Diderot et la librairie : l'impensable propriété

Abstract

Denis Malo: Diderot, Publishers and Literary Property. An analysis of the Lettre sur le commerce de la librairie, which differs from J. Proust's interpretation and attempts to bring out the conditions in which it was written and its internal contradictions. Diderot's history of publishing is based solely on Lebreton's archives and thus supports the Paris publishers' point of view and considers that the authors' interests are the same as the publishers'. But the contradictions in Diderot's position concerning literary productions and the status of the author are also seen to come from his situation after the death of his father and his concern, as a bourgeois paterfamilias, to ensure his daughter's future. An author's works are thus presented as pieces of property comparable to any other property, which can be bequeathed to his heirs. The question of the particular status of authors and their works is subordinated to this obsession, and he thus does not comment on the new 1777-78 texts concerning publishing, which are given in an appendix.