Licensing Loyalty : : Printers, Patrons, and the State in Early Modern France / / Jane McLeod.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: McLeod, Jane,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Penn State Series in the History of the Book
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (312 p.)

In Licensing Loyalty, historian Jane McLeod explores the evolution of the idea that the royal government of eighteenth-century France had much to fear from the rise of print culture. She argues that early modern French printers helped foster this view as they struggled to negotiate a place in the expanding bureaucratic apparatus of the French state. Printers in the provinces and in Paris relentlessly lobbied the government, hoping to convince authorities that printing done by their commercial rivals posed a serious threat to both monarchy and morality. By examining the French state's policy of licensing printers and the mutually influential relationships between officials and printers, McLeod sheds light on our understanding of the limits of French absolutism and the uses of print culture in the political life of provincial France.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 The Early History of Printers in Provincial France, 1470-1660 -- 2 The Vicissitudes of a Royal Decree: -- 3 The Royal Council Takes Control: -- 4 The Purges: -- 5 Arguments Offered by Printers in Petitions for Licenses, 1667-1789 -- 6 Patronage and Bureaucracy Intersect: -- 7 Behind the Rhetoric: -- Conclusion -- Appendix A: Printers' Wealth in the Eighteenth Century -- Appendix B: Some Licensed Provincial Printers Involved in the Clandestine Book Trade, 1750-89, by Town -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index