Oak Knoll

First edition. Fine in fine dust jacket.

Historically, 18th-century France offers a wide field of opportunity for students of publishing and bookselling and the social and political role of reading, and for proponents of alternative literature theories. The author discusses here unsanctioned texts of the time: utopian fantasy, pornographic hedonism, slanders, etc., along with the methods of sale and distribution and the question of whether and how such books may have contributed to the monarchy's loss of legitimacy in popular opinion.