14 Who Are D’Holbach’s Readers?
In: The Great Protector of WitsSearch for other papers by Nicholas Cronk in
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Abstract
How do the philosophes, and d’Holbach in particular, reflect on the question of their readership? They necessarily depend on the print medium of their day to open up the space for dialogue and to engage new audiences, and in the course of the 18th century there is a huge increase both in the number of print publications and in levels of literacy all across Europe. The philosophes were living through a ‘reading revolution’; how did they respond to it? Théologie portative (1768) and Le Bon sens (1772), both fairly short octavos that would have been modestly priced, are the two works of d’Holbach that seem to stand apart from the others in respect of their potential accessibility and ability to reach out to a broader audience. The very term portatif evokes a book that can be carried – or hidden – in a pocket, the 18th-century equivalent of a paperback, and the Théologie portative is an overt reply to Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique, which in its first edition had been called Dictionnaire philosophique portatif. The Théologie portative was reprinted several times in the 1770s, then more or less disappeared in the 19th century. Le Bon sens, on the other hand, enjoyed a very different destiny. There were frequent new editions during the Revolution and its success continued all through the 19th century and into the twentieth, when it was also widely translated.