Mapping Print, Charting Enlightenment
The ‘Mapping Print, Charting Enlightenment’ (MPCE) project aims to reconstruct popular reading trends to revise understanding of European enlightenment and the transformational impact of print.
Through an innovative, industry-wide digital survey of unprecedented scope and sophistication, tracking the circulation in France and across Europe of millions of copies of thousands of titles across all sectors of the book trade of pre-revolutionary France – legal, pirate and contraband.
It explores what books were widely read; where they were produced and consumed; what was the relative scale and nature of different parts of the trade – notably religious and illegal publishing; and how ‘popular’ cosmopolitan was popular reading?
