to fill various positions in the administration and the army during the eighteenth century. For example, Chrétien-François II de Lamoignon (1735-1789) was a prominent member of the Parlement, and the Keeper of the Seals from March 1787 to September 1788. His father-in-law was a former Keeper of the Seals, and his sons-in-law included Henri-Cardin-Jean-Baptiste d’Augesseau, Charles-Henri Feydeau, and the Marquis de La Force. His cousins included César-Henri de La Luzerne, a member of Necker’s cabinet, and Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, who had been appointed minister of the king’s household in 1775, and a minister of state in 1788. Presumably, it was this type of family, with money and influence, that the censor feared to insult. T. de Morembert, “Lamoignon, No. 1, 6, and 11”, and L. Normand, “Lamoignon, No. 7,” Dictionnaire de biographie française, ed. J. Balteu, M. Prevost and J.P Lobies (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 2001), vol. 19, 584-90. 90 Herrmann-Mascard, 43.

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The text on pages 37 and 38 of the octavo edition is part of the description of Louis XIV, a summing up of his character (Figures 14 and 15).91 Saint-Simon placed this passage immediately after his description of Louis’ death in 1715.

Figure 14a. Back pastedown of Exposé historique. Height: 22 cm.

91 In the Pléiade edition, ed. Yves Coirault (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), and based on Saint-Simon’s original manuscripts, the passage in the 1788 text appears in vol. 5 (1714-1716), 480. Comparison of the 1788 text with the Pléiade edition shows that many passages in Saint-Simon’s original manuscript had been omitted in the version prepared for the eighteenth-century typesetter: for example, that his courtiers nicknamed Louis “le roi de revues”, mocking him for preferring the parade ground and fancy uniforms to real warfare; that he was accompanied by his mistresses while on campaign; that he enjoyed gossip, etc.

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Figure 14b. Stub between pages 128 and 129.

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Figure 15a. Verso of the back pastedown.

Figure 15b. Page 129 with stub.

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What new evidence about the process of censorship does this newly discovered cancelled leaf supply? Niel listed changes made to the duodecimo edition (by comparing the rejected pages and the substituted ones) and to the octavo (by comparing the duodecimo pages to the octavo’s cancels). The pre-censored texts of both the duodecimo (page 30) and the octavo (page 37) are nearly identical, but differ in very small ways, namely in spelling and punctuation.92 These variants seem to be the kind of changes that could be made on the press, by a proof-reader rather than a censor. Niel’s list shows further instances of such minor differences between the editions, and between copies from the same edition.93 More importantly, a comparison of Niel’s list with the cancelled leaf (now the endpaper) reveals that the censor made changes to the octavo which he did not make to the duodecimo. None of these are major cuts, such as the removal of lines 10 and 11 on page 37, “je dis [the duodecimo has a comma after dis] les Condé, les Turenne, & à plus forte raison, tous ceux qui leur ont succédé.”94 Instead, for these additional changes, the censor cleverly changed the tone and meaning of a sentence by substituting a few words. In the passage on Louis XIV’s predilection for reviewing his troops and conducting sieges, instead of “s’y faire retenir à force étaler,” (line 13, octavo; “à force d’étaler”

92 Examples are on line 8, in which “quelquefois” is spelled as one word in the duodecimo, and two in the octavo (on the octavo’s cancel, it is spelled as one word); and line 13, in which “admirable” is plural in the duodecimo and singular in the octavo (it remains plural in the duodecimo cancel and singular in the octavo cancel). 93 Niel’s list of changes to the 1788 octavo edition differs slightly from the text on the cancels of the British Library octavo copy. In the following list, the text in Niel’s copy is followed by the text in the BL copy. On p. 33, flt (Niel)=fit (BL); p. 85: long-temps =long-tems; convenait=convenoit; p. 209, et=&; inspira=imprima; p. 265, roi=Roi; et=&; p. 299, Mde=Mde.; p. 300, Mdelle=Mdlle. 94 This cut (also removed in the duodecimo) removes the accusation that Louis’ generals encouraged him to delude himself that he was a military genius. The assertion that Louis actually had an imperfect grasp of military matters was a serious charge: his misplaced vanity caused him to direct his wars himself, to the detriment of the actual campaigns. The censor may have also wanted to protect the reputation of the generals, Louis de Bourbon, prince de Condé (le Grand Condé, 1621-86); and Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne (1611-75), both military heroes. The Condé had wielded great power and acquired great wealth during the regency of Louis XV; the two present direct descendants of the family were Louis-Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Condé (1736-1818) and his son Louis-Henri-Joseph (1756-1830).

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in the duodecimo), he persists “afin d’étaler” to exhibit his vigilance, forethought and endurance (line 15). At the bottom of the page (line 24): Louis’ “grande mine” was changed to a “bonne mine,” substituting a positive image and eliminating any suggestion that his face was gross or fat. According to Niel, page 31 of the duodecimo was not a cancel. Its text appears on page 38 of the octavo, and in this format there are minor differences between the endpaper (the cancelled page) and its replacement. These changes presumably were made by the censor. In the second paragraph, the phrase “les derniers, sur les Troupes, habillements … ” (line 11) became “ceux, des Troupes, des habillements …” on the cancel. As a result, Louis’ fixation on petty details was minimized. At the end of the same paragraph, “y avoit” in the cancelled page was removed before “long-tems” (line 20). This cut lessens Saint-Simon’s emphasis on the gap between Louis’ experienced, knowledgeable officers and the king himself, who had acquired his information only recently. An unexplained change is one made presumably not by the censor, but by the typesetter. He did not follow the text of the rejected page line by line when resetting the whole first paragraph, but set it so that the paragraph has three fewer word breaks, and at the same time, replaced colons with semi-colons. A single cancelled leaf is not enough evidence to deduce the methods followed by the censor and the printer. However, a comparison of the cancelled pages of the duodecimo and octavo suggests that the censor did not make changes first to the duodecimo, whose reset page then became the text from which the octavo was corrected. Instead, the censor seems to have worked directly on both formats. The censor may have made two lists: the first consisted of changes that he insisted must be made; the second of changes that were merely suggestions. The latter were made only if they were already on a cancelled leaf. If the minor (desirable but not necessary) change fell on another leaf (here, belonging to the duodecimo), the printer did not have to reset and reprint it. It would be interesting to compare this with other instances of the same text published simultaneously in two formats, both of which have cancels, to see if they show a similar pattern of necessary and optional changes. Studies of other texts whose pre- cancel version survives could eventually explain the censors’ methods and their working practices. An additional problem suggests itself. The mere survival of this cancelled leaf is intriguing. If the censor did not want anyone to read it (or any of the other cancelled pages from the Mémoires) why

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were all the cancelled leaves not immediately rendered illegible? The lieutenant de police of Paris was responsible for enforcing regulations in the book trade there.95 His inspectors and their assistants, who searched printshops and binderies several times a year, should have ensured that the cancelled pages were sent to a board-manufacturer, to be made into pasteboard or pulpboard. Instead, the cancels were kept for several months at least, and then used (carelessly or by design) in such a way that the condemned text could easily be read. When used as pastedowns, printed waste was usually positioned face-down, or so that any visible text was upside-down or at right angles to the text pages.96 On the Moreau pamphlet, however, it was positioned right-side up. It seems unlikely that a bookbinder (or, since it is a simple binding, a bookseller) deliberately incorporated a cancel from another book so that its seditious text could be read, but it would be interesting to find other instances of this in political pamphlets of the period. This use of this cancelled leaf (and probably others from the Mémoires) may be a simple instance of a bookbinder taking advantage of laxity on the part of the inspectors and their assistants. In 1788 and 1789, the total number of pamphlets published in France increased by approximately 375% and 400% respectively over the previous year’s output.97 Many of these pamphlets were, like Moreau’s Exposé historique, concerned with the re-convening of the Estates General, and published in the twelve months following July 1788. Some of these pamphlets were printed in the provinces; others were so slight as not to need a binding with endpapers. However, bookbinders in Paris at this time probably experienced an acute need for waste paper for binding these political pamphlets in broché bindings. As well, this sudden flood of new pamphlets may have overwhelmed the inspectors’

95 Thiroux de Crosne was lieutenant de police (chief of police in Paris) from 11 August 1785 to 16 July 1789; Herrmann-Mascard, 86. 96 Of a group of a dozen other French paper bindings from 1770-1800 with pastedowns of printed waste in the W.D. Jordan Special Collections and Music Library at Queen’s University, I noticed that five were used so only the blank side was visible, and seven had text on both sides. Of the latter, five had text set at right angles to the text block, one was positioned upside-down, only one (Analyse des ouvrages de J.J. Rousseau, see Figure 13) with a single word printed on it was positioned right-side up. 97 According to the Catalogue de l’histoire de France in the Bibliothèque nationale, 217 pamphlets were published in 1787, 819 in 1788, and 3,305 in 1789: Antoine de Baeque, “Pamphlets: Libel and Political Mythology,” in Revolution in Print, 165-176, on 165.

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ability to supervise compliance with the book trade regulations. A third factor was economic. Presumably cancelled pages were sold to the board-manufacturers at the same low price as clandestine and prohibited books. These were priced as if they were page trimmings (edges cut off by a bookbinder).98 Printers’ waste (intact sheets) fetched a better price. Anyone working in the book trade would have known there was a ready market for waste paper for endpapers, and appreciated the profit to be made from selling the cancels illegally to a bookbinder rather than following regulations. The chance survival of these particular copies provides physical evidence of how the book trade operated. The problem is how to interpret this evidence. Usually I have been able to draw only tentative conclusions. My first example, Histoire critique de la philosophie (1742), is an instance of complexity in book production; in particular, the binding brings together components from different times and places. The text was printed on French paper in Holland for a Huguenot bookseller in London; some of the endpapers are from an account book made of French paper at least 60 years before, others from an account book used by a French-speaking bookseller at least thirty-five years before; the decorative cover paper was probably produced in Germany. All this leads to uncertainty as to where and when the book was actually bound, though the endpapers tip the balance in favour of France, rather than London or Holland. The second example, Influence du despotisme de l’Angleterre (1781), shows the care expended on some clandestine pamphlets in the 1780s, and seems to locate the binder in Besançon. The third, Tableau de l’Angleterre, et de l’Italie (1788), is associated with the war in the Rhine and the Terror, events undreamt of when the book was printed. Although printed on low- quality paper, and out-of-date, the bookseller still had this book sewn and provided with a cover in hopes of a customer. The newspaper endpapers indicate a probable date (late 1793 or early 1794), but not a location, as French-language newspapers would have been available in most large, western European cities. However, Strasbourg and Geneva are strong possibilities. The endpaper of the fourth paper binding, on a book about Rousseau (1785), provides evidence that some unsaleable fiction was discarded after languishing in a warehouse for a decade.

98 These paper scraps were turned into pulpboard. However, the confiscated clandestine books were presumably made into (more expensive) pasteboard. Lalande in his Art du cartonnier (1762) states that obtaining banned books at this low price allowed board-makers to realize a good profit; Eagan, 96.

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The endpaper on the fifth, a political pamphlet of 1789, is the most interesting. The cancelled leaf from Saint-Simon’s Mémoires (1788) reveals the operation of the censorship office less than a year before the fall of the Bastille. When the censor “corrected” this leaf of the octavo, he seems to have made more changes on it than on pages containing the same text of the duodecimo edition. However, the police inspectors who should have ensured that the rejected leaves were destroyed seem to have been less zealous or less efficient than the censors who made the cuts to the text. Were these cancels simply overlooked? Or were they confiscated by a police inspector who routinely supplemented his income by illegally selling such clean printed waste paper to a bookbinder? Whoever was responsible for its fate, the survival of this cancel (and presumably many others) as an endpaper was due to its being slightly more valuable to a bookbinder than to a board-maker, who could use less pristine sheets. Not every endpaper can be read, and the stories some tell are confusing ones. The waste paper cannot always be identified, and even when it can, it does not locate where and when the bookbinding was done. However, it is still worthwhile trying to decipher the evidence that the endpapers of printed waste provide. As more copies are studied and their evidence accumulated and sifted, it should become easier to interpret the way waste paper was used. In turn, this should lead to further insights into the book trade. For the study of bookbindings, there is no substitute for the close examination of physical copies. The unique details of the paper bindings on these five titles make a case for the retention of physical copies of texts which are also available online, and for keeping intact these humble “temporary” paper bindings. Until recently, most bibliographers concentrated on the text, and were more likely to note particularly fine gold-tooled bindings, which indicated prestigious ownership, rather than modest ones of paper. Yet booksellers advertised and sold a substantial number of books in paper bindings, and some readers left their purchases in these bindings. And, as this essay shows, those with manuscript and printed waste paper endpapers can be helpful in revealing aspects of the eighteenth-century book trade.

SOMMAIRE

Cet article examine les pages de garde contenues dans des reliures cartonnées et brochées de cinq textes du dix-huitième siècle français.

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Ces spécimens démontrent qu’il y des livres qui se doivent d’être conservés intacts comme artéfacts, étant donné que leurs feuillets jaunis par le temps peuvent fournir des indices sur le lieu et l’époque où ils ont été reliés, produits et diffusés, voire même donner un aperçu sur l’exercice de la censure. Il en va de même pour le travail de reliure le plus routinier pratiqué sur des ouvrages anciens, lequel peut faciliter notre compréhension des opérations commerciales jadis en vigueur. Le premier spécimen à l’étude est l’Histoire critique de la philosophie de Deslandes publiée par Jean Nourse à Londres en 1742. La typographie indique toutefois que l’ouvrage fut imprimé en Hollande. Même si ce livre fut frappé d’interdiction par le gouvernement français, les pages de garde donnent à penser qu’il fut relié en France. Le deuxième exemple est un pamphlet politique clandestin intitulé Influence du despotisme de l’Angleterre [1781] imprimé probablement à Neuchâtel et Besançon. La page de garde placée à la fin du livre est une page de titre de l’édition de 1779 ou 1780 de La Boussole imprimée par le même imprimeur de Besançon, ce qui suppose que la reliure fut fabriquée à cet endroit. Le troisième ouvrage est une traduction du Tableau de l’Angleterre et de l’Italie par Archenholtz et publiée à Strasbourg en 1788. Si l’on se fie à des événements survenus en septembre 1793 et rapportés par des journaux français de l’époque, la datation des pages de garde coïncide avec une période trouble de l’histoire politique et économique du pays, ce qui explique en partie la mauvaise qualité de la reliure. Le quatrième texte est l’Analyse des ouvrages de J.J. Rousseau publiée par la Veuve Duchesne à Paris en 1785. Comme l’ouvrage comporte un feuillet tiré d’un roman raté d’un dénommé Monvel publié par Duchesne une décennie plus tôt, on peut présumer que la reliure fut réalisée à Paris. Enfin le cinquième spécimen et non le moins intéressant est un pamphlet royaliste daté de 1789. La page de garde se trouvant à la fin du livre consiste en un feuillet tiré de la première édition in-octavo des Mémoires de Saint-Simon publiés par Buisson en octobre 1788. Si l’on compare cet exemple avec une édition in-douze de Buisson (1788), il appert que le censeur fit plus de coupures dans l’in-octavo que dans le format plus petit. La reliure fut sans doute réalisée à Paris au début de l’année 1789. Les feuillets supprimés auraient été probablement vendus à un cartonnier comme c’était l’usage à l’époque mais, dans ce cas-ci, ils furent utilisés par un relieur de manière que le texte censuré soit aisément lisible.

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