Book Fetish

Joachim Heinrich Campe and the Commodification of Literature

Bibliographic Data

ID10497399
AuthorsMatt Erlin (0000-0002-0536-7499, Washington University in St. Louis, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume42
Issue4
Pages355-376
Publication date2006-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSeminar A Journal of Germanic Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-1939 • E-ISSN: 1911-026X
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/seminar.42.4.seminar-v42-4-355
OpenAlexW2016906745
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited20

Consumer culture in eighteenth-century Europe has attracted a great deal of attention in the past decade, so much that consumption studies has itself become something of a growth market for scholars of the period (e.g. Berg and Clifford; Berg and Eager; Brewer and Porter; Smith). Ever since Neil McKendrick presented his controversial thesis regarding a “consumer revolution” in eighteenth-century England, social, cultural, and intellectual historians have sought to explain and interpret the consequences of the remarkable increase in consumer goods produced in that country beginning in the 1760s – from coffee, tea, and tobacco to watches, looking glasses, umbrellas, puppets, and porcelain (McKendrick/Brewer/Plumb, 9). More recently, analyses of French history have challenged conventional wisdom regarding French economic backwardness, uncovering the details of what Michael Kwass has termed “a buying spree of historic proportions” (187). Germany has figured less prominently in these discussions. Its low profile is understandable to the extent that it reflects the relative economic underdevelopment of the area in the eighteenth century, but it is nevertheless unfortunate, because a consideration of the German situation can shed light on a still underilluminated facet of eighteenth-century consumer culture. The expansion of the literary market, especially the market for works of fiction, played a crucial role in the development of the new culture of consumption. While this role has certainly not been ignored by scholars – Colin Campbell’s The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (1987) offers a case in point – it is nevertheless surprising that the representative anthologies and overviews that treat consumer culture do not devote more space to a consideration of one of the period’s most important consumer goods – the book – and one of its most important experiences of consumption – reading. Germany, where access to many consumer goods was more limited than in France and England, offers an especially compelling case study for those interested in books as consumer objects, and it is thus no surprise that some scholars of German culture have turned recently to what could be termed the “virtual” consumption of textual representations. Daniel Purdy in particular has demonstrated the extent to which educated Germans actively participated in an emergent European consumer culture, even though they frequently experienced this culture only vicariously, through novels

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Backwardness · Commodification · Consumer Culture · Consumerism · Consumption (sociology · Economic history · Economics · Economy · German · Literature · Media studies · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Popular culture · Romance · Sociology · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

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