Market Forces and Modernisation in the French Book Trade in the Last Century of the ‘ Ancien Régime ’ and in the Early Nineteenth Century: Some Reflections on the Emergence of the Publisher’s Series

Abstract

A resolutely ambitious title needs to be explained, if only in a summary fashion. It must be conceded that it is difficult to do justice in a brief chapter to a cluster of questions about the way in which the book trade in France, and in Western Europe generally, made the transition from a tightly controlled guild structure to more open systems and even to laissez-faire capitalism by the end of the nineteenth century.