Enlightenment? What Enlightenment? Reflections on Half a Million Books (British, French, and Dutch Private Libraries, 1665–1830)

Bibliographic Data

ID9308332
AuthorsAlicia C Montoya (Radboud University Nijmegen, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume54
Issue4
Pages909-934
Publication date2021-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEighteenth-Century Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-2586 • E-ISSN: 1086-315X
PublisherJohns Hopkins University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/ecs.2021.0097
OpenAlexW3193570152
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited10

In the summer of 1779, having filed for bankruptcy after a series of unfortunate business ventures, the Paris-based, former treasurer of the Ponts et Chausses and secrtaire du Roi Gabriel Prvost saw his small but choice library of 673 books confiscated and put up for auction. 1 A catalogue was drawn up, and the sale took place over a seven-day period, August 20 to 28. Manuscript notes in one of the copies suggest that all lots found buyers. Other exceptional prices were paid for a magnificent copy of the Cassini map of France, consisting of 204 sheets pasted on canvas (730 livres); and a 17-volume, quarto set of Buffon's Histoire naturelle (380 livres) and his Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (331 livres). Despite these standout prices, most books however went for more modest sums, with the majority sold for prices varying between one and five livres. Gabriel Prvost's library would, on the face of it, appear to be a model Enlightenment library, containing the major works of the most well-known philosophes

Archaeology · Art · Enlightenment · Historiography · Literature · Political science · Reading (process · Classics · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

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