Summary of Darnton’s “What is the History of Books?”

Reprinted many times, Darnton’s essay was originally published in 1982.  I read the article in The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future.

Darnton was writing a social and cultural history of communication through print.  People who do things with books are the core of his study.  He wanted to think about how ideas were transmitted by print.  He also considered how exposure to the printed word changed thought patterns and behavior.  The field of the history of books is interdisciplinary and could be expanded in many ways.  It goes back to the Renaissance and really began to flourish in the 19th century with analytical bibliography.  It really developed after 1958 with Febvre and Martin’s The Coming of the Book.  This example of Annales school historiography  looked at larger patterns of production and consumption over long periods of times through statistical analysis.  It examined ordinary books, not rare editions; traditional culture over avant garde.  When Darnton was writing, he was saw a disarray of topics and methodologies — bibliography, history, comparative literature, reader’s psychology, libraries, publishing, law, etc. — and he was trying to manage the interdisciplinary work run amok.

His answer was to turn to the communication circuit, which comprised 6 stages: publisher, printer, shipper, seller, reader, and back to author.  Outside influences are contained in the middle of the schematic chart.  Most people examine one section of this circuit in their studies, but they are all inter-related, Darnton argues.

To prove this point, he uses the example of the Montpelier, France bookseller Isaac Pierre Rigaud.  He liked using a seller because they were discussed less in the literature.  The example revolves around Rigaud’s orders for Voltaire’s Questiones sure l’Encyclopedie, from the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN) in Switzerland.  Voltaire’s work was forbidden, but sold well.  He did not make it easy for the sellers though, as he often changed his texts.  Rigaud was angry that customers blamed him for it.

Some context: Rigaud sold lots of medical books, a few forbidden books, but he really was a general salesman.  He had a book inventory worth around 45,000 livre.  He was a smart buyer who only purchased  a few dozen of any title at a time and he was well aware of what sold well.  Montpelier was a town of 31,000 people and had a university, a number of academies, masonic lodges, and had a strong textile industry.  There were 16 monastic communities and was the seat of the province where the intendant sat.  The courts were based in the city and many lawyers resided there.  This created an enviornment for an extensive book trade and customers wanted Enlightenment texts.  The 1770s and 1780s were tough times in France, and in the book trade in particular, high tariffs were put in place to pay for national war debt.  Severe policing was in effect from 1771-1774.  Government reforms in 1777 hurt the foreign traders who sent books into France, hurting Rigaud’s business.

Rigaud was a sharp businessman though.  Each major town in France had 1-2 large sellers with a larger group of fringe firms selling old volumes and chapbooks.  There were also firms beyond the fringe sellers who hawked illegal texts.  Rigauld played rough and worked with debt holders to shut down his competition.  Rigauld also controlled the business of the local binders and used his patronage to exert pressure on other sellers who did not get their books bound in time.

With Questiones, Rigaud took a gamble with STN, which was producing a pirated edition, supposedly with the help of Voltaire who would give the firm additional material to publish.  Cramer, Voltaire’s originally printer, got his editions out first and Rigaud lost his gamble.  From correspondence at STN that Darnton used, it is clear that Voltaire’s, while technically illegal still sold very well.  Amsterdam printed an edition too.  Rigaud’s actions were not odd — sellers would play publishers off each other and negotiated hard for the best deals and best delivery times.  Sellers sought any small advantage.  Firms outside France were essential before the Revolution because of censorship laws, and there were various routes that smugglers took to get books into the Gallic lands.  Ultimately, social, political, economic, and intellectual conditions affected Rigaud very much.

Danrton claimed that circuit was not a standard formula, but that it did show how disparate parts of book history could fit together.   The trick is relating those separate parts into the whole circuit to get the full story.

Authors: How do they do their work? How do they break away from patronage? What is the nature of a literary career?  How did writers deal with publishers, printers, reviews, and other writers? How do you go from independently wealthy writers to people selling prose to the highest bidder?  One can go to police records, literary almanacs, and bibliographies for answers.

Publishers: We still need to understand publishers as distinct entities.  Luckily many publishers’ papers still exist.  How do publishers draw up contracts? How do they build alliances with sellers?  How do they handle finances, publicity, supplies, and shipments?  Can we analyze catalogs and prospectuses?

Printers: Well studied because of analytical bibliographers.  These bibliographers were looking to create perfect texts, especially Shakespearean texts, which have no manuscripts.  Ultimately, McKenzie squashes this with the idea of the “sociology of the text” in 1985.  How do printers calculate costs and organize production?  How do budgets change with machine made paper?  How did technology alter management and labor relations?  What part did journeymen play in this labor history?

Shippers: Little work is done on how books get to shops.  The wagon, canal, railroad, and post office all have an effect on the text.  They were shipped in sheets and bound to taste by buyer.  They were expensive ship for relatively cheap items (compared to textiles, that is).  From August-September, wagons were not available due to the harvest and there was ice in some ports in the winter.  Smuggling was also a key component of this enterprise.  What about cheap literature circulation?

Sellers: Sellers as a culture agent is an underdeveloped concept.  They mediate between supply and demand at the point of contact.  What about the social and intellectual world of men like Rigaud?  What about their values and tastes? How do they fit into communities? How do networks and alliances work?  We need more economic studies.  How do credit mechanisms work?  How do negotiated bills of exchange work?

Readers: They are the most mysterious part of the circuit.  How do readers make sense of signs on the page?  How is meaning construed?  One can look at fictitious audiences, implicit readers, and interpretative communities.  Very often, historians and literary critics assume a text works on the reader in the same way.  But reading changes over time and people inhabit different mental universes over the centuries.  But now people are seeing that readers take significance from books and don’t merely read them.  Texts do shape readers though.  Darnton fears the inner experience of ordinary readers might allude us, but the social context can be gleaned.  We can now look at library history, reception studies, and the reading revolution of intensive vs. extensive reading.  Over time, with the cluttering of print, it is clear that print becomes a commodity that can be thrown away.  How does that change reading?  Popular and elite dichotomies are no longer holding.  Sociology is becoming key — who reads what, when, and why and does it change man’s mental universe?  Do the use of books in oaths, as gifts, prizes, and legacies change reading?

Books don’t respect boundaries, languages, or limits, so the field must be interdisciplinary and international.  In the end Darnton says that books make history, they don’t merely recount it.