1. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, The Picture of Paris before and after the Revolution, trans. Wilfrid and Emilie Jackson (London: Routledge, 1929), p. 179; this work consists of excerpts from Mercier’s Tableau de Paris and Nouveau Paris.

2. Maurice Albert, Les Théâtres des boulevards (1789–1848) (Geneva: Slatkine, 1969; reprint of Paris ed., 1902), p. 71.

3. Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1952–53), vol. 1, pp. 95–96.

4. Mornet, Origines intellectuelles de la Révolution française, pp. 1–2.

5. Other historians have different terms for and somewhat different conceptions of the eighteenth-century development that is referred to here as the “publicization of critical discourse.”

Mornet (1933), as noted, provides much evidence of publicization, but refers to it only as “diffusion générale”; ibid., passim.

Augustin Cochin, La Révolution et la libre-pensée (Paris: Plon, 1924), distinguishes a campaign to “susciter une opinion publique” by “les sociétés de pensée” (p. xxx), a campaign he calls “la socialisation de la pensée” (title of the book’s first section).

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989; first published 1962), chap. 3, discusses “the genesis of the bourgeois public sphere [bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit].”

Keith Michael Baker, “Public opinion as political invention,” in Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 172, writes: “‘Public opinion’ took form as a political or ideological construct, rather than as a discrete sociological referent.”

Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991; first published 1990), p. 19, cites “the emergence of a new conceptual and social reality: public opinion.”

Arlette Farge, Subversive Words: Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France, trans. Rosemary Morris (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995; first published 1992), p. 198, concludes, “Something was emerging, something firm and solid: quite simply, the right to know and to judge, the right to expect the king to divulge his secrets.”

None of these historians, however, shows an interest in the general process of things becoming public. They all focus their attention on the formation of public opinion in politics. (Mornet and Habermas also devote some attention to the formation of public opinion in the arts, as a forerunner of public opinion in politics.) Thus their study of public things is twice narrowed, first to opinion and second to political opinion. And the development they trace is the formation of a new thing, whereas the development traced here is the transformation of old things, with, to be sure, novel consequences.

6. Roland Mousnier and Ernest Labrousse, Histoire générale des civilisations, vol. 5, Le XVIII^e siècle, l’époque des “lumières” (1715–1815) (Paris: P.U.F., 1959), p. 121.

7. Hillairet, Dictionnaire historique, vol. 1, pp. 294–96, 297–98, 577, 582; vol. 2, pp. 76, 602; Marie-Blanche d’Arneville, “Jardins,” in Dictionnaire Napoléon, p. 964.

8. Mornet, Origines intellectuelles de la Révolution française, pp. 306, 314–15. Mornet cites the proliferation of various kinds of social spaces in support of his thesis tracing the Revolution back to “la diffusion des idées nouvelles.” Similarly, Cochin cites the proliferation of various kinds of “sociétés de pensée” in support of his thesis tracing the Revolution back to the common organizational form of these social spaces; Cochin, La Révolution et la libre-pensée, pp. xxviii–xxxvii. But neither Cochin’s conception of “la socialisation de la pensée” nor Mornet’s conception of “la diffusion des idées nouvelles” resembles the conception of “publicization” presented here.

9. On the fairs: Fournel, Vieux Paris, chap. 3; Maurice Albert, Les Théâtres de la foire (1660–1789) (Geneva: Slatkine, 1969; reprint of Paris ed., 1900), passim; Marian Hannah Winter, “Le Spectacle forain,” in Histoire des spectacles, ed. Guy Dumur (Paris: Pléiade, 1965), pp. 1435–60; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, chaps. 2, 6. On the Boulevard du Temple: Fournel, Vieux Paris, chap. 4; Albert, Théâtres des boulevards, passim; Marian Hannah Winter, The Theatre of Marvels, trans. Charles Meldon (New York: Blom, 1964), passim; Michèle Root-Bernstein, Boulevard Theater and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1984), passim; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, chap. 7. On the Palais-Royal: Saint-Marc and Boubonne, Chroniques du Palais-Royal, passim; Hillairet, Dictionnaire historique, vol. 2, pp. 219–22; Berthier de Sauvigny, Nouvelle histoire de Paris, pp. 379–82; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, chap. 8.

10. On some theaters paying the Opéra to extend its privilège: Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, chap. 4. See also Root-Bernstein, Boulevard Theater and Revolution, pp. 45 (some theaters ignored the Opéra’s privilège), 57–62 (some theaters paid the Opéra to extend its privilège), 201 (number of Paris theaters); Nicolas Brazier, Chroniques des petits théâtres de Paris, 2 vols. (Geneva: Slatkine, 1971; reprint of Paris ed., 1883; first published in Paris, 1837), vol. 1, chap. entitled “Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique” (some theaters exploited loopholes in the Opéra’s privilège); vol. 2, pp. 295–302 (amateur theater in eighteenth-century Paris). On attendance at the Comédie-Française beginning to set records in the 1760s: John Lough, Paris Theatre Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), pp. 174, 272–73. On the opening of forty-five new theaters during the Revolution: Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973–77), vol. 2, p. 709.

11. For population figures: Chandler and Fox, Three Thousand Years of Urban Growth, pp. 17–20; Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes, pp. 181–82. On public reading rooms: Zeldin, France 1848–1945, vol. 2, p. 355. On public bathtubs: Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794–1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), p. 151.

12. For the eighteenth-century café counts: Mornet, Origines intellectuelles de la Révolution française, pp. 281–82. For the 1807 café count: Prudhomme, Miroir historique, vol. 1, p. 283. For Philidor’s observation: Twiss, Chess, vol. 1, p. 150.

13. For the 1789 and 1803 restaurant counts: Grimod de la Reynière, Almanach des gourmands, vol. 1, p. 163. For the 1820 restaurant count: Zeldin, France 1848–1945, vol. 2, p. 739. For the patisserie count: Carême, Pâtissier royal parisien, 2d ed., vol. 1, pp. xli–xliii.

14. Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, pp. 89–101; Brenet, Concerts en France, pp. 115–16, 130–33, 356–82; Young, “Concert,” in New Grove Dictionary, vol. 4, p. 617.

15. Cochin, La Révolution et la libre-pensée, pp. xxviii–xxxvii; François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 187–91; Chartier, Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, pp. 16–17.

16. Daniel Ligou et al., Histoire des Francs-maçons en France (Toulouse: Privat, 1981), pp. 29, 67, 79–80, 164–66.

17. Cochin argues that in a “pure democracy,” whether of a “société de pensée,” of a national government such as France had in 1793–94, or of any other sort, there will always develop a division of the people into two unequal groups, a small active group and a large passive group, a few “effective militants” and “flocks of adherents.” Similarly, the present study suggests that in the publicization of an activity there often develops a division of people into performers and spectators. Cochin, La Révolution et la libre-pensée, p. 5.

18. Mona Ozouf, La Fête révolutionnaire, 1789–1799 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), pp. 20, 38–40.

19. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “J. J. Rousseau, citoyen de Genève, à M. d’Alembert sur son article ‘Genève’ dans le septième volume de l’Encyclopédie ” (generally called “Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles”), in Oeuvres complètes de J. J. Rousseau, 17 vols. (Paris: Armand-Aubrée, 1830–33), vol. 1, pp. 405 n (first quotation), 395 (second quotation). See also Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire, in Oeuvres complètes (Pléiade ed.), vol. 1, p. 1085.

20. David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic: Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1948), passim (“Triomphe de Voltaire,” pp. 46–53); Anon., Collection complète des tableaux historiques de la Révolution française, 3 vols. (Paris: Auber, an X (1802)), vol. 1, tableau 55, facing p. 220, “Triomphe de Voltaire.”

21. F[rançois-Victor]-A[lphonse] Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention, 2 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1885–86), vol. 1, pp. 6–8, 28–40; [Louis-] Sébastien Mercier, Paris pendant la Révolution, ou Le nouveau Paris, 2 vols. (abr., Paris: Poulet-Malassis, 1862; first published Paris, 1798), vol. 1, pp. 275–80.

22. Pierre de Vaissière, La Mort du roi (21 janvier 1793) (Paris: Perrin, 1910), pp. 61, 90, 129.

23. E. J. Delécluze, Louis David, son école et son temps (Paris: Macula, 1983; reprint, with plates added, of Paris ed., 1855), 12th unnumbered page of plates between pp. 264 and 265.

24. [Louis-Antoine Fauvelet] de Bourrienne, Mémoires de M. de Bourrienne, ministre d’État, sur Napoléon, le Directoire, le Consulat, l’Empire, et la Restauration, 10 vols. (Paris: Ladvocat, 1829), vol. 3, p. 214. See also the quotation of Heinrich Heine in chapter 4 of this volume, p. 153.

25. Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, vol. 1, pp. 403–4; vol. 2, p. 408.

26. Paul Ginisty, Mémoires d’une danseuse de corde: Mme Saqui (1786–1866) (Paris: Charpentier and Fasquelle, 1907), chaps. 6, 7, 8 (the quotation is on p. 86).

27. Marie-Antoinette Allevy, La Mise-en-scène en France dans la première moitié du XIX^e siècle (Geneva: Slatkine, 1976; reprint of Paris ed., 1938), pp. 2, 22, 63, 114–15; Gautier, Histoire de l’art dramatique, vol. 2, p. 175.

28. Winter, Theatre of Marvels, pp. 57 (first quotation), 176 (second quotation), chap. 9; Michèle Richet, “Le Cirque” and Tristan Rémy, “Le Mime,” in Histoire des spectacles, pp. 1520–29 and 1493–1509, respectively.

29. Allevy, Mise-en-scène en France, pp. 44–45 (panoramas), 59, chap. 4 (Diorama); E[tienne] G[aspard] Robertson, Mémoires récréatifs, scientifiques et anecdotiques du physicien-aéronaute E. G. Robertson, 2 vols. (Paris: Roret, 1840), vol. 1, chaps. 9, 11, 12, 13 (Fantasmagorie).

30. On Robertson: Robertson, Mémoires récréatifs, scientifiques et anecdotiques, vol. 1, chap. 10; Anon., “Robertson,” in Biographie universelle et portative, vol. 4, pp. 1122–23; L. Louvet, “Robertson,” in Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 42, cols. 393–95; Fournel, Vieux Paris, pp. 267–71.

On Comus: Labouderie, “Ledru,” in Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, [1st ed.], vol. 23, p. 538; Anon., “Ledru,” in Biographie universelle et portative, vol. 3, p. 227; L. Louvet, “Ledru,” in Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 30, cols. 269–71; Campardon, “Comus,” in Spectacles de la foire, vol. 1, pp. 214–15; Jean Torlais, “Un Prestidigitateur célèbre chef de service d’électrothérapie au XVIII^e siècle, Ledru dit Comus (1731–1807),” Histoire de la médecine 5, no. 2 (February 1955): 13–25; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, pp. 200–201.

On Mesmer: Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Viking, 1932); Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968).

On Cuvier: Baron [Georges] Cuvier, Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe (Brussels: Culture et civilisation, 1969; reprint of 3d ed., Paris, 1825), pp. 98–99, as well as several other places in the same section of the text; Charles Coulton Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 277; William Coleman, Gerges Cuvier, Zoologist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), unnumbered page of illustrations between pp. 20 and 21; Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science, and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 177–81

31. [Etienne Gaspard] Robertson, La Minerve, vaisseau aërien destiné aux découvertes, et proposé à toutes les académies de l’Europe (Paris: Hocquet, 1820), pp. 30–32.

32. Colmont, Histoire des expositions des produits, pp. 7–8, 23, 29, 44, 317; on p. 8, Colmont calls the industrial exposition a spectacle.

33. Fétis, “Sax,” in Biographie universelle des musiciens, vol. 7, pp. 416–19.

34. On Paganini’s making his audience wait: Harrys, Paganini in seinem Reisewagen und Zimmer, p. 54; Sugden, Niccolo Paganini: Supreme Violinist or Devil’s Fiddler? sketch on p. 79. The sources of the quotations: Bull, “Violin Notes,” in Ole Bull, a Memoir, pp. 374–76; Heine, “Saison musicale, Paris, 25 avril 1844,” in Lutèce, pp. 223–24; Robert-Houdin, Comment on devient sorcier, p. 29; Anon., “Chronique musicale,” L’Illustration; journal universel hebdomadaire 3, no. 64 (18 May 1844): 188.

35. Walker, “Chess, without the Chess-Board,” Fraser’s Magazine 21, no. 123, pp. 305–7.

36. On Carême’s mastic: Marie-Antonin Carême, Le Pâtissier pittoresque, 1st ed. (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1815), pp. 24–26. On traditional pastillage: Montagné, Larousse Gastronomique, p. 670.

37. The word physicien, it may be recalled, was doubly ambiguous. First, it could refer to either a physician or a physicist; second, with regard to physicist, it could refer to either a physical scientist or an entertainer who made use of recent discoveries in physical science in his entertainments. Comus, holder of the titles “physician to the king” and “tutor of physics to the children of the king,” published researcher, and boulevard showman, filled all of these bills. On Comus, see note 30 in this chapter.

38. For an example of Vidocq’s making arrests in a crowded tavern: Vidocq, Mémoires, pp. 355–56. On Vidocq and the chaining ceremony at Bicêtre: ibid., pp. 146–48, 184–85, 404–7; Paul Bru, Histoire de Bicêtre (Paris: Les Bureaux du Progrès, 1890), p. 89; Gordon Wright, Between the Guillotine and Liberty: Two Centuries of the Crime Problem in France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 70. For examples of Vidocq in the witness box: Le Moniteur universel, 18 March 1824, p. 309; Roch, “Procès de Vidocq,” Observateur des tribunaux 11, pp. 209–344, section entitled “Interrogatoire de Vidocq.”

39. On the etymology of publicité: Paul Robert and Alain Rey, Le Grand Robert, dictionnaire de la langue française, 9 vols. (Paris: Robert, 1985), vol. 7, p. 890; Alain Rey and J. Rey-Debove, eds., Le Petit Robert, dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française (Paris: Robert, 1988), p. 1563. On the etymology of publiciste: Aulard, Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention, vol. 1, p. 49; Trésor de la langue française, dictionnaire de la langue du XIX^e et du XX^e siècle (1789–1960), 17 vols. to date (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1971–<$f$>), vol. 14, p. 13; Robert and Rey, Grand Robert, vol. 7, p. 890. On the etymology of “publicity” and “publicist”: J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, eds., The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., 20 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), vol. 12, pp. 782–83.

40. On the pamphlet counts: Antoine de Baecque, “Pamphlets: Libel and Political Mythology,” in Revolution in Print: The Press in France, 1775–1800, ed. Robert Darnton and Daniel Roche (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 165–66. See also Eugène Hatin, Bibliographie historique et critique de la presse périodique française (Torino: Erasmo, 1960; reprint of 1st ed., Paris, 1866), pp. xci, 200–238 (periodical counts), xci–xcii (daily newspaper counts and circulation figures). On the circulation of La Gazette de France: Claude Bellanger et al., Histoire générale de la presse française, 5 vols. (Paris: P.U.F., 1969–76), vol. 1, p. 199.

41. Aulard, Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention, vol. 1, pp. 8–17. The Moniteur did not become the official government newspaper until 1800.

42. Rolf Reichardt, “Prints: Images of the Bastille,” in Revolution in Print, pp. 223–51; F[rançois-Victor]-A[lphonse] Aulard, “L’Art et la politique en l’an II,” in Études et leçons sur la Révolution française, 9 vols. (Paris: Alcan, 1893–1924), vol. 1, pp. 264–67; Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic, pp. 136–37.

43. The source of Napoleon’s quotation: Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, vol. 1, p. 252. On Napoleon’s reduction of newspapers: André Cabanis, La Presse sous le Consulat et l’Empire (1799–1814) (Paris: Société des Études Robespierristes, 1975), pp. 13, 36, 41. See also Robert B. Holtman, Napoleonic Propaganda (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950), pp. 61–62 (assignments to journalists), 92–96 (battlefield bulletins); André Cabanis, “Presse,” and François Monnier, “Propagande,” in Dictionnaire Napoléon,pp. 1402–4 and 1406–11, respectively.

44. Hatin, Bibliographie historique et critique, pp. xci–xcii.

45. Ibid., pp. lxix, xcii.

46. Imogen Fellinger, “Periodicals,” in New Grove Dictionary, vol. 14, pp. 414–15; Hatin, Bibliographie historique et critique, p. lxx.

47. Trésor de la langue française, vol. 9, pp. 113–14; Simpson and Weiner, eds., Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 6, p. 391.

48. Carême, Cuisinier parisien, p. 30.

49. Hooper and Whyld, Oxford Companion to Chess, p. 245; Peter Bloom, “A Review of Fétis’s Revue musicale, ” in Music in Paris in the 1830s, ed. Peter Bloom (Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon, 1987), p. 72.

50. Lady Sydney Owenson Morgan, France in 1829–30 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1830), excerpted in Lady Sydney Owenson Morgan, Lady Morgan in France, ed. Elizabeth Suddaby and Philip John Yarrow (Newcastle upon Tyne: Oriel, 1971), pp. 234–38; Henri [Heinrich] Heine, “Les Nuits florentines,” La Revue des deux mondes, 4th ser., 6 (15 April 1836): 224–26 (help with the translation from Heinrich Heine, The Works of Heinrich Heine, trans. Charles Godfrey Leland, 20 vols. [New York: Croscup and Sterling, n.d.], vol. 1, pp. 41–43); George Sand, “Lettres d’un voyageur. VII.,” La Revue des deux mondes, 4th ser., 8 (15 November 1836): 407–44.

51. “Faits divers,” Le Moniteur universel, 9 October 1857, p. 1108.

52. Vautrin, by Balzac, was performed at the Théâtre Porte-Saint-Martin in March 1840; Paganini en Allemagne, by Desvergers and Varin, was performed at the Théâtre des Nouveautés in April 1831; La Czarine, by Adenis and Gastineau, was performed at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique in 1868.

53. Samuel Edwards [pseud. of Noel Bertram Gerson], The Vidocq Dossier: The Story of the World’s First Detective (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), p. 104. In his article “First Steps toward a History of Reading,” Robert Darnton reminds us how common it was, at least until the end of the eighteenth century, if not later, for books to be read out loud to others rather than silently to oneself: “For most people throughout most of history, books had audiences rather than readers”; Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (New York: Norton, 1990), p. 169.