Charmet and the book police : clandestinity, illegality and popular reading in late Ancien Régime France

On September 7, 1778, Modeste Monnot, Inspecteur de la librairie, and his adjunct, the bookseller Nicolas-Anne de St Agathe, called at the bookshop of Jean-Félix Charmet. They were searching for contraband works. What they found in Charmet's boutique on the Grand'rue at the Place Saint-Pierre in Besançon has the power to shock. It also calls us to rethink our understanding of the book trade of the later enlightenment, to re-contextualize the place of clandestine publishing, and to radically revise standard accounts of popular reading in the late eighteenth century. As for Charmet, his business clearly bore little resemblance to descriptions in existing historical literature.