Everyday Life in the German Book Trade
Author | : Pamela E. Selwyn |
Publisher | : Penn State Press |
Total Pages | : 438 |
Release | : 2010-11-01 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780271043876 |
ISBN-13 | : 0271043873 |
Rating | : 4/5 (76 Downloads) |
Download or read book Everyday Life in the German Book Trade written by Pamela E. Selwyn and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his popular book The Germans (1982), Stanford historian Gordon Craig remarked: &"When German intellectuals at the end of the eighteenth century talked of living in a Frederican age, they were sometimes referring not to the monarch in Sans Souci, but to his namesake, the Berlin bookseller Friedrich Nicolai.&" Such was the importance attributed to Nicolai&’s role in the intellectual life of his age by his own contemporaries. While long neglected by students of the period, who tended to accept the caricature of him as a philistine who failed to recognize Goethe&’s genius, Nicolai has experienced a resurgence of interest among scholars reexploring the German Enlightenment and the literary marketplace of the eighteenth century. This book, drawing upon Nicolai&’s large unpublished correspondence, rounds out the picture we have of Nicolai already as author and critic by focusing on his roles as bookseller and publisher and as an Aufk&ärer in the book trade.