Welcome to the higher seminar in Book History Wednesday 20 April, 3:15 pm to 5 pm CET, with invited guest Professor Thomas Munck, Glasgow.

The seminar will be on Zoom through the following link: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/62339647753

Professor Munck will open the discussion with a presentation entitled ’What techniques might help authors and publishers of radical texts avoid the threats of censorship and suppression 1740–1795?’, which he presents thus:

This paper will examine how the control of printed texts became increasingly difficult during the 18th century, not only in France (with its heavily bureaucratised censorship system) but also in other parts of Europe, including Britain, Scandinavia and Germany. Evasion could take many forms (disguising the meaning in complex academic language or even Latin, engaging in illegal publication, serialising a text for example in journals, or disguising subversive meanings in fiction).  But mechanisms of repression also became more sophisticated, notably through prosecution in law, and direct harassment of authors and publishers.  The French Revolution brought these problems to a head, all over Europe.

Suggested background reading for those who want to come prepared is chapter 6 from Thomas Munck’s book Conflict and Enlightenment: Print and Political Culture in Europe, 1635–1795 (Cambridge University Press, 2019) (available for employees and students at Lund University), or the article ‘Public debate, politics and print: The late Enlightenment in Copenhagen during the years of the French Revolution’, [Danish] Historisk Tidsskrift, 114 (2014), pp. 323-52.

All welcome!

Image: Regents of the Aalmoezeniersweeshuis Orphanage in Amsterdam, 1729. Date: 18th century. Institution: Rijksmuseum. Provider: Rijksmuseum. Providing Country: Netherlands. Public Domain