The history of Contes moraux’s publication and translation in Denmark–Norway points to some significant aspects of text distribution and reading. The stories are only printed in volume form in French, for a bourgeois and aristocratic readership at home as well as for international trade and distribution. Furthermore, translations in Danish appear exclusively in serial publications, mainly alongside a variety of other texts spanning from advertisements and essays to political statements and fiction. The serial publications invite a broader audience of readers socially while often addressing specific groups such as women or children. Publications centred on to cities: Copenhagen and Bergen. Copenhagen being the centre of print, book trade and publications by authors from both kingdoms and Bergen being Norway’s largest city, that is hardly surprising. However, by tracing some roads of dissemination for Contes moraux in Norway, we get a more nuanced picture of the reception of these stories – both ‘stolen’ and ‘legitimate’ fruit – at the periphery of Europe. Important sources of information include catalogues of book auctions, lending libraries and private collections, advertisements in newspapers, holdings in museums as well as the above-mentioned subscription lists for periodicals.
Book editions of
Contes moraux (in French and translation, imported and local) are regularly advertised in the Copenhagen press and bookshop catalogues from around 1766 onwards, notably sold alongside
Bélisaire in the following years. By the late 1790s it appears on a list of books suitable as textbooks/readers for students of foreign languages, pointing to a new status as a literary classic for the young (in French).
1 KA 15 May 1797. Copenhagen and Altona booksellers served readers in Norway as well, either by orders from individual readers, by sending agents or sales catalogues to the main cities (including from Gyldendal and Philibert), or by employing local commissionaires to provide books from their private homes. Furthermore, some readers ordered books directly from abroad or brought them back from their travels.
2 H. L. Tveterås, Den norske bokhandels historie, vol. I (Oslo, 1987), pp. 98, 114, 124–9. On German agents in Norway (selling books in several languages): Norske Intelligenz-Sedler (NIS) 12 July 1775 (Altona) and Efterretninger Fra Addresse-Contoiret i Bergen i Norge (EAB) 21 August 1784. Books from Philibert: EAB 6 April 1772. It is difficult to determine which editions readers owned in Norway. Of a selection of more than 70 private book auction catalogues between 1766 and 1896, 12 included volumes of
Contes moraux, all in French from the 1760s and 1770s (most s.a.), including one Paris and one Amsterdam edition. Interestingly, there are no German translations, even though they were available from the Copenhagen bookshops, too.
3 A selection of catalogues owned by the National Library of Norway, of which many are digitised. A search of all known catalogues across institutions could alter the percentage and geographical distribution of Contes moraux appearing in the catalogues. Also included is a list of books in the estate of Ole Brose, Bergen (d. 1784; Regional State Archive, Bergen, ‘Skifteakter for Ole Brose’). A study of estates (predominantly of clergymen) in the second half of the 1700s found works by Marmontel in ten out of c. 130 book collections but does not name which ones (F. Bull, Fra Holberg til Nordal Brun (Kristiania, 1916), p. 235). If we look at library catalogues from eighteenth-century Norway, there is only one edition in German (part of
Marmontels Werke), available in Bergen’s Reading Society for Foreign Literature (1796–1800). However, we find Philibert’s 1768 edition at the Cathedral School library in Christiania (Oslo).
4 Online catalogue by K. Kukkonen and M. Sjelmo, Literary Fiction in Norwegian Lending Libraries in the 18th Century <www.nb.no/forskning/skjonnlitteratur-i-norske-bibliotek-pa-1700-tallet> (2019). Date of acquisition of the Philibert edition unknown. The volumes are evenly distributed between Christiania and Trondheim, with only a couple in Bergen.
5 The lack of editions in Bergen is partly due to the few Bergen catalogues available for this study.Marmontel’s readership in Norway tended to be from the upper strata of society, often reading the stories in the original French or to some extent in translations in periodicals. Tellingly, a study of books owned by provincial farmers before 1840 shows no trace of Marmontel, except perhaps as locally written moral tales for children in the early 1800s.
6 J. Fet, Lesande bønder (Oslo, 1995), p. 177. As there was no nobility in the country, the owners of
Contes moraux tend to belong to the ‘economic aristocracy’ of landowners, industrial magnates and leading officials of the crown. They are present in the subscription lists of the Danish and Norwegian periodicals that carried the translations, too. The same class of readers would adorn their houses with engravings picturing scenes from these stories, making them artefacts of taste on display.
7 See for instance an engraving by J. R. Smith of Bélise from ‘The Scruple’ at the manor house Ulefoss in Telemark (<www.digitaltmuseum.no>).The periodicals and translations substantially widened the readership for the texts both demographically and geographically. While there are no advertisements for
Contes moraux in volume form in Norwegian papers and bookshops, there are quite a few for periodicals carrying translations of the stories, including
Den danske Oversættere,
Bibliothek for det smukke Kiøn, and
Det nye Magazin (both issues and volumes).
8 See for instance EAB 6 April 1772 (catalogue of books from Philibert, including Den danske Oversættere), Norske Intelligenz-Sedler 16 June 1779 and 1 December 1784 and Christiansandske Ugeblade 12 November 1785 (Birch’s magazines in volumes). Language is key. Texts in foreign languages had a limited and often well-read readership, thus regarded by authorities as less liable to pose a threat to the public of dubious imported morals or ideas.
9 See for instance the Danish theologian Nannestad on the dangers posed to commoners by the translation of Bélisaire in 1768 (N. E. Nannestad, Afhandling om dydige Hedningers Salighed (Sorøe, 1768), pp. 4–5). The selected translations in periodicals reached a variety of readers, including clergymen, teachers, doctors and lower officials.
10 Subscription lists for Bibliothek for det smukke Kiøn, vols 1 and 2. Provinzialblade only refers to its readers in the periodical itself and in addition to those mentioned above includes farmers, military and tradesmen, as well as women and children (A. Nøding, Claus Fasting (Oslo, 2018), p. 215). Birch’s Magazin lists two subscribers in Norway (1778–9). One noteworthy recipient is ‘Rechestad Læseselskab’, a reading society in rural South-Eastern Norway, which subscribed to two sets of the
Bibliothek for women. Its existence was previously unknown, but it is probably an initiative by Rakkestad’s local vicar, Hans Hammond, who was very well read and connected in literary circles. In letters to P. F. Suhm he complains about the deplorable state of reading and knowledge among the local farmers, with faint hopes of improving the situation.
11 Letters from the 1780s in P. F. Suhm, Samlede Skrifter, vol. 15 (Copenhagen, 1798), pp. 373, 381; 385–90.