The new public sphere

The number of printers, booksellers and other agents on the print market was not great, but in an industry that had been more or less stable for several decades, a sudden increase is evident. This is most clearly visible in the political centre, Stockholm, where the seven printers in 1766 had to compete with another three in 1771, and the number of bookshops grew from two in the early 1760s to six or seven by the end of the decade. Between 1720 and 1766 an average of 1.5 new journals were launched each year; in 1766–74 this number rose to 12.5.1 J. Nordin, ‘En revolution i tryck: Tryckfrihet och tryckproduktion i Sverige 1766–1772 och däromkring’, Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund årsbok 2020, pp. 100–3.

The primary motivation behind the Freedom of the Press Ordinance was to invigorate public discourse. ‘So, the life and strength of civil liberty consist in limited Government and unlimited freedom of the written word’, wrote philosopher Peter Forsskål as far back as 1759.2 P. Forsskål, Thoughts on Civil Liberty: Translation of the Original Manuscript with background (Stockholm, 2009), p. 15, emphasis in original text. The effects of the reform are also most clearly visible in the political publications. Citizenship was exercised in the literary arena, and pamphlets, which until then had mainly been circulated in manuscript copies (which were exempt from prior censorship), were now being printed in growing numbers. The connection with political activities is clearly visible in Figure 5.2, where the years 1769 and 1771, when the Diet convened, clearly stand out.

The Freedom of the Press Ordinance did not only stimulate publishing as such, it also accelerated an already ongoing radicalisation of the political climate. A few weeks before the signing of the Freedom of the Press Ordinance, another important law was adopted which stated that changes to the constitution could only be implemented after decisions by two consecutive sittings of the Diet with intermediate elections.3 Kongl. Maj:ts Nådige Förordning, Til Befrämjande af Lagarnes behörige wärkställighet bland Rikets Ämbetsmän och öfrige undersåtare: Gifwen Stockholm i Råd-Cammaren then 12. Novemb. 1766 (Stockholm, 1766), Section 11. This was a recognition of the electorate’s influence on national affairs, and such a mandate obviously required a well-informed citizenry. Furthermore, a proper citizenry could not be divided by formal inequalities. The privileges of the nobility therefore became one of the main targets of the three commoner estates, and a great number of pamphlets contained testimonies of the aristocracy’s abuse of power and oppression of more humble members of society. Such opinions resonated in the government, which began to dismantle noble privileges bit by bit until they were in practice all but abolished in the early 1770s.4 J. Nordin, Ett fattigt men fritt folk: Nationell och politisk självbild i Sverige från sen stormaktstid till slutet av frihetstiden (Eslöv, 2000), ch. 6.

Copenhagen, with its fifteen printing houses, was the dominant centre for the printed word in Denmark‒Norway in the period of press freedom, although printing houses also existed in towns such as Bergen, Trondheim, Christiania, Aalborg and Odense. The number of printers in Copenhagen did not increase in these years, but five of the printers became particularly active and strongly contributed to the media revolution caused by the freedom of the press, which gave rise to the blending of genres, new types of periodicals, new authors, new readerships. Thus, literary citizenship was broadened considerably. Although the vast majority of pamphlets were published in Copenhagen, Norwegian printers contributed with original material and reprints. In the period after the fall of Struensee, the number of prints from Norway exceeded those printed in the Danish provinces.5 H. Horstbøll, ‘Bolle Luxdorphs samling af trykkefrihedskrifter 1770–1773’, Fund & Forskning, 44 (2005), 412. Likewise, Norwegian authors working out of Copenhagen took part in the development of the new literary citizenship of the press freedom period. One of the most prolific writers of the period was the Norwegian J. C. Bie, who under the pseudonym of Philopatreias kickstarted public debate shortly after the introduction of press freedom by attacking grain-producing landowners, lawyers and priests in a pamphlet. The reputation of his pamphlet reached the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands) where it – as the sole example of so-called Press Freedom Writings – was translated into English and published in St Croix in 1771.6 [J. C. Bie], Philopatreia’s Remarks, I: On the dear Times, and Decay of Trade; II: On the Courts of Justice; III: On the Revenues of the Clergy (St Croix, 1771).

The concept of Press Freedom Writings (trykkefrihedsskrifter) was a contemporary notion coined by the Register of Press-Freedom Publications – a new periodical that offered information on every such print published since the introduction of press freedom, including price, number of pages, points of sale and a short review of each separate publication. It was edited by young intellectuals and students and published by a book trader named Kanneworff; it also involved the work of the later well-known publisher Søren Gyldendal.

This literary chronology was consolidated in a collection of 914 publications gathered and bound in 45 volumes in octavo, one in quarto and one in folio, by a central civil servant, Bolle Luxdorph. The Luxdorph Collection of Press Freedom Writing is chronologically divided into two series: twenty volumes dated before the fall of Struensee in January 1772, twenty-seven after that date, plus an extra folio volume with graphic prints. This collection consists of what Luxdorph considered to be publications owing their existence to the freedom of the press. A dating of the scripts based on the first day of advertising each piece in the press constitutes a chronological reconstruction of the majority of publications in the Luxdorph Collection, and most Press Freedom Writings can now be sequentially arranged, which is important for organising the order in the many debates of the period.7 The Press Freedom Period 1770‒3 is exhaustively investigated in H. Horstbøll et al., Grov Konfækt, vols 1‒2.

Immediately following the downfall of Struensee in January 1772, an avalanche of printed sermons, pamphlets and broadside ballads were published, giving a vivid picture of an alleged conspiracy conceived by Struensee. Most of these prints and sermons accentuated that the monarchy had been saved by divine intervention and by the efficiency of the Queen Dowager Juliana Maria and the Hereditary Prince Frederick, who were part of the group taking control of the government following the coup.

In contrast to Sweden, there was no explicit public debate in Denmark‒­Norway on freedom of the press before the introduction, but after its introduction the debate flourished with such a variety and detail that it is reasonable to suggest that freedom of the press in general must have been actively discussed before 1770, although covertly. Merethe Roos has pointed out that there were emergent new textual norms (and so-called ‘modernising tendencies’) even before press freedom, but they became much more fully expressed in the new open public sphere of the Press Freedom Period.8 M. Roos, Enlightened Preaching: Balthasar Münter’s Authorship 1772‒1793 (Leiden, 2013), p. 147. Indeed, press freedom had also been negotiated on a practical level by Spectator journalists pushing the limits of censorship in the 1740s.9 E. Krefting, ‘The Urge to Write: Spectator Journalists Negotiating Freedom of the Press in Denmark‒Norway’, in E. Krefting et al. (eds), Eighteenth-Century Periodicals as Agents of Change: Perspectives on Northern Enlightenment (Leiden, 2015), pp. 153‒71. Moreover, Ellen Krefting has convincingly argued that the Dano-­Norwegian government adopted an implicit legal distinction between news and opinion, which weakened the newspapers’ editorial power so that opinions were to a great extent channelled into periodicals which, thus, became hubs of textual experiments and ultimately agents of change informed by Enlightenment discourse.10 E. Krefting, ‘News versus Opinion: The State, the Press, and the Northern Enlightenment’, in S. G. Brandtzæg et al. (eds), Travelling Chronicles: News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century (Leiden, 2018), pp. 299‒318.

Many of the Dano-Norwegian Press Freedom pamphlets and scripts mentioned press freedom as an incentive or even an excuse for publishing. There was a strong common reflexivity among the writers of the press freedom era; a permanent discussion on how to use the press freedom was followed by debates on taste, which more often than not lead to social stigmatisation of the new Grub Street writers and the new socially diverse readerships.

Two examples can illustrate how this reflexivity was present in different expressions of anticipation and disappointment, ideals and realities, normativity and practice. In January 1772 publisher Hans Holck launched the periodical Magazin for Patriotiske Skribentere (Patriotic Writers’ Magazine), proclaiming the explicit aim of creating an arena for the application of freedom of the press. On the cover of the first issue it was stated that the king had bestowed on his subjects ‘the freedom of writing which has been suppressed for so long; so, it is the intention of this magazine that anyone can have his patriotic thoughts inserted at no cost, in so far as they (without mentioning persons) are in accordance with the ordinance’ (no. 1, p. 1). The entire Press Freedom Ordinance was then quoted. It is worth noticing that press freedom was perceived by Holck as a natural right that had so far been suppressed and that he offered a platform for individual exercising of this new right and the practice of literary citizenship.

Shortly after the fall of Struensee the author Niels Prahl (who was a co-editor with the above-mentioned Holck) published an account of the Struensee reign. Prahl’s review of Struensee’s reforms opened with the Press Freedom Ordinance, 1770, which was quoted in its entirety. Struensee was praised for the introduction of freedom of the press, but authors exercising this freedom were criticised for attacking people and entire estates. ‘Instead of uncovering prejudice,’ wrote Prahl, ‘most people presented a whole stock of the heart’s evil content. These unbound hunting writers, however, kept writing as long as someone wanted to buy their stuff’.11 N. Prahl, Greve Johan Friderich Struensee, forrige Kongelige Danske Geheime-CabinetsMinister og Maitre des Requettes, Hans Levnets-Beskrivelse og Skiebne udi de sidste Aaringer i Dannemark (Copenhagen, 1772). This was a pointed critique of what Prahl considered to be a distasteful commercialisation of the public sphere stimulated by press freedom that had compromised literary citizenship.

The publication wave of the press freedom era follows a characteristic pattern: the spring of 1771 saw a first explosion and also proved the most creative in terms of new formats, new topics, new authors, new debates. After a restriction of the law on 7 October 1771 intensity began to wane, but after the coup in January 1772 it rose to new heights during the spring of 1772. From then on the new regime’s increasing initiatives against freedom of the press made their mark, and in 1772‒4 the number of press freedom writings quickly shrunk (Figure 5.3).

Freedom of the press changed the Copenhagen system of communication and the conditions of the public sphere for good. As Norwegian linguist Kjell Lars Berge has pointed out, the press freedom period initiated a new communication order. Radical experiments with genre and textual formats, new participants and new readerships led to new rules and new text norms. The rapid changes in the cultures of text not only opened the door to dissemination of information and knowledge (which was in line with the ordinance on freedom of the press) but became a catalyst for the expression of opinion (on every topic imaginable), also to extremes such as spin campaigns, libel and even threats.12 K. L. Berge, ‘Noen tekstvitenskapelige betraktninger omkring studiet av tekster, kulturer og ideologier i dansk-norsk 1700-tall’, Arr: Idéhistorisk tidsskrift, 4 (1999), pp. 72‒80; K. L. Berge, ‘Developing a New Political Text Culture in Denmark‒Norway 1770‒1799’, in Eighteenth-Century Periodicals as Agents of Change, pp. 172‒84. In the light of the multiplicity of topics raised and genres used, the absence of reference to the Swedish press freedom legislation in the Dano-Norwegian pamphlets is striking.

Perhaps more importantly, a new market with new commercial opportunities for printers as well as writers had been established. As was the case in Sweden, the number of publications doubled as a result of the freedom of the press, and it created a permanent increase in publishing output during the following decades. The catalogue of the Royal Library registers 256 books in Danish language from the year 1769. This number grew to 438 in 1770 and reached a peak in 1771 with 730. In 1772 it decreased somewhat to 711, and the following year it was down to 337. Although these figures only have tentative and relative value, they give an idea of the increase in activity in the two main years of press freedom, 1771 and 1772.13 See H. Horstbøll et al., Grov Konfækt, 1, p. 53. The increase signalled by press freedom did not wane with the gradual introduction of new restrictions, and output levels continued to grow steadily; especially the number of periodicals in Denmark and Norway rose substantially.14 H. Horstbøll, Menigmands medie: Det folkelige bogtrykk i Danmark 1500‒1840 (Copenhagen, 1999), p. 347. The fact that pre-publication censorship was not reintroduced supported the growing volume of the literary market. The social expansion of Dano-­Norwegian literary citizenship was consolidated and even intensified by political components during the following decades.

Even though the Swedish and Dano-Norwegian numbers in Figures 5.1‒5.3 are not directly comparable, on a general level they indicate the same fact: freedom of the press fostered a considerable increase in publications, a rise that persisted even after new restrictions on the press appeared.