Prévot, Chantal <br/><br/>
What did the French read in the Napoleonic period? 

 -  2020.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> This apparently simple question is hard to answer given the variety of publications and media, running from high quality books, to proto-paperbacks, tracts and pamphlets, to name but the few best known. Reading was varied occupation, comprising both the skim-reading of a broadsheet bought in the street and the enjoyment of a finely bound classic at home, in a library or reading room. The answer, or rather the beginnings of an answer are to be found in studies of publishing output, in inventories of private libraries, in references to reading in memorial literature, and in the book titles scattered throughout divers texts and also the mentions of books and reading in newspapers. These sources – as diverse as the texts and media themselves – give a panorama of the world of books and reading during the First Empire and the Restoration seen from the point of view of the history of publishing rather than from that of literary criticism.