The reading mania and the French Revolution

Detail

Literacy first, reading mania after

• From the 17th and 18th centuries, churches set up village schools across Europe. Ordinary village people — peasants and artisans — began to read.
• By the late eighteenth century, literacy in parts of Europe reached 60–80 per cent.
• Once people could read, they wanted more to read. Historians call this the reading mania (a hunger for books that spread far beyond the rich).
• Printers answered by making books cheap and small, not costly and grand.

How cheap books reached ordinary people

• Booksellers hired pedlars — travelling salesmen who walked village to village with books in a pack. Books came to the buyer; the buyer did not need a city shop.
• New cheap print forms:
• Almanacs — small yearly books with calendars, farming tips, weather and omens.
• Ballads and folktales — songs and old stories in print.
• Penny chapbooks in England — pocket-size books sold for a penny by sellers called chapmen.

• Bibliotheque Bleue in France — cheap little books wrapped in blue covers (blue paper was the cheapest paper available).

• External detail on the Bibliotheque Bleue:

• These were chapbooks of the 16th to 18th centuries, printed mainly at Troyes in France. A digital collection holds 252 titles (full text and page images), built by the Médiathèque du Grand Troyes, the ARTFL Project (University of Chicago) and CIFNAL; with extra texts from the Bancroft Library, Berkeley, the total reaches 284 titles [2].
• Typical cheap print of this kind was a few pages, cheaply made, carrying one popular story or ballad with a rough woodcut picture [3].
• Reading matter grew sharply after about 1650. This growth both came from and pushed forward the spread of schooling to the middle classes — especially to women [3].

The periodical press

• From the early eighteenth century, periodicals (magazines and newspapers that come out at fixed times) appeared.
• Their mix was new: current affairs plus entertainment in one issue. A reader got news of wars and trade next to gossip, stories and adverts.
• This trained ordinary readers to follow public events as a habit, not as a one-off.

Science, reason and rationality reach the common reader

• Print carried the new science and philosophy out of the scholar's study:
• Newton's discoveries were retold for general readers.

• Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Rousseau were printed widely and read widely.

• The key words of the age — science, reason and rationality (deciding things by evidence and thinking, not by custom or priests) — entered popular literature.

• External detail on these writers:
• Voltaire published Lettres philosophiques, attacking the settled religious and political order. The uproar forced him to flee Paris [4].
• Rousseau published Du Contrat social (The Social Contract). He argued laws bind people only if the general will of the people supports them — not because a ruler or the Church handed them down [4].
• Thomas Paine travelled to England in 1787 and joined the debate on the French Revolution. His Rights of Man (1791–92) defended the Revolution and argued for republicanism; he attacked monarchy, aristocracy and all privilege, and demanded manhood suffrage, peace, public education, old-age pensions and maternity benefits [5].
• Britain charged Paine with treason and ordered his arrest. He had already left for France, where he was elected to the National Convention [5].

  Note: Rights of Man (1791–92) appeared after 1789, so it spread the Revolution's ideas outward rather than causing 1789. Paine's earlier Common Sense and the wider Enlightenment writing are what fed the pre-1789 mood [5].

Mercier's claim

• The French novelist Mercier declared: "The printing press is the most powerful engine of progress and public opinion is the force that will sweep despotism away."
• He warned rulers: "Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!"
• In many of Mercier's novels, the hero is changed by reading. He devours books, and books remake him.

Print and the French Revolution — the three arguments

The chapter gives these as a debate among historians, not as settled fact.

• Argument 1 — Print spread Enlightenment ideas.
• Writers like Voltaire and Rousseau were read in large numbers.
• Their writing attacked tradition, superstition and despotism (rule by one person with no limits).

• It questioned the Church's sacred authority and the state's power based on custom, asking people to judge everything by reason.

• Argument 2 — Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate.

• Print made argument public. Readers discussed and re-examined all values, norms and institutions.

• Once people were used to judging, ideas of social revolution could be thought and stated.

• Argument 3 — By the 1780s, print mocked the royal family.

• Underground literature, cartoons and caricatures circulated in large numbers.
• They attacked the morality of royalty and painted the monarchy as sunk in pleasure while common people suffered.
• This fed hostility to the monarchy in the years just before 1789.

The caveat — print opened possibilities, it did not command minds

• People did not read only revolutionary books. They also read monarchical and Church propaganda — writing defending king and religion.
• Readers were not sponges. They accepted some ideas and rejected others.
• So print did not directly shape people's minds. What it did was open up the possibility of thinking differently.

What the Revolution then did to books

• The flow ran both ways: once the Revolution began, it reorganised France's books.
• 1789 — monastic and church libraries were seized. Books were gathered in the main town of each département in stores called dépots littéraires [6].
• 1792 — the libraries of aristocratic families were taken in the same way [6].
• The Bibliotheque Nationale received about 300,000 volumes, and new libraries were set up in many large provincial cities [6].

Prelims Hooks

• Literacy in parts of Europe by the late eighteenth century: 60–80 per cent.
• Penny chapbooks were sold in England by sellers called chapmen.
• Bibliotheque Bleue = cheap small books of France, known by their blue covers; a French chapbook tradition of the 16th–18th centuries printed largely at Troyes [2].
• The digitised Bibliotheque Bleue collection holds 252 titles, rising to 284 with Bancroft Library additions [2].
• Pedlars were the travelling book-sellers hired by booksellers to reach villages.
• The periodical press began in the early eighteenth century and combined current affairs with entertainment.
• Mercier, a French novelist, called the printing press "the most powerful engine of progress."
• Scientist popularised in cheap print: Newton. Philosophers: Voltaire, Rousseau, Thomas Paine.
• Paine's Rights of Man was published in 1791–92; Britain charged him with treason and he was later elected to France's National Convention [5].
• By the 1780s, underground cartoons and caricatures mocked the French royal family.
• 1789: church libraries seized into dépots littéraires; 1792: aristocratic libraries seized; Bibliotheque Nationale gained about 300,000 volumes [6].

Mains Points

• Print as a cause of revolution — a careful answer, not a simple one. The three arguments (Enlightenment ideas spread, a new culture of debate, mockery of royalty by the 1780s) must be stated together with the caveat: readers also consumed royal and Church propaganda, so print opened the possibility of thinking differently rather than dictating what people thought. A good GS-I answer uses this to show the difference between a condition and a cause.
• Literacy is the hinge. Church village schools raised literacy to 60–80 per cent in parts of Europe; only then did cheap print (almanacs, chapbooks, Bibliotheque Bleue) have a mass market, and only then could political print matter. Technology alone explains nothing without readers — a useful link to the Indian case, where low literacy shaped how vernacular print worked.
• The market made the message cheap. Pedlars, penny pricing, blue paper covers and woodcut illustration carried ideas to people who could not afford a bound book. Distribution, not just authorship, is what turned philosophy into public opinion — and after 1789 the Revolution reorganised book ownership itself, seizing church and noble libraries into public ones [6].
• Print and public opinion as a political force. Mercier's claim that public opinion would "sweep despotism away" marks a new idea: that opinion outside the court is a power in politics. Paine's career shows both sides of it — Rights of Man spread republican demands (suffrage, public education, pensions) while the British state answered with a treason charge, proving rulers believed print was dangerous [5].