"AN EXTRAORDINARY BEST-SELLER BY ANY BIBLIOMETRIC MEASURE"
"...bibliometric events..." — Mark Curran

AM | @HDI1780

On his Twitter account yesterday [@c18booktrade], Mark Curran announced the publication of his research work on the double-entry account books of Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN) (*). Following my immediate RT, Mr Curran tweeted back in reference to Histoire des deux Indes:

@HDI1780 Indeed, and thanks! A remarkable book and extraordinary best seller by any bibliometric measure.

* * *

The article is certainly worth the attention of anyone interested in French book history circa 1780. On page 98, the author draws up the list of the STN's overall top-ten clandestine best-sellers:

1. Tableau de Paris, Louis-Sébastien Mercier –14,065 (sales)

2. Contrat conjugal, Jacques Le Scène-Desmaisons –4,164

3. Histoire des deux Indes, Guillaume-Thomas-François Raynal –3,684

4. Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, Voltaire –2,511

5. Dissertation sur l’établissement de l’abbaye de S. Claude, Charles-Gabriel-Frédéric

Christin–2,504

6. Requête au Conseil du Roi, Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet –2,201

7. Dieu, Voltaire –2,187

8. Système de la nature, D’Holbach–1,972

9. De la verité, Jaques-Pierre Brissot de Warville –1,930

10. L’an 2440, Louis-Sébastien Mercier –1,904

Mr Curran adds: "Specialists will remark that these top-tens do not wildly differ from those presented in Robert Darntons's The forbidden best-sellers and The corpus of clandestine literature. Mercier, Voltaire, d'Holbach, Raynal, and Brissot all occupy plum positions [...] Erotic works comprised only 10.7 per cent of the STN’s illegal sales and those railing against despotism just 3.6 per cent. Instead, the themes of a higher Enlightenment –philosophy (32 per cent), religion (24 per cent), politics (20 per cent), social issues (20 per cent), current affairs (17), and social mores (17 per cent) –dominated the society’s illegal shipment".

(*) Mark Curran: "Beyond the Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France", The Historical Journal, 56, 1 (2013) pp. 89-­112.

________________