Foreign Booksellers in Vienna and Prague 1680-1750

The goal of this project is to explore the cultural, economic and social topography of the book trade in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1680 until 1750. I will analyse the crucial role of foreign booksellers at these markets, with a focus on Vienna and Prague. Studying these important markets and long-distance trade relationships will allow us to fully grasp the importance of different centres of the book trade in the Holy Roman Empire. In the late 17th century, the increasing diversity in the book trade led to intense competition. Many booksellers invested in long-distance trading, with booksellers from Nuremberg, Augsburg and Leipzig establishing stable business networks in the Austrian and Bohemian lands. Frequently, they were adherents of the Protestant faith. While these publishing houses had no qualms about producing pious and devotional literature for Catholics, as market players, they were subject to trade restrictions. In addition to general data (sales channels, distribution, volume, etc.), this project will cast light on individual business deals with academic and aristocratic customers, which ranged from one- off purchases to year-long relationships: here, we see that the purchase of books generally ran through these established trade networks across Europe. Books from Italy and Antwerp came via Augsburg and Nuremberg or the Frankfurt book fair to the Viennese and Prague markets. Italian, French, Dutch or English book imports were channelled through these distribution networks or they were printed in translation by the publishers themselves. I intend to analyse the printed book as a commodity, in order to comprehend the publishers practices and the networks of the book trade. Evaluating the dependency between the economic and cultural value of a book as an object is equally important. I will evaluate the book assortment according to different content-based criteria, to assess those titles, with high sales rates, that were wildly successful. This means, in practice, to move significantly beyond the well-researched corpus of Enlightenment literature. Contrary to most available literature, the book trade will be considered more comprehensively by taking vendors entire offer of bestselling books into account, ranging from prayer and devotional books to sermons, advice literature, occasional prints as well as almanacs and calendars. The project sets itself apart from the general research interest in an Enlightenment-oriented book market in the second half of the 18th century. It brings the decades after 1680 to light as an instrumental period of change for the practices of book trade. Beyond a traditional book history structured along the borders of present-day nation states, I will analyse the early modern economic and cultural spheres on a transnational and -regional level, appropriate to the historical reality of this era.