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Eighteenth-century Review Journals and the Internationalization of the European Book Market

2010; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07075332.2010.507343

1949-6540

Thomas Munck,

Scottish History and National Identity

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 See notably: S. Botein, J.R. Censer & H. Ritvo, 'La presse périodique et la société anglaise et française au xviiie siècle: une approche comparative', Revue d'histoire moderne & contemporaine, xxxii (1985), 209–36; J.D. Popkin, News and Politics in the Age of Revolution: Jean Luzac's Gazette de Leyde (Ithaca, NY, 1989); R. Harris, A Patriot Press: National Politics and the London press in the 1740s (Oxford, 1993); J.R. Censer, The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment (London, 1994); B. Tolkemitt, Der Hamburgische Correspondent: zur öffentlichen Verbreitung der Aufklärung in Deutschland (Tübingen, 1995); J. Popkin, 'Political communication in the German Enlightenment: Gottlob Benedikt von Schirach's 'Politische Journal', Eighteenth-century Life, xx (1996), 24–41; U. Möllney, Norddeutsche Presse um 1800: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen in Flensburg, Braunschweig, Hannover und Schaumburg-Lippe im Zeitalter der französische Revolution (Bielefeld, 1996); G. Feyel, L'annonce et la nouvelle: la presse d'information en France sous l'ancien régime, 1630-1788 (Oxford, 2000); The Politics of Information in early modern Europe, ed. B. Dooley & S.A. Baron (London, 2001); Pressewesen der Aufklärung: periodische Schriften im alten Reich ed. S. Doering-Manteuffel et al., (Berlin, 2001); P. Rétat, La Gazette d'Amsterdam: miroir de l'Europe au xviiie siècle (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century - henceforth SVEC - 2001:06); Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America, 1760-1820, ed. H. Barker & S. Burrows, (Cambridge, 2002); Enlightenment, Revolution and the Periodical Press, ed H.J. Lüsebrink & J.D. Popkin (SVEC, 2004:06). For the wider issue of a 'communications revolution', see notably W. Behringer, Im Zeichen des Merkur: Reichspost und Kommunikationsrevolution in der frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen, 2003), and his 'Communications revolutions: a historiographical concept', in German History, xxiv (2006), 333–74. 2 For Scottish participation in the powerful network of publishers in London, see R.B. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors in eighteenth-century Britain, Ireland and America (Chicago, 2006), passim and especially pp. 365–8. 3 Notable exceptions include N.S. Fiering, 'The Transatlantic Republic of Letters: a note on the circulation of learned periodicals to early eighteenth-century America', William and Mary Quarterly, xxxiii (1976), 642–60; D. Roper, Reviewing before the Edinburgh (London, 1978); and more recently, F. Donoghue, 'Colonizing readers: review criticism and the formation of a reading public', in The Consumption of Culture 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text, ed. A. Bermingham & J. Brewer (London, 1995), pp. 54–74; F. Donoghue, The Fame Machine: Book Reviewing and eighteenth-century literary Careers (Stanford Ca., 1996); G. Sheridan, 'Irish Literary Review Magazines and Enlightenment France, 1730–1790', in Ireland and the French Enlightenment, 1700-1800, ed. G. Gargett & G. Sheridan (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 21–46; and A. Forster, 'Review Journals and the reading public', in Books and their Readers in eighteenth-century England, ed. I. Rivers (Leicester, 2001), pp. 171–90. 4 P.E. Selwyn, Everyday Life in the German Book Trade: Friedrich Nicolai as Bookseller and Publisher in the Age of Enlightenment, 1750-1810 (Philadelphia, PA, 2000), pp. 251–97; H. Möller, Aufklärung in Preussen: der Verleger und Geschichtsschreiber Friedrich Nicolai (Berlin, 1974). The ADB is available as part of the on-line resources of the Library of the University of Bielefeld, < www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/diglib/aufklaerung>, which also has a searchable index and keyword facility. 5 For this study, the set of the VLO in the Bodleian Library in Oxford was used to supplement the digitised version of most of the early part of the journal, located on the E-laborate web page of the Huygens Institute . The VLO had variant titles during this period (Nieuwe Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen from 1768 to 1771, Hedendaagsche VLO from 1772 to 1778, Algemeene VLO from 1779 to 1785, and so forth), but only the prefatory adjective changed, so for convenience the generic abbreviation VLO is used here in all citations. With no consistent system of volume numbering, only the year will be cited. The print run or readership of the VLO is not known. See also G.J. Johannes, De barometer van de smaak: tijdschriften in Nederland 1770-1830 (The Hague, 1995), pp. 119–23. For the Mennonite connection, see W.W. Mijnhardt, ' The Dutch Enlightenment: Humanism, Nationalism and Decline', in The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century, ed. M.C. Jacob & W.W. Mijnhardt (Ithaca, NY, 1992), pp. 197–223. 6 There is as yet no digitised version of the KLE. The research for this article used the complete set in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and the nearly complete one in Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek in Odense: I am grateful to the staff of both libraries for their help in giving me access to this large print-run. The title of the KLE underwent significant variation over the years, so for each citation the actual title of the moment will also be indicated (in brackets). As with the VLO, there is no consistent system of volume numbering, so only the year will be indicated. For a full survey of Danish periodicals more generally, see J.D. Søllinge & N. Thomsen, De danske aviser 1634-1989 (Odense, 1988); on the role of the KLE, see also T. Munck, 'Translating Enlightenment: European influences and Danish perceptions of identity in the press in the later eighteenth century', in Northern Antiquities and National Identities, ed. K. Haakonssen & H. Horstbøll (Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Copenhagen, 2008), pp. 239–48, which also explores evidence regarding likely readership (such as a list of 487 subscribers noted in 1767). 7 There is a growing literature on the history of language in early modern Europe, but see notably F. Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse in eighteenth-century Germany (Oxford, 1995); F. Oz-Salzberger, 'The Enlightenment in translation: regional and European aspects', in European Review of History, xiii (2006), 385–409; P. Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2004); and L. Asfour, 'Theories of translation and the English novel in France, 1740–1790', SVEC, 2001:04, pp. 269–78. 8 KLE (Kiøbenhavnske Nye Tidender om lærde Sager), 1760, supplement inserted at p.259; KLE (Kiøbenhavnske Efterretninger om lærde Sager), 1767, pp. 163-6. The first full-scale dictionary devoted solely to the Danish language, modelled on Johnson's dictionary of 1755, was published from 1793 onwards by the Royal Academy of Sciences. 9 KLE (Nyeste Kiøbenhavnske Efterretninger om lærde Sager), 1790, pp. 544–47. This problem was also brought out in the VLO, when it observed in 1792 that a history of the French Revolution, translated into Dutch but printed in France, was marred by an excessive number of printing errors: VLO, 1792, p. 561. 10 The availability across Europe of French-language publications (especially those lacking official authorisation) is difficult to document accurately: import by private individuals, although subject to restrictions similar to other international trade, was not well monitored, and no systematic ledgers from French-language bookshops in cities such as Hamburg or Stockholm appear to exist. See J. Eriksson, Carl Christoffer Gjörwell som aktör på den svenska bokmarknaden 1769-71 (Uppsala University, 2003), pp. 51–2; and B. Fabian, 'English books and their eighteenth-century German readers', in The Widening Circle, ed. P.J. Korshin (1976), pp. 119–96. 11 It is not always clear whether a journal was reviewing the original version, or a translation. Thus the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, which Nicolai worked on before launching the ADB, gave extensive coverage to foreign work, but usually omitted accurate bibliographical detail. The ADB itself, consistent with its main objectives, prioritised German-language work (but included some Latin scientific books published in the German lands). We can obtain more reliable indications from traditional learned reviews such as the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen: in 1764, Latin and German texts were numerically predominant, followed quite closely by texts in French, whilst English constituted less than 10% of all the books reviewed, and other European languages (including Italian, Dutch and Danish) made only rare appearances. The VLO concentrated on publications in Dutch, with some Latin texts (especially in medicine), but did mentioned a few French texts. Interestingly, the KLE was easily the most international in its coverage: in 1765, out of 181 publications reviewed that year, 57 were in Danish, 53 in German, 36 in Latin, 29 in French, 5 in English and 1 in Italian. 12 Oz-Salzberger, 'The Enlightenment in translation', pp. 385–409, esp. 389–92; and her earlier outline of these ideas in 'Translation', in the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. A. Kors (New York, 2003), pp. 181–8. 13 VLO, 1774, pp. 510–5. Getting the balance right was clearly problematic: the VLO explicitly criticised a translator who had not deliberately 'improved' the original by correcting mistakes and setting shortcomings right (VLO, 1792, pp. 322–9), but the journal also complained when another translator had cluttered up his rendering of Rousseau's Emile by adding not only his own remarks but also ones derived from the German translation (VLO, 1796, pp. 197–200). 14 Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, 1757, pp. 1052–55. 15 Latin texts, being mostly for educational or scientific use, rarely required translation, but in any case played a dwindling role in Nicolai's business. Selwyn, German Book Trade, pp. 46–7; and A. Nebrig, 'Die englische Literatur in Friedrich Nicolais Übersetzungsprogramm', in Friedrich Nicolai und die Berliner Aufklärung, ed. R. Falk and A. Kosenina (Hanover, 2008), pp. 139–64. 16 Selwyn, German Book Trade, pp. 91–2 and 116–32. 17 ADB, xxxix (1780), 401–03; ADB, lxxxix (1789), 60. 18 ADB, Anhang Abt.4 (1791), 2291–96. I am grateful to Rhona Munck for bringing this to my attention, and for other assistance with the German texts. 19 ADB, xxxix (1779), 276–81; ADB, lxxxv (1789), 508–31; ADB, Anhang Abt.4 (1791), 2205–20; NADB, ix (1794), 126–32; NADB, xvii (1795), 66–71. 20 These observations are based on a systematic trawl of German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish library holdings, and on reviews in the three journals used here, supplemented by means of samples from other German-language and Swedish journals. 21 R. Darnton, 'The high enlightenment and the low-life of literature in pre-revolutionary France', Past & Present, li (1971), 81–115; R. Darnton, 'The forbidden books of pre-revolutionary France', in Rewriting the French Revolution, ed. C.Lucas (Oxford, 1991), pp. 1–32; R. Darnton, The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-revolutionary France (London, 1996); and The Darnton debate: Books and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, ed. H.T. Mason (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1998). 22 Mercier's utopian story finally appeared in Dutch, in instalments, from 1792: VLO, 1793, pp. 220–7; VLO, 1794, pp. 230–7; VLO, 1795, pp. 207–12. The KLE discussed the original French text (Kiøbenhavnske Efterretninger om lærde Sager, 1773, pp. 205–7), but no Danish translation was published. 23 On the curious and quite sudden change in reputation of Rousseau in Sweden, see M.-C. Skuncke, 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Swedish eyes around 1760', SVEC, 2008:01, pp. 87–103. 24 Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (1753), pp. 30–32; the French original had been noted in 1749, pp. 715–8. 25 ADB, lxi (1785), 381f; continuing interest in the work is confirmed with the publication of a third German translation, noted in the NADB, ci (1805), 274. For the German reception, see C. Scharf, 'Strukturbedingungen politischer Freiheit: ein Forschungsbericht zum Geist der Gesetze in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert', in Interdisziplinarität und Internationalität: Wege und Formen der Rezeption der französischen und der britischen Aufklärung in Deutschland und Rußland im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. H. Duchhardt & C. Scharf (Mainz, 2004), pp. 105–42. 26 KLE (Kiøbenhavnske Nye Tidender om lærde og curieuse Sager), 1749, pp. 317–20. 27 For an overview of the political context, see T. Munck, 'Absolute monarchy in later eighteenth-century Denmark: centralised reform, public expectations and the Copenhagen press', The Historical Journal, xli (1998), 201–24. 28 KLE (Kiøbenhavnske Efterretninger om lærde Sager), 1771, pp. 193–201 and pp. 209–13. For the wider Danish discussion, see D. Tamm, 'The Danish debate about Montesquieu: Holberg, Kofod Ancher, Sneedorff, Schytte and Stampe', in Northern antiquities, ed. Haakonssen and Horstbøll, pp. 163–80. 29 VLO, 1771, pp. 333–8; VLO, 1772, pp. 220–6; VLO, 1774, pp. 223–7. 30 VLO, 1784, pp. 331–4. 31 VLO, 1786, pp. 162–6. 32 VLO, 1786, pp. 365–71. 33 Howard's An account of the state of the prisons (1777) was translated into German in 1780; his Account of the principal Lazarettos in Europe (1789), translated in 1791, was reviewed in the ADB, cxi (1792), 89–92; the VLO seemed to have been particularly taken with the concept of Howard as a visionary and self-sacrificing reformer (VLO, 1790, p. 396 and p. 482; VLO, 1792, pp.161–4, 244–57 and 382–8. 34 VLO, 1791, pp. 572–5, for part I; VLO, 1793, pp. 32–8, for part II. 35 VLO, 1798, pp. 430–5. 36 NADB, viii (1794), 119–23, for part I; and NADB, xv (1795), 77–81, for part II. 37 KLE (now the exact title), 1794, pp. 23f, 43f, and 145–53. 38 See for example the review of a Dutch translation of John Leland, A view of the principal deistical writers that have appeared in England (English original published in 1754), a book which the reviewer regarded as an effective rebuttal of Hume's critique of miracles: VLO, 1765, pp. 433–40, and VLO, 1766, pp. 339–50. 39 KLE (Kiøbenhavnske Nye Tidender om lærde Sager), 1763, pp. 203–50, and KLE, 1764, pp. 6–88. Equally, Priestley, A view of the principles and conduct of the Protestant Dissenters (1769), was well received as a good explanation: KLE (Kiøbenhavnske Efterretninger om lærde Sager), 1771, pp. 202f. A reference to the Système de la nature, whose author was then assumed to be Maribaud, merely noted the fact that even Voltaire had come out to attack its atheism: KLE (Kiøbenhavnske Nye Efterretninger om lærde Sager), 1778, pp. 46f. 40 C. Nottmeier, 'Aufgeklärter Protestantismus: Friedrich Nicolai, die Neologie und das theologische Profil der Allgemeinen Deutschen Bibliothek', in Friedrich Nicolai und die Berliner Aufklärung, ed. Falk and Kosenina, pp. 227–49; S. Habersaat, Verteidigung der Aufklärung: Friedrich Nicolai in religiösen und politischen Debatten (2 vols, Würzburg, 2001). 41 ADB, xxxxix (1782), 131–6. 42 N.C.F. van Sas, 'The patriot revolution: new perspectives', in The Dutch Republic, ed. Jacob and Mijnhardt, pp. 91–119, esp. 104f. 43 J.D. Popkin, 'Print culture in the Netherlands on the eve of the revolution', in The Dutch Republic, ed. Jacob and Mijnhardt, pp. 285–91. 44 Discussion of freedom of expression in the north German territories can be traced in most journals, but representative examples from the ADB itself include the full review of the 1778 German translation of a Swedish report on the 1766 edict and its subsequent interpretation in law, in ADB, xxxix (1779), 300–2; and Nicolai's own explicit treatment of book censorship in the preface to ADB, xxxii (1777), pp. i-xii. His views on the matter are clear from the wider context of his writings: Selwyn, German Book Trade, pp. 190–213 and 238–49. 45 Munck, 'Absolute Monarchy', pp. 217–9. 46 For example in the review of Laurids Fogtman, Kongelige Rescripter, Resolutioner og collegial Breve, in KLE, 1789, p. 140; or that of F. Thaarup's Kort Vejledning til det danske Monarchies Statistik, in KLE, 1790, pp. 529–38. 47 KLE (Nyeste Kiøbenhavnske Efterretninger om lærde Sager), 1790, pp. 753–60; and KLE, 1791, pp. 784–6. 48 KLE (now its full title), 1795, pp. 134–44, 165–76, 209–10, 257–63, 361–6, 689–93 - a list of entries which in itself underlines how important this issue had become. 49 For example the review of the Dutch translation of J.P. Rabaud, Précis historique de la révolution française, in the VLO, 1792, pp. 560–68; or the unusual juxtaposition of the French and Polish constitutions in a single Dutch publication in 1791, commended by the VLO, 1791, pp. 21–6. 50 KLE (Nyeste Kiøbenhavnske Efterretninger om lærde Sager), 1790, pp. 399. 51 Wiep van Bunge, 'Introduction', in The early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic 1650-1750, ed. W. van Bunge (Leiden, 2003), pp. 1–16; and W. Mijnhardt, 'The construction of silence: religious and political radicalism Dutch history', ibid., pp. 231–40. Additional informationNotes on contributorsThomas MunckI am grateful to the British Academy for awarding me research funding (SG-43817) to allow me to undertake work on the Dutch material for this article with the help of two research assistants: Dr. Tine van Bortel (who compiled data on Dutch translations of major eighteenth-century works, and examined Dutch journals), and Mr Henk van Klaveren (who provided me with translations of a number of key articles from the journals). I am also grateful to Professor Hamish Scott for valuable comments on an earlier version; and to the anonymous readers for IHR.