The common cosmopolitan reading culture of eighteenth-century Europe and North America: new digital perspectives

Abstract

This article uses a range of digital historical bibliometric resources to explore how far it is possible to speak of a common reading culture across Western Europe and North America in the later eighteenth century. It looks at the holdings and borrowing records of British and North American libraries and edition count data drawn from the Eighteenth-Century Collections Online and the English Short Title Catalogue and compares them with French and Swiss evidence drawn from the publishing records of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel, Parisian stock sale and confiscation records, and records of print runs and provincial legalisations of counterfeit stock. From this preliminary survey, the article suggests that there was a strong enough overlap between elite reading of novels, travel literature, and history to suggest that Britain and English-speaking North America shared a common reading culture with much of Western Europe. Further research in coming years is expected to flesh out and clarify this picture.