Lettres d’Elie Luzac à Jean Henry Samuel Formey (1748–1770): regard sur les coulisses de la librairie hollandaise du XVIIIe siècle by Hans Bots, Jan Schillings

Abstract

MLR, 98.2, 2003 461 lead to atheism is evident here, but Bouchardy agrees with Elisabeth Labrousse that, in spite of doubts he may have entertained, Bayle nevertheless remained a believer. As well as remindingus ofwell-known comparisons with Montaigneand Rousseau, Bouchardy draws some more unusual links to writers with whom Bayle is not often associated (Baudelaire and Sade, for example). He indicates that there was a devel? opment from Bayle's early works through to the later ones, although this evolution does not always emerge as clearly as one might have wished. In fact it has to be said that on the whole this is a fairly dry, difficultread and the arguments are not always easy to follow. Indeed, the occasional quotations from other Bayle specialists such as Labrousse and Hubert Bost, who express complex philosophical ideas so clearly, are a timely reminder that difBculty does not necessarily have to mean opacity. In conclusion , this is a book that a specialist reader with a good grounding in philosophy and the works of Bayle may read with some profit,but it is not one for the faint-hearted. University of Strathclyde Joy Charnley Lettres d'Elie Luzac djean Henry Samuel Formey (1748-1770): regard sur les coulisses de la librairie hollandaise du XVIIF siecle. By Hans Bots and Jan Schillings. (Vie des Huguenots, ed. by Antony McKenna, 15) Paris: Champion. 2001. 416 pp. 400 F. ISBN 2-7453-0386-4. The 213 letters from the Dutch bookseller Elie Luzac to Formey formpart of the vast correspondence maintained by the latter in his role as permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin and as the co-editor of important periodicals such as the Bibliothequegermanique. Having been praised by Luzac, Formey firstcontacted him in order to set up a new periodical, the Bibliotheque impartiale, a work which was quickly at the centre ofcontroversy due to itspraise ofone ofVoltaire's pet hates, the poet JeanBaptiste Rousseau, an action which led another prominent journalist, living in exile in Holland and similarly critical of Voltaire, Jean Rousset de Missy, to accuse Formey of being a pedant (see Christiane Berkvens-Stevenlink and Jeroom Vercruysse, Le Metier de journalist e au dix-huiteme siecle (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1993), p. 133). Both Luzac and Formey, in their fidelityto strictreasoningand erudition, are representative of those who were wary of the all-triumphant French version of the Enlightenment and who accused Voltaire and his ilk of superficiality and of sacrificing solid reason to showy style. Luzac, himself the author of a refutation of the materialism of La Mettrie, was not just a bookseller, but a highly educated man, and we frequently see him here arguing subtly with Formey at an intellectual level, over both language and content in the latter's work. The present correspondence thus shows in some detail the background to the publication of Formey's work as well as illustrating in more general terms the methods of the Dutch book trade towards the end of its years of glory. The manuscripts of most ofthe letters published here are kept in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, with a minority found in other libraries in Germany and Poland. The text has been carefully and competently prepared and is very richly annotated. This is an excellent scholarly presentation of a correspondence that helps to further our understanding of the Enlightenment in its European dimension. University of Leeds Christopher Todd ForgingRousseau: Print, Commerce and CulturalManipulation in the Late Enlighten? ment. By Raymond Birn. (SVEC, 2001.08) Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. 2001. ix + 28ipp. ?49. ISBN 0-7294-0770-5. The introduction begins: 'This book is about image marketing, cultural discipleship and the economics of literary canonisation.' Well, not really. It is in the main a de- ...