Licensing Loyalty

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Early History of Printers in Provincial France, 1470–1660

2. The Vicissitudes of a Royal Decree: Enforcing the October 1667 Order in Council Regulating Printers in the Provinces

3. The Royal Council Takes Control: The 1701 Inquiry and the Bureau de la Librairie

4. The Purges: The Enforcement of Printer Quotas in the Provinces After 1704

5. Arguments Offered by Printers in Petitions for Licenses, 1667–1789

6. Patronage and Bureaucracy Intersect: Five Case Studies in the Reign of Louis XVI

7 . Behind the Rhetoric: The Social Position and Politics of Provincial Printers, 1750–1789

Conclusion

Appendix A: Printers’ Wealth in the Eighteenth Century

Appendix B: Some Licensed Provincial Printers Involved in the Clandestine Book Trade, 1750–89, by Town

Notes

Bibliography

Index

“[Licensing Loyalty] provides a detailed picture of the interests, discourses, actions, and relationships of printers throughout France under the Old Regime. This picture furthers our understanding not just of the book trade but of the state-building process in the century and a half between the end of the Wars of Religion and the beginning of the French Revolution. It is thus relevant to scholars of print culture, absolutism, and Enlightenment in early modern Europe.”

—Christine Haynes, Journal of Modern History