Criticism and the Circulation of News: The Scholarly Press in the Late Seventeenth Century

Quoted in Robinson Howard , The Great Comet of 1680: A study in the history of rationalism, repr. edn (Cleveland, 1916), 24–25, quoting a 1681 German collection of observations of “Wunder-Cometen”. The comet of 1680 is briefly treated in Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the order of nature 1150–1750 (New York, 1998), 334–5. Daston and Park place this discussion in the context of early Enlightenment criticisms of wondrous phenomena and religious enthusiasm. The most comprehensive treatment of comets as objects of wonder and as natural phenomena is Sara Schechner Genuth, Comets, popular culture, and the birth of modern cosmology (Princeton, NJ, 1997). See pp. 76–78 for English reactions to the comet of 1680.

[anon], “Nouveautez du commencement de l'Année”, Journal des s&çavans, 13 January 1681, 12–14, quoted on p. 12.

See articles in the issues of 24 February, 5 May (an entire issue), 30 June, and 21 July, all in 1681.

de la Roque Jean Paul , “Extrait de plusieurs lettres écrites de Rome contenant la description & le dessein au vray d'un oeuf prodigieux, qui y a esté veu au mois de Decembre dernier”, Journal des s&çavans, 20 January 1681, 25–26.

Although focused on Francis Bacon's ideas, the discussion of preternatural phenomena in the seventeenth century in Daston and Park , Wonders and the order of nature (ref. 1), 221–8 offers useful guidance.

Hall Marie Boas , “Oldenburg and the art of scientific communication”, The British journal for the history of science, xi (1965), 277–90.

For a perceptive discussion of the role of journals in the scholarly world, see Goldger Anne , Impolite learning: Conduct and community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven, CT, 1995), 54–114. On the Republic of Letters more generally, see most recently Grafton Anthony , “A sketch map of a lost continent: The Republic of Letters”, Republics of Letters: A journal for the study of knowledge, politics, and the arts, i (2009), and Shelford April G. , Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre Daniel Huet and European intellectual life, 1650–1720 (Rochester NY, 2007) for standard accounts. For an account of the Republic of Letters in the eighteenth century which emphasizes correspondence and social networks, see Brockliss L. W. B. , Calvet's web: Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters in eighteenth-century France (Oxford, 2002).

One could broaden this point to include other publications, such as the Spectator and Tatler, which were clearly intended to reflect the social milieu of the London coffee houses, and the several correspondances littéraires produced in France in the mid-eighteenth century which reported to outsiders on the doings of prominent Parisian salons see Klein Lawrence , “Enlightenment as conversation”, in What's left of Enlightenment?, ed. by Baker Keith Michael Reill Peter Hanns (Standford, CA, 2001); Cowan Brian , “Mr. Spectator and the coffee house public sphere”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxxvii (2004), 2004–66. On the correspondence littéraires, see Goodman Dena , The Republic of Letters: A cultural history of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY, 1994), chap. 4.

Quoted in Goldgar Anne , Impolite learning (Yale, 1995), 55.

Swift Jonathan , A tale of a tub and other works, ed. with an intro. by Ross Angus Woolley David (Oxford, 1986), 60–61.

Preface to the Journal literaire, published in 1713 in The Hague. Quoted in Bot Hans de Vet Jan (eds), Stratégies journalistiques de l'Ancien Régime: Les préfaces des Journaux de Hollande 1684–1764 (Amsterdam and Utrecht, 2002), 57. As suggested by the title, this volume collects and reprints prefaces from some thirty-eight French-language journals published in the Netherlands before 1789. It also includes a short but insightful introduction by the authors.

Yeo Richard , Encyclopedic visions: Scientific dictionaries and Enlightenment culture (Cambridge, 2001), 87–94, and idem, “A solution to the multitude of books: Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopedia (1728) as ‘the Best Book in the Universe’”, Journal of the history of ideas, lxiv (2003), 2003–72. This article is part of an entire issue of the journal devoted to the topic of “Early modern information overload”, and includes articles by Ann Blair, Brian Ogilvie, and Jonathan Sheehan.

A chronological list of seventeenth-century French-language journals, including newspapers, is in Dictionnaire des journaux 1600–1789, ed. by Sgard Jean , ii (Paris, 1991), 1179–990. For general histories of the periodical press, see Feyel Gilles , L'Annonce et la nouvelle: La presse d'infomation sous l'Ancien Régime (1630–1788) (Oxford, 2000), which covers seventeenth-century publications thoroughly, and Holger Böning, Welteroberung durch ein neues Publikum: Die deutsche Presse und der Weg zur Aufklärung. Hamburg und Altana als Beispiel (Bremen, 2002), which opens with useful general history of newspapers and periodicals.

Wittmann Reinhard , Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels (Munich, 1991), 76.

Yardeni Myriam , “Journalisme et histoire contemporaine à l'epoque de Bayle”, History and theory, xii (1973), 208–29, quoted on 208(n). For a discussion of the historical evolution of the term ‘criticism’, although one quite hostile to its deployment by Enlightenment critics in the sense meant here, see Koselleck Reinhart , Critique and crisis: Enlightenment and the pathogenesis of modern society (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 103(n)-5(n). See also Röttgers Kurt , “Kritik”, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. by Brunner Otto Conze Werner Koselleck Reinhart , iii (Stuittgart, 1982), 651–75.

Sommerville C. John , The news revolution in England (Oxford, 1996), 161. For another interesting perspective on the cultural novelty of the news, see Woolf Daniel , “News, history and the construction of the present in early modern England”. In Dooley Brendan Baron Sabrina A. (eds), The politics of information in early modern Europe (London, 2001), 80–118.

Beyond periodicity, as Brendan Dooley has suggested recently, the ability to transmit news items through the press in the seventeenth century may also have fostered a novel sense of comtemporaneity, the sense among a group of people dispersed over a geographical area that they are partaking of the same set of events. See Dooley Brendan (ed.), The dissemination of news and the emergence of contemporaneity in early modern Europe (Farnham, 2010), 1–19.

On criticism and the formation of the public sphere, see Chartier Roger , “The public sphere and public opinion”, in idem, The cultural origins of the French Revolution, trans. by Cochrane Lydia G. (Durham, NC, 1991), 27; Baker Keith Michael , “Public opinion as political invention”, in idem, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French political culture in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1990), 167–99; Hohendahl Peter Uwe , “Literary criticism and the public sphere”, in idem, The institution of criticism (Ithaca, NY, 1982), 44–82; Berghahn Klaus , “Von der klassizistischen zur klassischen Literaturkritik 1730–1806”, in Hohendahl Peter Uwe (ed.), Geschichte der deutschen Literaturkritik (1730–1980) (Stuttgart, 1985), 10–75. An excellent discussion of the critic's public function is in Faulstich Werner , Die bürgerliche Mediengesellschaft (1700–1830) (Göttingen, 2002), esp. p. 23 1 ff.

This point has been developed in greater detail in Broman Thomas , “On the epistemology of criticism: Science, criticism and the German public sphere, 1760–1800”, in Schönert Jörg (ed.), Literaturwissenschaft und Wissenschaftsforschung (Tübingen, 2000), 6–26.

Atherton Ian , “‘The itch grown a disease’: Manuscript transmission of news in the seventeenth century”, in News, newspapers, and society in early modern Britain, ed. by Raymond Joad (London, 1999), 39–65. See also Raymond Joad , “The newspaper, public opinion, and the public sphere in the seventeenth century” in the same volume, 109–40.

According to Victor von Klarwill, the so-called “Fugger Newsletters” actually consisted of manuscript reports transmitted to the Fuggers by two news agents, possibly acting as intermediaries from other news writers. von Klarwill Victor , The Fugger news-letters, trans. by de Chary Pauline (New York, 1924), pp. vii–xxii.

Atherton , “‘The itch grown a disease’” (ref. 20).

On the Gazette de France and similar publications, see L'Annonce et la nouvelle (ref. 13), esp. pp. 191–263 on the contents of the early Gazette. See also Feyel Gilles , “Gazette de France”, in Dictionnaire des journaux (ref. 13), i, 443–9, and Solomon Howard M. , Public welfare, science, and propaganda in seventeenth century France: The innovations of Théophraste Renaudot (Princeton, 1972), 100–61 on the Gazette. More generally on information sources and their control in seventeenth-century France, see Vittu Jean-Pierre , “Instruments of information in France”, in Dooley Baron , The politics of information in early modern Europe (ref. 16), 160–78.

On the issue of propaganda in the early press, see Raymond Joad , “Introduction: Networks, communication, practice”, in News networks in seventeenth-century Britain and Europe”, ed. by Raymond Joad (London, 2006), 1–17.

Feyel , L'Annonce et la nouvelle (ref. 13), 187.

For its first twenty-three issues, the Gazette was published in Oxford and titled the Oxford Gazette. Beginning with issue number 24 (1 February 1 1665/6), it became the London Gazette.

Sommerville , News revolution in England (ref. 16), 63–74 for discussion of the London Gazette.

The London Gazette, nr. 800, 17 July 1673. Accessed through http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/800/pages/.

Weber Johannes , “Deutsche Presse im Zeitalter des Barock: Zur Vorgeschichte öffentlichen politischen Räsonnments”, in “Öffentlichkeit” im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. by Jäger Hans-Wolf . Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert Supplementa, iv (Göttingen, 1997), 137–49, quoted on p. 138. See also Lindemann Margot , Deutsche Presse bis 1815. Geschichte der deutschen Presse, Teil I (Berlin, 1969) 86–107, which includes tables displaying when newspapers were first established in various cities.

The most recent history of the Philosophical transactions in the seventeenth century during and after Oldenburg's own editorship is Johns Adrian , “Miscellaneous methods: Authors, societies and journals in early modern England”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxiii (2000), 159–86.

Hall , “Oldenburg and the art of scientific communication” (ref. 6), 277–90, esp. pp. s289–90.

The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. by Hall A. Rupert Hall Marie Boas , ii, 1663–65 (Madison, WI, 1966), pp. xxv–xxvi.

On Oldenburg's expectations for the Philosophical transactions, see Correspondence, iii, 69, and ii, 563 for mention of the print run. More generally on Oldenburg's financial situation, see Hall Marie Boas , Henry Oldenburg: Shaping the Royal Society (Oxford, 2002), 79–88.

Hall , “Oldenburg and the art of scientific communication” (ref. 6), 289. On the role of letters in the Philosophical transactions, see also Bazerman Charles , Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science (Madison, WI, 1988), 131–3.

Philosophical transactions, nr. 1, 6 March 1664/5, 1.

“L'Imprimeur au Lecteur”, Journal des s&çavans de l'An M. DC. LV par le Sieur de Hedouville (Amsterdam, 1669). The edition consulted by me was a pirated reprint of the first Paris edition, but it matches what is quoted in Betty Trebelle Morgan, Histoire du Journal des s&çavans depuis 1665 jusqu'en 1701 (Paris, 1929), 62–63. Why de Sallo chose initially to write under the pseudonym “de Hedouville” is unknown.

The major sources on the early history of the Journal des s&çavans are Paris Gaston , “Le journal des savants”, Journal des savants, January 1903, 5–34, which unfortunately contains few specific citations; Betty Trebelle Morgan, Histoire du Journal des s&çavans depuis 1665 jusqu'en 1701 (Paris, 1929), which covers much the same ground as Paris, but supplies many more references; Vittu Jean-Pierre , “Journal des savants”, in Dictionnaire des journaux 1600–1789, ed. by Sgard Jean (Paris, 1991), 645–54; and most recently, Vittu, “La formation d'une institution scientifique: Le journal des savants de 1665 à 1714”, Part 1, “D'une enterprise privée à une semi-institution, Journal des savants, January-June 2002, 179–203, and Part 2, “L'Instrument central de la République des Lettres”, Journal des savants, July-December 2002, 349–77.

It might be noted in passing that by using the Journal des s&çavans to publish decisions by civil and canonical tribunals, De Sallo was adding yet a third “master” to his journal's obligations, a move which made sense in terms of de Sallo's own association with the Parlement of Paris, but perhaps not so wise a choice in other respects.

For articles in mining, see e.g. among other articles Philosophical transactions, nr. 3 (1665), 45–46. and nr. 19 (1666), 330–43. On silkworms, see nr. 5 (1665), 87–91 and nr. 2 (1665), 26–27. On the comet, see nr. 1 (1665), 3–8 and nr. 2 (1665), 17–18. Finally, the transfusion experiments were reported between nr. 20 (1666), 353–8 and nr. 30 (1667), 557–9.

See ” of a way of killing ratle-snakes”, Philosophical transactions, nr. 3 (1665), 43, and “Some observations of swarms of strange insects, and the mischiefs done by them”, Philosophical transactions, nr. 7 (1665), 137–8, both of which were based on reports received from North America.

Journal des s&çavans, 26 January 1665, 45–54. This article included precise descriptions of where the comet could be found at various times over the course of some two weeks between December 25 to January 9. For the review of Descartes's treatise, see the issue of 5 January 1665, 10–12.

The review unambiguously attributes the dialogue to Plato (see esp. p. 91), but more recent critics have called it spurious.

The volume is titled De medica historia mirabili lib. sex.

The letter from Amsterdam is reprinted on pp. 97–100.

“An extract of a letter, written by Mr. Richard Towneley to Dr. Croon, touching the invention of dividing a foot into many thousand parts, for mathematical purposes”, Philosophical transactions, nr. 25, 6 May 1667, 457–8.

“More wayes for the same purpose, intimated by Mr. Hook”, Ibid., 459.

This was true whether the journal managed to adhere to its production schedule or not. The very fact that it proclaimed itself a journal implied a “more-to-come” bond with the reader/subscriber. Ann Blair has recently characterized Renaissance miscellanies on the basis of their adherence to the Humanist virtues of wide and random reading as crucial to the discovery (invenio) of suitable topics for practicing the rhetorical arts. Such miscellanies, she points out, often came equipped with finding aids such as an alphabetical arrangement or an index. See Blair Ann M. , Too much to know: Managing scholarly information before the Modern Age (New Haven, CT 2010), 126–31. Much the same was true of periodicals as well. The Philosophical transactions: Which usually consisted of 24 pages per issue, presented a summary table of contents under its banner, whereas the 12-page Journal des s&çavans did not. On the other hand, both journals did issue annual indices arranged alphabetically.

In claiming that periodicals reduce facts to “factoids”, it is of course not my intention to deny that facts might maintain a viable existence outside the pages of scholarly journals. The wellspring of historiographic attention to matters of fact is Steven Shapin and Schaffer Simon , Leviathan and the air pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, NJ, 1985) and Shapin Steven , “Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology”, Social studies of science, xiv (1984), 1984–520. A supplement (or corrective, depending on one's point of view) to Shapin and Schaffer is Barbara Shapiro, A culture of fact: England 1550–1720 (Ithaca, NY, 2000).

“Extrait d'une lettre de M. Denis Professeur de philosophie & de mathematique, à M. *** touchant la transfusion du sang”, Journal des s&çavans, 25 April 1667, 125.

“Extrait d'une lettre de Mr. Pecquet à Mr. Carcavi, touchant une nouvelle découverte de la communication du canal thoracique avec la veine emulgente”, Journal des s&çavans, 4 April 1667, 105–11.

In 1666, the Journal des s&çavans appeared weekly, except for the period between 6 September and 15 November (even in the 1600s, a holiday away from the city was the sacred right of everyone who could afford to get out of town). In that year, it published 227 separate articles, the large majority of which were notices of recently published books. Of those 227 items, 37 (16%) can be classified as reports of original research, observations, experiments, or as responses to other such reports. Of those 37 articles, 20 (54%) were extracted and translated from articles previously published in the Philosophical transactions. In 1667, the Journal des s&çavans began coming out irregularly, with 16 issues in all. These issues contained a total of 74 articles, 15 of which (20%) were not book notices. Of those 15,5 (33%) were reprints. In 1668, the 13 issues of the Journal des s&çavans published 73 articles in all, 16 of which were not book notices and of the latter 7 were extracts from other journals. On the issue of transmission of news about England in the Journal des s&çavans, a useful survey is Walters Barrie , “The Journal des savants and the dissemination of news of English scientific activity in late seventeenth-century France”, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, cccxiv (1993), 133–66.

For the first notice of the Giornale de' Letterati, see the Journal des s&çavans, 15 October 1668, 99. See the next issue of 12 November 1668, 107–8, for the extract from the Giornale de' Letterati. On the origins and history of the Giornale de' Letterati, see Gardair Jean Michel , Le “Giornale de' Letterati” de Rome (1668–1681) (Florence, 1985), esp. 31–34 for discussion of an Italian translation of the Journal des s&çavans, and pp. 161–81 for an account of the news the Giornale published during its early years.

Or perhaps even without paying a subscription. There is evidence in Pierre Bayle's correspondence that he sought to trade his Nouvelles de la République des Lettres for a copy of the Philosophical transactions. Bost Hubert , Un “intellectuel” avant la lettre: Le journaliste Pierre Bayle (Amsterdam, 1994), 110. What, if anything, came of this initiative is not known.

On the suppression of the Nouvelles, see Labrousse Elisabeth , Pierre Bayle. Tome I, “De pays de foix à la cité d'Erasme” (The Hague, 1963), 190(n). According to at least two of Bayle's correspondents in Paris, La Roque may have instigated the action against the Nouvelles. See Bost Hubert , Un “intellectuel” avant la lettre, p. 109(n); and Betz Louis Paul , Pierre Bayle und die “Nouvelles de la République des Lettres”, repr. of 1896 (Geneva, 1970), 23–24.

The entire issue of the Journal des s&çavans 6 February 1668 is devoted to blood transfusion. On the priority of its discovery, see the Philosophical transactions, no. 27, undated (September, 1667).

Journal des s&çavans 19 November 1668, 117–19.

The article in question was the review of Charles Patin, Introduction à l'histoire par la conoissance des medailles, in Journal des s&çavans, nr. 8, 23 February 1665, 97–98.

Journal des s&çavans 12 January 1665, 13. The report of books newly placed on the Index was the lead article in this particular issue, so it could scarcely be supposed that de Sallo intended that his comments go unnoticed by readers. On the religious issues connected with the suppression, see Paris , “Le journal des savants” (ref. 37), 10–11.

Of course, it should be added that after a vigorous first year, the Journal des s&çavans itself began to disappear with Gallois at the helm. He published forty-two issues in 1666 on a weekly schedule (with a lengthy holiday between early September and mid-November), sixteen issues in 1667, thirteen in 1668, and only four in 1669. Morgan , Histoire (ref. 37), 137.

Philosophical transactions, nr. 36,15 June 1668, 715–16, quoted on p. 716. Interestingly, the notice makes no mention of the title by which this book came to be known best, Plus ultra.

Bayle's work as a journalist has been largely ignored in the substantial historiography that has grown up around him, although the writing of Hubert Bost is an indispensable exception. See Bost Hubert , Pierre Bayle: Historien, critique et moraliste (Turnhout, 2006). Bost's book examines three prominent themes in Bayle's writing, and includes a lengthy discussion of the Nouvelles on 43–100. On Bayle's intentions for his journal in the context of other contemporaneous publications, see Bost , “Un Journaliste sur les Journaux de son Temps”, in La Diffusion et la lecture des journaux de langue Française sous l'Ancien Régime (Amsterdam, 1988), 203–11.

Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, March 1684, preface (unpaginated). The edition consulted for this article was the third corrected edition.

Ibid.

Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, March 1684, 18.

De oraculis veterum ethnicorum dissertationes duae (Amsterdam, 1683).

Bayle Pierre , Pensées diverses sur la comète. Présentation de Joyce et Hubert Bost (Paris, 2007).

Lennon cites this as one instance of Bayle's general tendency to regard idolatry (e.g., in the Tridentine doctrine of transubstantiation) as the most significant error of Catholicism. See Lennon Thomas M. , Reading Bayle (Toronto, 1999), 107–18.

Darmanson Jean , La beste transformée en machine, divisée en deux dissertations prononcées à Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1684).

Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, March 1684, 18–33, quoted on p. 23.

Ibid., 24.

Bayle , Pensées diverses sur la comète (ref. 66).

Lennon Thomas M. , Reading Bayle (Toronto, 1999), quoted on p. 15. For the most important recent works on Bayle, see Bost , Pierre Bayle (ref. 61), and idem, Pierre Bayle (Paris, 2006). The standard interpretation has long been Elisabeth Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, 2 vols, published as part of the Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vols, i and vi (The Hague, 1963–64). Bost's is the more useful, however, because it follows Bayle's own writings more faithfully than does Labrousse, whose method is to distill them into a synthetic interpretation of his thinking.

Nadler Steven M. , Arnauld and the Cartesian philosophy of ideas (Princeton, NJ, 1989) offers a clear, carefully developed account of this point. See also Nadler Steven M. , “Choosing a theodicy: The Leibniz-Malebranche-Arnauld connection”, Journal of the history of ideas, lv (1994), 1994–89. A more condensed version that agrees with Nadler's on all but a few details is Tad M. Schmaltz, “Malebranche on ideas and the vision of God”, in The Cambridge companion to Malebranche, ed. by Nadler Steven (Cambridge, 2000), 59–86.

Bayle Pierre , “Réponse de l'auteur de la recherche de la verité au livre de M. Arnauld”, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, April 1684, 119–28.

Ibid., 128.

On this point, see the discussion of Malebranche and St Augustine in Nadler Steven , Malebranche and ideas (Oxford, 1992), 101–3.

Nadler Steven M. , Arnauld and the Cartesian philosophy of ideas (Princeton, NJ, 1989), 167.

Nadler , Malebranche and ideas (ref. 76), 152–8.

Lennon , Reading Bayle (ref. 67), 20–41, which offers a lengthy and interesting discussion of this point with special reference to Bakhtin.

In Critique and crisis (ref. 15), Reinhart Koselleck adopts a similar point of view, but he does not connect the source of this ideology to the periodical press.

Kramnick Jonathan Brody , “Literary criticism among the disciplines”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxxv (2002), 343–60.

For a position that supports Kramnick's see Valenza Robin , Literature, language, and the rise of the intellectual disciplines in Britain, 1680–1820 (Cambridge, 2009), 180–1.