Print and Manuscript in French Canada under the Ancien Régime

Abstract

No printing press was set up in the Laurentian valley of North America, the colony known as New France, until the late date of 1764.1 That date has become important in the historiography of the book and of printing in Canada, a reference point signifying a cultural break between a French past, little affected by print culture, and a very different English future. In fact, the history of the book in Canada under the French colonial regime is still relatively unknown and evidence is scarce (as in other French colonies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). The commonplace, and oversimplified, explanation of what was actually a remarkable but complex phenomenon is well illustrated by a passage from the work of a pioneer of research on the book in Canada: ‘Before 1764, there was neither a printing press nor a bookstore in New France, though books were being imported by institutions and individuals. Only after the Conquest did printing presses, the book trade and libraries develop.’2 In the same vein, it is worth quoting a 1976 review of the history of New France that discusses colonial relationships with books: Cultural objects, whether for decoration or instruction, were profoundly marked by French traditions. Often they were imported directly from the mother country. The Jesuit missionaries ordered paintings and images from Europe that they used in evangelizing the ‘savages’ and propagating the Catholic faith. The few paintings decorating the churches came from France or had been executed by Frenchmen…. The same was true of literature. The books gracing the libraries of the few people of substance had all been published in Europe…. Common folk made do with oral literature. There was little circulation of chapbooks.3