Raymond Birn,Royal Censorship of Books in Eighteenth-Century France

Reviewed by: Louise Seaward, University of Leeds, UK

Based on public lectures which Raymond Birn presented at the Collège de France, this work was first brought to market in French in 2007. Royal Censorship is both a translation and an augmentation of this earlier text. This new version is updated by three additional chapters. Two of these consider how censorship evolved in the years immediately prior to the French Revolution whilst the third is an extended case study of one particular censor who judged books for the French state for more than 25 years.

Birn's study, which acquaints the reader with the complexities of censorship under the old regime, is chronologically comprehensive, stretching from 1699 to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Drawing his data from censors’ reports and the records of privileges issued for particular books, Birn is able to sketch out the working life of French censors in this period. Light is shed on the censors’ social and cultural background, their interaction with their colleagues and superiors and the nature of their role as literary judges. Birn divides much of his investigation by genre in order to explore how censors approached the rich variety of texts which circulated under the ancien régime. From mathematics to theology, from belles-lettres to jurisprudence, the censors contributed to a negotiated understanding surrounding the kinds of topics that could not be tolerated.

As is the case with most research on censorship in eighteenth-century France, there is some discussion of the liberal minister Malesherbes and the role he played in encouraging his team of censors to be more tolerant. Yet Birn tempers this by pointing out that most of the ideas expounded by Malesherbes were never implemented. Throughout the century, the administration of the French book trade remained in glaring need of reform. Indeed, Birn is adept at underscoring the challenging circumstances that censors faced in this era. Their work was largely unpaid, the division of labour was uneven and the objectives of state censorship were never properly codified. Matters were further complicated by the censors’ increasing use of more informal verbal and written permissions, the most notable of which was the permission tacite. These semi-official approbations allowed censors to expand the parameters of licit literature if they saw fit, but also resulted in some confusion about which books deserved to be denounced. Birn's supplementary chapters are a welcome addition to this edition as they make it clear that censorship became an even trickier task in the 1770s and 1780s as censors struggled to define the limits of acceptability in the context of changing times.

As well as considering the censors as individual decision makers, Birn also ruminates upon their influence and impact as a group. A thorough empirical grounding allows him to elaborate upon the idea of tolerant censorship that he has already expressed in earlier scholarship. Most of the censors could not be described as being either enlightened or reactionary. Instead they sought to find a middle way between the two and were guided by an attitude of pragmatism and flexibility in their decision making. This is a complex dichotomy which Birn is able to explain clearly without resorting to over-simplification. His findings feed into the recent research of scholars like Jane McLeod who have counselled against the traditional view of censorship as oppressive and authoritarian. Censors deliberated and regulated what was allowed to be said as much as they suppressed the discussion of certain subjects. Moreover, as Birn acknowledges, the French state pursued a form of positive censorship whereby it approved of the dissemination of certain strands of thought in the hope of influencing the wider public. The extent to which this strategy of official promotion evolved across the century certainly merits further consideration.

Birn's overview of the censorship structure simultaneously encompasses a large scope and provides a wealth of detail. By underscoring the censors’ scholarly knowledge, Birn suggests that their decisions were shaped by wider developments in the French cultural landscape as well as by their responsibility to defend the absolutist regime. Historians working on eighteenth-century France have often been drawn to the drama of the forbidden book trade but this study underscores the need to think just as closely about the much bigger corpus of texts which were permitted to circulate by the French authorities. Royal Censorship has something to say about the subtleties and difficulties of controlling the printed word which resonates beyond the French context and this edition will allow these ideas to be transmitted to a wider audience of scholars and students.