Printing and Bookselling in Rodez, 1624–1820: An Essay in Socio-Cultural History

This article focuses on the history of the Rodez printing firm in provincial France from 1624 to 1820 (although the firm ran until 1984). In contrast to the world of clandestine printing and bookselling, very little is known about the lives of ordinary sedentary printers in ancien-régime France. The paper is organized in three parts and considers the following issues. How did the firm operate, who worked in it, what training was required, and what was produced? How did this change over time? Secondly, this was a family firm, so we may ask how was it kept in the family, and how did the family fare as it made a living out of printing? Here we have an insight into the history of an artisan family over nearly 200 years, the ascension of an artisanal family to the level of respectable bourgeoisie. The third area considered is the possible contribution to understanding the cultural world of a provincial town. The firm printed and sold books, and account books and order books give us further information, though of a fragmentary nature. From this it is possible to raise questions about recent research on the starkly contrasting world of Enlightenment bestsellers.