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Sharon Brown,
a PhD candidate in the School of Literatures , Languages
and Cultures, is investigating the trade in French books
in Scotland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
She is writing a thesis on the multiple factors that
made this segment of the Scottish book trade possible,
successful and remarkably long-lived. The thesis first
examines the importing of French books from Europe ,
marketing techniques practiced by Scottish booksellers,
publishing of French books in Scotland both in French
and in translation, and the different levels and types
of schooling, including education through extensive
travel in Europe , which formed Scottish readers of
French materials. It also looks at representative libraries
of individuals such as Smith, Hume, Blair and Robertson,
as well as those of families like Newhailes and Paxton.
Books covering all disciplines and genres are included
in this study.
The second part
of the thesis examines the significant though lesser
market for Scottish books in France during the two centuries
under consideration. It will show that while French
interest in Scottish writing was on the whole narrower
and more specific than was Scottish interest in French
publications, it was nevertheless important: writing
emanating from the Scottish Enlightenment was widely
read by French counterparts and in the salons of
Paris; and records of the nineteenth century cabinets
de lectures , for example, indicate that Walter
Scott was the most popular Scottish author in France
for most of the nineteenth century. Of interest too
is the fact that the writings of Scott most read by
the French were not those most popular in Britain .
The third area
of concern posits that while Scots were a part of a
pan-European group of readers comprising a vigorous
market for French writing that was at once intellectual
and popular and that reflected the interests of different
strata of readers, from those associated with the Enlightenment,
to those engaged in the burgeoning fields of science
and medicine, to those to whom French literature was
made available by means of translations of popular French
18 th and 19 th century writing, Scottish readers nevertheless
imparted a unique cast to French works. The impact of
an alien culture on French texts, especially if translated,
the importance that may be extrapolated from the popularity
of certain works in Scotland at a given time and why
certain French texts survived in Scotland when they
did not in France, are among the factors that will be
examined with a view to supporting the hypothesis that
the thousands of French books imported into Scotland
or published there during the 18 th and 19 th centuries,
not only influenced the Scots, but in turn frequently
gave to the French texts themselves an entirely different
influence and status from that which they enjoyed in
France.
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