Background

What role does literature play in commercial society? To what extent can literature resist or even counter market forces? In what ways does commercial society use the book trade to promote its own system of values? This conference proposes to illuminate the ongoing debates regarding the place of literature within commercial society – topics that have long exercised many working in the arts and humanities on both sides of the Atlantic – from a historical perspective, focusing on the long eighteenth century.

Eighteenth-century writers were acutely aware of living in an age in which social and international relationships were being rapidly reshaped by commercial forces. The world of letters played a crucial role in helping to assimilate, explore and influence this changing world: from histories of civil society to economic philosophy, merchant handbooks and, last but by no means least influential, imaginative literary genres, most notably the emerging modern novel. The eighteenth century was also a period, in which, the world of letters itself, was dramatically reorganized by these same commercial pressures and interests, bearing witness to the rise of the professional author and the rapid expansion of the book trade across European boundaries and across the seas. It is thus unsurprising that the objects of this growing international trade – the books and pamphlets – should reflect not only on commercial society in general but also on the economics of writing more specifically. While these were developments that were associated with an increasingly global commerce, France and England were key players. Furthermore, their books on trade and their mutual trade in books shows clearly the extent to which these two European powers each singled out the other for particular attention, motivated by conflicting sentiments of admiration, hostility and rivalry.

Venue