Transgressions in Print
Mlle Bonafon and the Private Life of
Louis XV

Robert Darnton
Shelby Cullom Davis '30 Professor of European History, Princeton University

Prof. Darnton regales us with the results of his recently completed study of the scandalous literature attached to the court and Louis XV. It begins with police archives—the case of a servant woman who wrote a novel about the king's sex life—and opens onto a discussion of romans à clef and reading. 

Robert Darnton has been called one of the most original contributors to our understanding of life in pre-revolutionary Paris. He is also considered a leading authority on the history of books and censorship. Many view The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedia (1979) as Darnton's most influential work. His book The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France, an intriguing study of clandestine libertine literature under the Old Regime, won the 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award. Before joining Princeton's history faculty in 1968, Darnton worked as a reporter for the New York Times.