While historians have investigated many aspects of late eighteenth-century Bourbon censorship, they have not explored the evolving practice-well underway by the reign of Louis XV-of fining, suspending or banning printers and booksellers from the trade for censorship infractions and pirating. This article plots chronologically and examines 158 arr & ecirc;ts du conseil issued by the conseil d'& eacute;tat from 1703 to 1788 ordering France's licensed printers and booksellers to be fined, suspended, or banned from the printing and bookselling trades, and documents how matters of printer and bookseller discipline were removed from the regular courts and transferred to the conseil d'& eacute;tat, which handled printers and booksellers very strategically. In almost every case, delinquent printers saw their original punishments softened following the intervention of printers' patrons. Multiple voices and much negotiation among varied stakeholders governed state-media relations in the Bourbon monarchy, where an emerging bureaucracy tangled with the traditional influence of powerful patronage networks.

This article examines the Bordeaux bookseller and printer Arnaud-Antoine Pallandre's two censorship trials in 1775 and 1790 to compare state-media relations during the late Bourbon monarchy and the French Revolution. An entourage of protectors kept Pallandre in business even though he flouted pre-revolutionary book trade legislation. After 1789, his printing and bookselling shop became a centre of pamphlet sales and counter-revolutionary gatherings that came under intense scrutiny by patriots in the clubs, the National Guard and the crowds, who pressured the municipal governments to end Pallandre's trade in counter-revolutionary pamphlets. He eventually went to the guillotine in 1794. This article suggests that members of formerly privileged groups continued to wield considerable influence over printers and booksellers in France after 1789, making them objects of both government and popular censorship. In the struggle to achieve limits on a free press, printers and booksellers came to be regarded as individuals with public (potentially dangerous) political affiliations in a new way, a development that may help explain the high levels of media repression in the French Revolution.

When the Revolutionary government in France declared Freedom of the Press in 1789 it did not anticipate the flow of counter-revolutionary pamphlets attacking its decision to nationalize the French Church and require all clergy to swear an oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This article examines the conditions surrounding the printing of these religious pamphlets by investigating the career of one provincial printer in the border town of Metz—Jean-Baptiste Collignon—who worked with émigré bishops to produce them and who was guillotined in 1794 for counterrevolutionary activities. The authors explore the production and distribution of religious pamphlets, the ideological commitment of revolutionary printers, and the regional nature of censorship in the early French Revolution.

This essay studies an argumentative practice in eighteenth-century France by exploring the persuasiveness of some petitions to obtain printer licences. Those who wanted to enter the printing business in eighteenth-century France had to obtain licences from the King to do so. The French government had established limits to the number of printers it would permit to operate in the realm; hence, there was competition for any vacancy that became open. Thus, the context is that of trained printers in provincial towns, most of them with their own printing equipment, applying to the government in Paris for the highly valued licences to run printing businesses. We examine a small number of the original petitions and give an account of their persuasive capacity by (a) noticing the narrative character of the letters and (b) distinguishing between propositional and affective attitudes. Our view is that a reconstruction of the petitions as reasonable persuasive discourse is possible when it is noticed how the two kinds of attitudes can be combined to promote the same end.

The author examines the career of Simon Lacourt, a Bordeaux printer who was guillotined during the French Revolution, and explores the ways in which printers’ milieu and patrons determined their printing choices. Lacourt -- the last in a long line of King’s printers in Bordeaux -- was one of the most privileged and connected printers in the reign of Louis XVI when he made the move into revolutionary printing and became a newspaper printer and the official printer for the Department of the Gironde. His printing business prospered until the summer of 1793 when he became the official printer of thecommission populaire,the body that led the federalist revolt in Bordeaux, a fateful decision dictated by his social, familial and political milieu and one that left him vulnerable after the revolt failed. During his trial he was accused of trying to destroy his country and his fate raises questions about printer responsibility during the Revolution.

Journal Article PROVINCIAL BOOK TRADE INSPECTORS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE Get access JANE MCLEOD JANE MCLEOD The author is Associate Professor of History at Brock University in St Catharines, Ontario Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French History, Volume 12, Issue 2, June 1998, Pages 127–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/12.2.127 Published: 01 June 1998

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