1

Book Censorship in Eighteenth-Century France and Rousseau’s Response

Raymond Birn
Here are two observations of freedom of expression composed in the twilight of
France’s ancien régime: (1) “Each philosopher, each orator, each man of letters, should
be considered the advocate of what ought to be heard, even when he avows principles
believed to be false. Sometimes it takes centuries to plead causes. The public alone can
judge them, and in the end, if sufficiently instructed, it always will have judged well."1
(2) “Truth independent of bias always seems to me to be precious. Provided that
discussion is discreetly presented, with neither rant nor personal attack, I believe that it
cannot be given too wide a field."2

Of particular interest are the identities of the authors of these reflections and the
contexts in which they were written. The first observation was composed in 1759 by
Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, director of Louis XV’s office of pre-
publication book censorship. Malesherbes was writing to his father, the chancellor of
France, who happened to be his boss, and was defending the integrity of his bureau from
attacks by magistrates in the Parlement of Paris. Historians invariably identify
Malesherbes as “the writer’s friend,” protector of the Encyclopédie and Rousseau,
defender of the economic interests of the French publishing industry, and opponent of the
rival censorship prerogative claims of France’s parlements and episcopacy. The second
observation was by a more obscure authority than Malesherbes, jurist Jean-Baptiste-
Claude Cadet de Saineville, who never composed anything of note himself, but
nevertheless was among the busiest of Louis XVI’s royal censors. Cadet de Saineville’s
comments were contained in his written approval (1777) of Guillaume-François Le
Trosne's manuscript, "De l'Ordre social", published by De Bure in Paris later that year.

What can we make of the remarks by Malesherbes and Cadet de Saineville?

Might twenty-first century students of eighteenth-century principles hypothesize that,
rather than fulfilling a mission of repression, the royal censors serving Louis XV and
XVI envisioned themselves merely as the traffic police of the Enlightenment? Indeed,
their complex rating system of manuscripts and books sometimes reminds one of the
symbolic guideposts currently used by industry-sanctioned film graders throughout North
America and Europe. An eighteenth-century censor’s unqualified recommendation of a
royal privilège, his "G" rating, announced that a manuscript was publishable, a
contribution to science or morals, and in short, approved for “general audiences.” Next in
rank was the censor’s conditional approval, the permission de sçeau, his “PG” evaluation
for a manuscript that would be published in France without fanfare and lacking the
economic protections of a privilège. Next came the permission tacite, or even très tacite,
intended for a worldly-wise clientele. These permits, as well as an off-the-record verbal
tolérance, might represent the censor’s “R” rating for works with false publication
addresses and intended for a select, sophisticated, or jaded readership. Certain censorial
“non’s” might be interpreted as disapprovals accompanied by a knowledgable wink (an
“NC” rating?), while the “X”-rated works of the ancien régime were the underground
books and pamphlets that had avoided any sort of preliminary examination, were
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denounced as immoral and illicit, but which nevertheless circulated out of backrooms,
cellars, and false-bottomed trunks. By virtue of their gradations of tolerance, the royal
censors of eighteenth-century France seem to have wanted posterity to justify their labor
as exercises in quality control: keeping language pure, thinking clear, and ensuring that
progress and reason served as appropriate markers of cultural evolution.

Historian Barbara de Negroni--peering through a Foucauldian lens--scoffs at the

thought that France's eighteenth-century royal examiners warrant such a benign
reputation: "To censor," writes de Negroni, "is not simply to reject. It is to claim a power
over texts, it is to produce a new text which awards itself the right to prohibit others."3 De
Negroni equates censorship with the power to twist meanings in ways unrecognizable to
their authors, and even to state the opposite of what authors intended.

De Negroni's reflections seem self-evident. At the same time they fail to do

sufficient justice to Malesherbes or to Cadet de Saineville. De Negroni's recent book,
Lectures interdites, considered solely the consequences of what might be termed
"regulative censorship." Regulative censorship stood for those high-profile instances of
parlementary and episcopal condemnation of printed books during the reign of Louis XV
(1723-1774). De Negroni did not consider the activities of royal censors, toilers for the
chancellor's book-trade office, who examined manuscripts in their pre-publication stage.
These officials were responsible for what perhaps may be termed "structural censorship."4
They guided authors in the choice of appropriate subject matter, coverage, and language.
For these censors tact, good taste, and mastery of euphemism were to rise to the surface
of all intellectual inquiry. Paraphrasing Bourdieu, Sophia Rosenfeld elegantly
summarizes what passes for the structurally censored as "those ways of speaking about a
subject that are taken for granted as common sense or beyond dispute--and thus act to
ensure that a whole other universe of things cannot be stated and, consequently,
thought."5 In a historical sense I'll hypothesize that the rewards for composing a work
which qualified as structurally sound were the king's privilèges and permissions de sçeau.
Whenever argument was presented less skillfully, authors might squeeze out permissions
tacites and verbal tolérances. When institutionalized properly in the ancien régime,
structural censorship would diminish the need for noisy, public, and scandalous post-
publication denunciations.

My contribution to the Princeton censorship conference focuses on the time of the

high Enlightenment (1750-1763), though I'll allude to earlier and later periods. Following
the suggested guidelines, my paper is open-ended. Moreover, it is built upon a limited
number of case studies and is meant to be suggestive--not comprehensive. My main
points are the following. (1) From the start, the royal censors bore responsibility not only
for defining the contours of cultural fields but also for laying out proper expository
techniques for writers to honor. In other words, the censors were charged with teaching
the art of intellectual self-discipline. (2) Subsequently, royal censors loosened the bonds
of this self-discipline through routine use of tacit permissions, anonymous approvals, and
verbal agreements. (3) But a widening range of tolerance contained built-in dangers for
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the censors, leading to high-profile accusations of mismanagement--combustible kindling

in the overheated atmosphere of the ancien régime's great political/constitutional crises.
(4) How did the Enlightenment's writers react to structural censorship? It's perhaps a
cliché to note the Voltaire/Rousseau dichotomy one more time--anonymity vs.
transparency, subterfuge vs. confrontation. I'd like to reflect on the Rousseau example by
citing his rare theoretical remarks on censorship and by reviewing the publishing histories
of his major works. (5) Finally, I shall refer to something called "loving censorship," the
attitude of Rousseau's editors towards creating a posthumous literary testament, the
Collection complète of his works (1780-1782).

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The mechanisms of structural censorship in ancien-régime France assumed their

classical shape under the guidance of Louis II Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, Louis XIV's
chancellor between 1699 and 1714. Pontchartrain shoved aside the university,
episcopacy, and parlements as rival claimants to pre-publication examining authority, and
appointed his nephew, abbé Jean-Paul Bignon, as overseer of the economic and
intellectual interests of the book trade. Royal censors working for Pontchartrain and
Bignon were not given specific instructions regarding every work they perused. They
possessed considerable latitude in defining structural boundaries for field after field—
initially Religion, Belles-letters, History, Geography, Politics, Law, the Sciences, and
Medicine. But the censors were well-trained in the rules of the game, and their reports
reveal a remarkably conformist and even unified set of intellectual values that one scholar
has labeled “cultural Colbertism.”6

Between 1699 and 1715 nearly half of the books examined dealt with religious
subjects. Belles-letters dominated non-religious books. The censors’ favorite appreciative
adjectives were “useful," “exact,” and “instructive.” Somewhat more detailed judgments
were housed in the negative reports. The general formulas for non-acceptability were
debasement of morals or attacks upon the state, society, or individuals. However, very
few manuscripts were explicitly rejected on these grounds. Rather, censors concentrated
upon qualitative issues: Was an author’s argument well-structured? How powerful was its
reasoning? How elegant was its presentation? A work might be rejected because its style
was chaotic, facts were misrepresented, or its logic appeared inconsistent. Grammatical
absurdities and an overabundance of “gothicisms” were sufficient cause for disapproval.

Some time ago I conducted a case-by-case study of censors’ reports during the
Pontchartrain-Bignon era.7 I concluded that, concerning religion and theology, what
examiners considered most suspect were manuscripts emphasizing overly intense forms
of popular piety and exaggerated miracle-working. Censors stressed that religious
inspiration ought to derive from proper instruction and not spontaneously from the hearts
of believers. Further reason for discounting popular miracles, mysteries, and unverified
saints’ lives was the censors’ fear of incurring the ridicule of Protestants. Then there was
the Jansenist controversy. Publishers who hazarded the censorship channels discovered
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that Jansenism was not a tolerable subject. Frequently, it was well-meaning works
needing to discuss Jansenism so as to condemn it, that paid the price. Finally, it should be
noted that censors of religious works were ardent Gallicans who defended the liberties of
the national church.

The negative evaluations of belles-letters paralleled those of religion. Censors

were particularly uncomfortable with “popular” literature and so-called superstitious
themes, as well as with naïve expressions and disorderly, non-classical style. In 1710, for
example, the Rouen printer Jacques Besogne endured a blanket disapproval of stories that
had formed the basis of published folk literature for the past two centuries: Jean de Paris,
Pierre de Provence, Robert le diable, L’Espiègle, Civilité puerile, and the Quatrains de
Pybrac. “Filled with liberties that are too great," wrote the censor. Popular and didactic
adaptations of the classics were considered perversions of pristine originals. Bignon’s
censors were in the forefront of a campaign against enthusiasm, credulousness, the
fantastic, and the vulgar. Their weapons were those of proper classical accuracy, reason,
and taste.

Churchmen, university professors, and parlementary jurists certainly were not

disqualified from serving as censors; however, once at their posts, they were to put aside
traditional institutional loyalties and adopt collegial standards appropriate to their task as
examiners. No records survive of what occurred at plenary or discipline-defined meetings
of the censors. Nor do we have a clear-cut idea of day-to-day relations between authors
and publishers on the one hand, and censors on the other. However, I have found
evidence that face-to-face meetings occurred. By the early 1730s, they apparently became
so commonplace and unruly that an unnamed official, possibly Jacques-Bernard de
Chauvelin, considered them a threat to the proper working of the royal censorship
institution itself, and said so in a memorandum.8

According to the official, on two Sundays per month censors, publishers, and
authors gathered in the office of an inspector selected by the royal Keeper of the Seals. At
that time new manuscripts were presented to assigned examiners, and rejected texts were
returned to their authors. The anonymity of examiners thereby destroyed, arguments
would break out over the reproved texts. The scene was hardly that of an imperious
censor wielding the club of royal authority over the bared heads of supplicant quill-
pushers and ink-splashers. In fact, in order to protect the censor, “…to place him outside
the range of persecution by authors…and make him more comfortable about freely giving
his opinion," the memorandum's composer suggested holding the presentation and
recommendation ceremonies on two different days, the first reserved for authors and
publishers, the second reserved for censors. The memorandum reiterated that censors'
reports were to have priority over post-publication condemnations by parlements,
episcopal chairs, or universities. However, it also noted that royal ministers were the
ultimate censorship authorities.While repeating that all books published under the royal
seal were to contain “nothing contrary to religion, the state, morals, or against French or
foreign individuals," the memorandum specifically reminded censors of the quality-
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control features in place for the past thirty years: “Censors must be warned not to approve
books that are too mediocre."

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The 1750s proved to be the critical decade for royal censorship authorities. Verbal
sparring gave way to a more impersonal system of written reports. Between 1750 and
1763, 165 individuals were inscribed as royal censors. There were 79 serving when
Malesherbes assumed the directorship of the bureau and 122 when he left office. More
than half of the censors (84, or 51%) were inscribed in the category "Belles-
letters/History". Another 23 (14%) covered Natural History, Medicine, and Chemistry.
Slightly fewer (21 or 13%) examined works of Jurisprudence. Only sixteen (10%) now
were responsible for Theology. The remaining 21 (12%) dealt with Mathematics,
Surgery, Geography-Navigation-Voyages, and Architecture. As for formative cultural
influences, academies are the most apparent ones. Forty per cent of the censors belonged
either to a Parisian or provincial academy; and the academic values of critical
independence and devotion to the monarchy were consistent with the censor's vocation. A
second formative influence on the censors was the professoriat. Even though the
monarchy had withdrawn censorship powers from the collectivity of the Sorbonne, one of
six censors between 1750 and 1763 was associated with the University of Paris or the
colleges dependent upon it. Curiously enough, a significant minority of censors (16 or
9%) contributed to the Enlightenment's most subversive book, the Encyclopédie. Royal
censors might be journalists as well. Seventeen of them between 1750 and 1763 worked
for the government's cultural organ, the Journal des savants, at some point in their
careers. The more literary Mercure attracted 41 censors. Censor-journalists worked for
other periodicals financed by the regime--the Gazette, Observateur hollandais, and
Journal de Verdun for example. Thus censors played commanding editorial roles on the
staff of print organs meant to orient and direct public opinion.9

Between 1750 and 1763 the Enlightenment was in high gear, and censors
expanded the range of what was acceptable by using the permission tacite, an approval
originally established for books published outside France.10 It had been long assumed that
a work printed in relatively tolerant Amsterdam, Geneva, or London might be subjected
to less rigorous examination standards than works produced in France and adorned with a
royal privilège. For decades French publishers had courted censors' indulgence by
printing false foreign addresses on title pages, and censors who recommended a
permission tacite were promised anonymity. Cultural liberal and economic nationalist,
Malesherbes handled the ruses in creative fashion, since the core of his policy was to
encourage French publication of French authors, even under false pretense. Historians
have spilled considerable ink trying to determine whether the permission tacite ought to
be considered legal (it was duly recorded in its own register), illegal (it went
unmentioned in the “Code de la Librairie” of 1723/1744), far-seeing (an ingenious way
for the ancien régime to come to terms with the works of the Enlightenment), or a weak-
willed measure (illustrating the government’s inability to enforce or reform its own laws).
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During Malesherbes’s tenure several first-rate minds served as censors. These

included illustrious mathematicians, Alexis-Claude Clairaut and Antoine Deparcieux; the
celebrated astronomer Joseph-Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande; the botanist Michel
Adanson; the polymath Etienne Bonnot de Condillac; the playwright Crébillon père and
his novelist son. Such eminent personalities were likely to be secure in their judgments,
and took pleasure in establishing the boundaries of discourse for their respective fields.
On the other hand, lesser figures--particularly theologians--worked under the pressure of
what Malesherbes called “une terreur panique,” fearing authorial counterattacks. In
1756, Millet, syndic of the Sorbonne's Faculty of Theology, was entrusted with reading a
manuscript titled "Réflexions littéraires sur le poëme 'De la Religion naturelle.'" Millet
considered the work to be a moderate critique of Voltaire's aesthetics, appropriate and
certainly publishable. However, the censor was troubled. "If I recommend a privilège," he
wrote to Malesherbes, "it will be necessary for my name to appear [as examiner in the
volume]." Millet feared that his approval would be interpreted as an endorsement; and
Voltaire's partisans, perhaps the Master himself, would satirize him unmercifully. To
salvage his anonymity, Millet therefore recommended a permission tacite.11

As a censor's tool, the permission tacite was meant to grant some flexibility to
examining procedures. But the permission tacite had its built-in dangers too, opening
opportunities for the parlements, episcopacy, and royal Court to assert that censors
weren't doing their job properly. In January 1755 censor Jean Capperonnier
recommended a permission tacite for abbé de Marsy's Analyse raisonnée de Bayle.
Capperonnier's justification was that Bayle's works, while technically illicit, were easily
obtainable in Paris. Therefore, a purported critique of them should be allowed to
circulate. But Capperonnier established conditions for the Analyse raisonnée that placed
its permission in a "très tacite" category. The manuscript was to be printed secretly; only
two or three booksellers would be authorized to carry it; they had to sell it through
peddler-middlemen; and, if questioned, Marsy was to disavow having even written his
book. Under such conditions, the author ought to have spotted the danger signs. Three
months after Capperonnier gave his conditional approval, the police seized the Analyse
raisonnée at the shop of printer-bookseller Michel Lambert. In 1756 the Parlement of
Paris ordered Marsy's book to be shredded and burned. Marsy witnessed his work
running the gamut from "approuvé" to "toléré" to "prohibé".12 Capperonnier emerged
unscathed; however, another censor, abbé Paul Foucher, confided to Malesherbes that
the ideal manuscript for a royal examiner was one whose reasoned argument and stylistic
elegance were capped by the work's inherent dullness: "Long live works of history and all
in-folio collections!" Foucher exclaimed.13

The Marsy affair occurred in the midst of the Parlement of Paris’s aggressive
campaign to re-establish itself as repository and interpreter of the kingdom’s fundamental
laws. With this in mind magistrates reactivated their claims to regulative censorship
authority. Prior to 1750, Parlement had sporadically condemned books. For example, in
1734 it had sentenced Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques to be shredded and burned. More
recently, in 1746, Diderot’s Pensées philosophiques and La Mettrie’s Histoire naturelle
de l’âme and Politique du médecin de Machiavel received similar treatment. Since none
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of these books had ever obtained written permission to circulate, Parlement was justified
in using its juridical authority to punish.

In the early 1750s, the magistrates grew more aggressive. In 1752 they
condemned more than forty pamphlets written by anti-Jansenist bishops. By 1756,
Parlement was condemning books which had been approved, overtly or tacitly, by the
royal censors of the librairie bureau. The magistrates’ most conspicuous victims were
part two of Isaac Berruyer’s Histoire du peuple de Dieu, and both Marsy’s Analyse
raisonnée de Bayle and La Christiade, ou le paradis reconquis pour servir de suite au
Paradis perdu. When Damiens tried to assassinate Louis XV in January 1757 and a
monstrous royal declaration threatened the death penalty for anyone convicted of writing,
printing, or selling seditious or irreligious books, Parlement turned its censorship crusade
on those one-time advocates of regicide, the Jesuits. Not only did the magistrates
condemn works which the Jesuits had disavowed, but they also burned books found in
Jesuit college libraries or used in Jesuit classrooms. It made no difference whether the
works had once been approved by royal censors. Evolving was the parlementary position
that, as far as book censorship was concerned, the judicial regulative power of the
sovereign courts was superior to previous administrative decisions of the librairie office.
Arrogation of censorship authority had become a parlementary goal in itself.

In 1758, the magistrates went further on the offensive. They created precisely the
sort of noisy public affair that the royal censorship department had wished to avoid for
decades. It concerned a controversial book (De l'esprit), an over-confident author
(Claude-Adrien Helvétius), a manipulative advocate for publication (Charles-Georges
Leroy), and--worst of all, a hopelessly overmatched royal censor (Jean-Paul Tercier).14 In
De l'esprit Helvétius composed a lengthy hodge-podge of Condillac's sensationalism,
Hobbesian materialism, Lockean empiricism, and encyclopédiste social criticism. Leroy
carried the manuscript to Tercier in 30-page segments, in no particular order. Consumed
by his day job as a mid-level bureaucrat in the ministry of foreign affairs, Tercier spent
his evenings trying to make sense of what he read--all the while submitting to Leroy's
demands for a 24-hour turnaround. Moreover, Tercier neglected to initial the manuscript's
pages, as required by legislation; and he approved proofs without apparently having read
them. Complaints leaked out about incompetence and procedural mismanagement in
Malesherbes's bureau. The directeur appointed a second censor to read the text; minor
changes were inserted, and De l'esprit went on sale. Subsequently it would be examined
critically by Omer Joly de Fleury, attorney-general for the Parlement of Paris, the pious
queen and Dauphin, Mme de Pompadour, the Sorbonne, the archbishop of Paris, and the
pope--all of whom condemned it. A book awarded the blessing of two royal censors now
was sentenced to be shredded and burned. In the aftermath, books, broadsides, pamphlets,
and songs condemned De l'esprit's principles while advertising them.

The De l'esprit affair was the central political confrontation over censorship
practices and powers to occur in eighteenth-century France. Tercier retracted his approval
and his name was expunged from the censors' list. Malesherbes was furious over
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Parlement's pursuit of the censor and wrote to Omer Joly de Fleury: "You know as well
as I do that Parlement has never prosecuted censors, who take their immediate orders
from the chancellor."15 But the humiliation was complete. Malesherbes had to secure a
royal order withdrawing De l'esprit's privilège. Then Omer Joly de Fleury brought the
Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert into the picture. Malesherbes had been
protecting the Encyclopédie over the past nine years. Three separate privilèges with the
approval of royal censors had guaranteed its integrity. But to no avail. The attorney-
general's indictment demanded that the seven published volumes submit to re-
examination by a select committee of theologians, lawyers, and savants. Furthermore, no
additional volume was to be published without parlementary authorization. The issue
forced, the Encyclopédie's privilèges were withdrawn in March 1759. Still protected by
Malesherbes, Diderot went underground.

Prior to the affair over De l'esprit, Malesherbes had been preparing a report on the
regulation of the book trade for his father, Chancellor de Lamoignon. Now, in light of the
crises of late 1758 and early 1759, the directeur de la librairie composed five
memoranda that defended the very integrity of his department.16 He insisted that the
censorship of books ought rightly to be an administrative matter, not judicial opinions
expressed by venal officers of Parlement. However, he also believed that, owing to their
fears of reprisal, his royal censors had become inconsistent defenders of moral order, who
wasted intellectual energy combing manuscripts for obscure examples of personal satire
and hidden allusions. Malesherbes would redefine the task of censorship. He would have
censors see to it that a limited number of procedural regulations were observed. Censors
would limit their manuscript examinations to religious topics, to works dealing with les
mœurs, and to those concerned with the source of sovereign authority. In virtually all
other instances, as long as authors requested permission to print, Malesherbes would
waive external censorship requirements. And favoring the gradual abolition of tacit
permissions and secret tolerances, he urged authors to forsake anonymity. Parties who
felt offended in print might find redress in the courtroom.

If applied, Malesherbes's five Mémoires sur la librairie would have substituted

authorial self-censorship for the privilèges, permissions, and verbal tolerances that
defined the examination apparatus of the ancien régime. But the directeur's proposals
never were put into practice. In 1763 his father, Chancellor Lamoignon, was disgraced
and Malesherbes had to give up his post in the book-trade office. During his tenure,
however, no canonical author based his literary fortune more upon the censorship
manipulations of the directeur de la librairie than did Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In theory,
Rousseau and Malesherbes shared the vision of authorial self-censorship as a guiding
principle of writing. In practice, Malesherbes took paths of expediency to get Rousseau
printed. The writer, as we might expect, took the high moral road.

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On the subject of censorship, Rousseau was not a deep thinker--surprising for an

author whose Émile and Du contrat social were universally condemned, whose Discours
sur l’origine de l’inégalité and La Nouvelle Héloïse endured spotty harassment, and
whose Lettres écrites de la montagne were outlawed altogether. In his writings on the
publishing process Rousseau seemed primarily interested in literary property issues,
faithless editing, and suspected piracies. When he did address the issue of bureaucratic
censorship, Rousseau often eschewed universally applicable and principled approaches
and pursued exemptions based on his personal circumstances. Because his authorial self-
perception was that of an outsider acknowledging every word he published and because
he claimed to be writing airy theoretical treatises for connoisseurs, not satirical personal
attacks for crowd amusement, Rousseau felt that France's censorship authorities owed
him dispensations. Because he considered himself detached from the hurly-burly of
Genevan politics and composed most of his books hundreds of miles from his native city,
he urged authorities there to allow his writings to circulate freely. Rousseau maintained
that he practiced rigorous self-censorship, which he converted into a moral act. His
published writings nearly always bore his byline and motto, vitam impendere vero. In his
view literary anonymity or clandestinity à la Voltaire was irresponsible. It supposedly
tempted writers to leave no holds barred and thereby broke agreements of authorial
decency contracted with public authorities.17

Rousseau's most impassioned comments regarding the censorship of writers are in

the Fifth Letter of his Lettres écrites de la montagne (1764). Rousseau was responding to
the condemnation of Émile and Du contrat social by Geneva's patrician Petit Conseil and
to the hostile Lettres écrites de la campagne addressed to him by the Petit Conseil's
attorney-general, Jean-Robert Tronchin. Rousseau concedes that teachers and preachers
may rightly be punished for dogmatizing; however, the author of a book is far different.
"If he teaches, at least he does not gather a crowd, he does not stir up, he does not force
anyone to listen to him, to read him; he does not seek you out, he comes only when you
seek him out yourself." A book's author doesn't conduct an argument with his reader. He
politely takes leave when asked to. Rousseau admits that in countries where pre-
publication censorship exists, authors who fail to seek the necessary permissions are
sometimes punished. However--and one wonders how he related such a fact to his own
bitter experience--these countries tolerate the import of those very same unapproved
books. Rousseau adds that further reason for tolerating his writings is that they are
theoretical treatises for specialists. Rousseau is dismayed at being singled out personally
for punishment when, after all, it is his books that have been accused of causing damage.
"To arrest the author is to remedy nothing at all; on the contrary it is to increase the
publicity for the book, and consequently make the evil worse."18

The fact that Rousseau flaunted his authorial identity was a major reason that
agencies of regulative censorship pursued him so vigorously. What he took to be a moral
imperative, they considered arrogance. In the Fifth Letter, Rousseau defies his accusers.
He strides forth "as a man of honor, who sees his duty where others see that imprudence,
who feels that he has nothing to fear from anyone who wants to proceed justly with him,
and who regards publishing things that one does not want to acknowledge as a punishable
 10

act of cowardice."19 Later in the Confessions, Rousseau felt that notwithstanding his
avowal of Émile's authorship, it was its publisher, Duchesne, who was potentially
endangered.20 A miscalculation, as events proved.

In the Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles (1758) Rousseau argues for
censorship of entertainment that (in his view) might corrupt community standards. And
playwrights for Rousseau are a special case. For the present I shall place them aside and
stick with the example of books and their authors. With Rousseau's attitude regarding
censorship kept in mind, let me summarize the publishing histories of his major works
through mid-1762, year of the disasters that befell him.

As an author avowing his books and eventually publishing most of them abroad,
Rousseau was aware of the procedures to be followed. Submit a copy of the book in
question to the directeur de la librairie. The work's contents, plus political circumstance,
would determine what came next: a censor's recommendation of tolerance via a
permission tacite or a verbal approval, a ministerial/police accord, prohibition with a
wink, or prohibition pure and simple. Between 1750 and 1762, Rousseau depended upon
his personal relationship with Malesherbes to help guide his books through the thicket of
structural censorship. He did what he could to persuade the directeur to assume an active
role. Sometimes Rousseau succeeded, sometimes he didn't. His vicissitudes illustrate just
how flexible and unstable the Pontchartrain-Bignon machinery of censorship had become
at mid-century. There was one constant. Rousseau was convinced that everything he
wrote was adeptly self-censored and warranted open sale and distribution in France and
Geneva. For the most part, Malesherbes indulged him in his misconception.

(1) The Quest for the Friendly Censor: the Discours sur l'Inégalité and Lettre
à d'Alembert. Rousseau's first book, the Dissertation sur la musique moderne (Paris:
Quillau, 1743), was published according to prescribed form, obtaining an “approbation et
privilège du roi.” However, the Discours on the arts and science (1750), which would
forge Rousseau’s reputation, was a different story. The Paris publisher, Noël-Jacques
Pissot, called the Discours a pamphlet, not a book, and thereby avoided having to seek an
exclusive privilège or a censor's approval. Furthermore, Pissot falsely identified a pair of
deceased Geneva booksellers, the Barillots father and son, as publishers of the Discours.
Whether a censor other than the original Dijon academicians ever examined the first
Discours is conjectural. Whether Rousseau was actively involved in Pissot’s ruses is as
well. Diderot bore the responsibility for shepherding the Discours through the publication
process while Rousseau remained in the background.

By way of contrast, Rousseau was deeply involved in the publication and

dissemination of his next major work, the Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité. He had
offered the Discours to Pissot in June 1754; but the Parisian did not adhere to the printing
schedule the writer had insisted on. Therefore, by mutual consent, the pair annulled their
agreement. In November Rousseau signed a new contract with the individual who would
become his publisher of record, Marc-Michel Rey of Amsterdam.
 11

Working with a publisher from Holland presented Rousseau with an entirely new
set of challenges and opportunities. A royal privilège was outside the question for a book
printed abroad. At best, Rey could obtain a permission tacite, offering him limited rights
(no more than a few months) to exclusive sales in France. Central to success was
Malesherbes’s choice of royal censor. In his Mémoire sur la liberté de la presse, written
in 1790, Malesherbes recalled the horror expressed by the censor originally assigned to
examine the Discours. Not only did the censor disapprove of it, Malesherbes wrote, but
he also demanded that the government extinguish, in the examiner's view, the work's
frightful doctrine of reducing original man to brutish status.21 Rather than have Rousseau
face rejection and tempt Rey into publishing a clandestine edition, Malesherbes selected a
second censor, one whose sympathies were guaranteed. He asked abbé de Condillac to
read the Discours. Rousseau and Condillac had known one another since 1741, they were
occasional dining companions in Paris, and it was Condillac who inspired Rousseau’s
theories on the origins of language. The permission tacite register-list for 1754 records
Condillac’s official approval of the Discours.22 Unfortunately, it fails to attach Condillac's
full report. Very possibly it never was put to writing, but given orally. The date of
Condillac’s approval, 1754, for a book published the following year, suggests that the
censor read Pissot’s manuscript.

The Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité, and particularly its pompous

Dedication, were intended to influence the evolution of democratic government in
Geneva. In a letter to Jean Perdriau, Rousseau made it clear that, while he would submit
to having the state's examiners read his work, he considered no authority to be as severe a
censor as himself. "In short, if I have spoken well honoring my homeland, [Geneva] will
profit from the glory. If I have spoken poorly, the blame will be mine alone."23

With publication of the Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité two different

censorship strategies emerged. For his part Rousseau was asserting that the self-discipline
of his writing exempted him from paying much heed to external pressures. On the other
hand, Malesherbes opted for the administrative expedient of locating a cooperative
censor. Initially, both strategies worked in tandem. Following some delays that annoyed
Rey and maddened Rousseau, in mid-August 1755 the Discours went on sale in Paris. It
was quickly pirated. In Geneva the city government, the Petit Conseil, politely accepted it
and its Dedication.

Relatively satisfied with Rey’s work on the Discours sur l’inégalité, in March
1758 Rousseau offered the Amsterdamer his next major piece, the Lettre à d’Alembert
sur les spectacles. The essay was written in response to the encyclopedist’s scandalous
article “Genève,” and it vigorously opposed establishing a theater in Rousseau’s (and
Rey’s) native city. The Lettre à d’Alembert is Rousseau’s only work in which censorship
is a major topic. Rebuking the principle popular in France that the theater contributes to
improving public morals, Rousseau urged its prohibition in what he considered to be
rustic, uncorrupted Geneva. At the same time, he believed that he could most freely
express this opinion at a distance, in France. In offering Rey his essay, Rousseau insisted
 12

upon absolute secrecy. Rey agreed to Rousseau’s terms, shrouded though they were in
mystery; but the delays he had endured over obtaining the permission tacite for the
Discours sur l’inégalité persuaded the Amsterdam publisher to address Malesherbes
directly for the permit.

By early July Rey had sent two-thirds of the sheets to Malesherbes, who
examined them. The Parlement's challenge to his administration peaking over the De
l'esprit affair, the directeur deemed it wise to obtain a second opinion. It had been his
practice at times to seek cover by having a ministerial official assume a censor's role. On
this occasion, he took the unusual step of consulting the addressee of the Lettre.
D'Alembert accepted the offer, graciously adding that he would approve Rousseau’s
manuscript sight unseen! On 22 July Rey again urged Malesherbes to permit entry of the
Lettre. Preoccupied with getting Helvétius’s De l'esprit past a second censor,
Malesherbes delayed responding. On 21 August Rey could wait no longer and sent copies
of the essay to France. Two weeks later he informed Rousseau that the permission tacite
was in hand.

By 1760 Rousseau was fairly confident that Malesherbes's protective strategies

were working and that, as author, he was able to control the transit of his manuscripts to
print. But permissions tacites were as uncertain a guarantee of a writer's liberty of
expression as they were of a publisher's financial reward. More than three years after
publication of the Discours de l'origine de l'inégalité, attorney-general Omer Joly de
Fleury (January 1759) was lobbying for its condemnation and suppression. Shortly
thereafter the publication history of La Nouvelle Héloïse would illustrate further
difficulties.

(2) The Case of the Unfriendly Censor: La Nouvelle Héloïse. La Nouvelle

Héloïse was Rousseau’s major undertaking with Rey. Throughout most of 1760 the
Amsterdamer prepared the long novel for the press. It was a costly enterprise that
proceeded slowly, and in spurts—especially since Rousseau in France and Rey in
Holland were so dependent upon international mail services for the exchange of proofs
and sheets. Malesherbes’s office served as clearing-house; and Rousseau hoped that the
directeur’s curiosity about his incoming mail would result in his personal examination of
proofs and admiration for the text. And admiration would be tantamount to censorship
approval.

Chastened by Parlement's attacks on his administration, however, Malesherbes

now grew reluctant about manipulating procedures. Unofficially, however, he likely did
scan La Nouvelle Héloïse. And he wasn’t particularly pleased by what he read. Assuring
Rousseau that the novel eventually would be tolerated in France, he nevertheless insisted
on seeking a permission tacite via normal channels. He selected a workhorse censor,
Christophe Picquet, an honest and plodding man, who had no literary reputation to
protect and who served the police wing of Malesherbes's bureau as an inspecteur de la
librairie.
 13

On 22 November 1760, Rey sent 2,140 printed and stitched sets of La Nouvelle
Héloïse to Paris and another 1,500 to London, Geneva, and Germany. By the time the
books reached the Paris customs house in January 1761, Picquet had not even begun his
examination of the novel. Yet Rey notified Rousseau of Malesherbes's verbal assurance
that La Nouvelle Héloïse would be tolerated. A bookseller in the Palais-Royal, Etienne-
Vincent Robin, standing in for the actual middleman, Jean-Augustin Grangé, was
commissioned to remove Rey’s books from the customs house at the appropriate time.
The matter was complicated by the fact that another Paris publisher, Nicolas-Bonaventure
Duchesne, wished to negotiate with Rousseau for a subsequent edition of La Nouvelle
Héloïse, accompanied by a new author's preface. Rey knew that a new edition was
inevitable, but preferred that it be produced by Robin and Grangé—since, as his
customers, they were unlikely to work on it until his own edition had sold out. But, prior
to getting released, Rey’s books still had to pass the censor’s examination.

Rey’s edition went on sale in England, Holland, and Germany. Copies were
smuggled into Paris. Robin and Grangé planned their own edition and offered Rousseau
1,000 livres in exchange for his consent. Encouraged by Malesherbes and rationalizing
that he was at liberty to sell future versions of his novel as he pleased, Rousseau took the
money. He even supplied Robin and Grangé with the errata-list he had prepared for Rey.

However, Picquet wrecked everyone's plans. The censor, who actually belonged
to the Jurisprudence section of the bureau, read La Nouvelle Héloïse in his conscientious
and literal manner. Then he handed a list of recommended excisions to the directeur.
Malesherbes was in a bind. He knew that Rousseau was as unlikely to accept the cuts as
he would consent to becoming an underground author. Malesherbes also was aware that
Rey had placed large sums in the edition, and the directeur did not wish to have the
Amsterdamer try to recoup his investment through smuggling. Malesherbes therefore
concurred with Picquet’s report while hoping to salvage Rey’s edition. He passed along a
copy of Rey’s book, and Picquet’s recommendations, to Robin and Grangé. The Parisians
worked day and night, rapidly publishing the censored version of the novel but doing
their best to have it appear to be Rey's. Malesherbes intended to give the Parisians several
weeks to sell their book. Then he hoped to release Rey’s unexpurgated version without
fanfare.

Towards the end of January 1761 the Robin-Grangé edition went on sale. Its title
page contained the false address, “A AMSTERDAM, Chez MARC MICHEL REY”.
Though Rey had no financial interest in the Robin-Grangé edition, he tolerated the ruse—
for he believed that its success would facilitate the release of his own edition. Meanwhile,
very unwisely, Robin offered Rousseau a gift copy of the censored La Nouvelle Héloïse.
The author was horrified. Not only had the text been altered without his cooperation, but
it was filled with printing errors. Rousseau informed his friend François Coindet: “I no
longer recognize my manuscript. My intention is to disavow this edition publicly, even in
journals and gazettes. It's not ethical to dare to publish such a misshapen monster, such a
mutilated book, under my name."24 Thus, when it came to censorship procedures,
 14

Rousseau and Malesherbes had parted company. Rousseau believed he needed no outside
authority to dictate what was permissible. For his part, Malesherbes was the pragmatist-
administrator. For him censorship and the privilège-permission systems were simply facts
of literary life, to be confronted and manipulated. Malesherbes advised Rousseau to retain
the payments from both publishers of La Nouvelle Héloïse--Rey and Robin-Grangé--
which he did, and to cooperate with Duchesne on a proposed third edition, which he had
begun to do. On 16 February Rey’s La Nouvelle Héloïse was unobtrusively released from
the Paris customs house. No cancels had been inserted. It was the book Rey originally
had published. No agency of regulative censorship seems to have examined it past the
title page, and no effort was made to seize it. As far as the proposed Duchesne edition
was concerned, Malesherbes sent Rousseau the list of the excisions requested by Picquet;
but, the directeur later added, there was no need to abide by them.25 Rousseau was invited
to make “improvements” to the text; and a royal censor trusted by Malesherbes, the abbé
de Graves, served the author's interests in negotiating a favorable contract with Duchesne.
For the time being, Rousseau determined that he had had enough. Dismayed by his recent
experience, he soon refused to cooperate actively in any edition proposed by Duchesne.

Just how badly did the Robin-Grangé edition distort La Nouvelle Héloïse? In the
Confessions Rousseau complained that more than a hundred pages had been torn from his
novel.26 Jo-Ann McEachern has scrupulously compared the Rey and Robin-Grangé
editions. She concludes that, in addition to the excisions, nearly every page of Robin-
Grangé contained wrong words and errors in spelling or punctuation—devastating for
such a fastidious author as Rousseau.27 Barbara de Negroni estimates that the excisions
amounted to around twenty-five printed pages of the 1,976 contained in Rey’s edition.28
De Negroni finds the cuts falling into three categories. The first concerned Rousseau’s
footnotes, whose suppressions had no effect on the text. The second concerned entire
paragraphs or ends of paragraphs, which impaired comprehension of Rousseau’s chain of
thought while not necessarily changing his meaning. The third set of cuts was the most
insidious, eradicating sentences within paragraphs or words within a single sentence,
modifying completely what Rousseau had meant to say. Picquet added nothing of his
own. Concentrating on politics and religion, he limited himself to expurgating. He
removed a reference to boudoir government because it might bring to mind Mme de
Pompadour; and he struck out an account of royal indolence because it conjured up Louis
XV’s reputation. Above all, Picquet excised criticisms of Roman Catholicism:
suggestions of sensuality located in mystical texts, uncomplimentary mentions of
Jansenist theology, accusations of clerical hypocrisy, sacramental abuses or idolatry
lurking in the cult of saints—the sorts of matters that most bureau de la librairie censors
had been tracking down since the Ponchartrain-Bignon era. Finally, Rousseau’s
benevolent treatment of Wolmar disturbed the censor, for the author appeared to assure
salvation to his upright atheist.

Rousseau protested that views he had already published in the Discours sur
l’origine de l’inégalité and Lettre à d’Alembert were much bolder than the ideas
expressed in La Nouvelle Héloïse. The author suspected several reasons behind his new
persecution. First of all, certain readers of the novel were turning him into a moral
 15

preceptor for the young, replacing church and family, a role he claimed not to cherish.
Second, he accused the French censor of hostility towards La Nouvelle Héloïse’s
enlightened feminism. Preferring female characters who commence as libertines and
finish by taking lessons from their confessors, he could not abide a young woman who
was "pleasant, pious, enlightened, and reasonable--all at the same time." Third, Rousseau
considered his novel to be a victim of religious bigotry. He wrote that his characters bore
a Protestant piety and the censor was trying to mold them into Catholics. He concluded
that he would prefer not to participate in any new edition of La Nouvelle Héloïse if it
meant amending his text, and wrote bitterly to Malesherbes: "I thank Monsieur de
Malesherbes most humbly for his goodwill; but I neither know nor wish to learn how to
prepare a book for publication in Paris."29

(3) Censorship? Who Needs It? Émile and Du contrat social. Rousseau did try
again. Early in September 1761 Malesherbes and the duchess de Luxembourg had helped
him draw up a contract for Émile with the Paris publisher Duchesne. The sum promised
Rousseau was an unprecedented 6,000 livres. The author-publisher relationship, however,
would be filled with misunderstanding and grief, not the least caused by fears over
censorship borne by Duchesne and his business associate Pierre Guy. Perhaps his success
at having both the Rey and Robin-Grangé versions of La Nouvelle Héloïse circulating
lulled Malesherbes into believing that he could again manipulate the system on
Rousseau's behalf. The essential task at hand was to create a false publication address for
Duchesne's book. Duchesne and Guy arranged with the aged Dutch bookseller, Jean
Néaulme, to place Néaulme’s name and Amsterdam address on the title page of their
edition. By virtue of this ruse, the Parisians would publish surreptitiously and leave it up
to Malesherbes to obtain some sort of police tolérance for Émile. Perhaps Malesherbes
could acquire, very rapidly, a permission tacite from a friend in his bureau. Or perhaps he
could personally take responsibility for censorship. In return for using Néaulme’s name
and address, Duchesne and Guy agreed to send the Dutchman revises so that he could
make his own edition of Émile for sale in Holland, Germany, and Britain.

From the beginning of the affair, administrator Malesherbes slipped into an

advocacy role. Once he was forced to reverse course, this proved to be a disastrous
strategy; for he would have to abandon Rousseau. Initially, the directeur served as
Rousseau’s intermediary with Duchesne. He assuaged Rousseau’s fears that the Jesuits
were bent on destroying the writer's literary reputation. Malesherbes even read proofs of
Émile and proposed alterations, while comprehending just how sensitive Rousseau was to
having his words changed. One of Malesherbes’s inspecteurs de la librairie, likely
Joseph d’Hémery, supervised printing at Duchesne’s. Ironically, the more confidence
Rousseau developed in Malesherbes’s powers of protection, the more risky did the
writer’s actual circumstances become.

It did not help that Rousseau was preparing a second controversial book at the
precise moment he undertook Émile. Early in 1761 Rey had purchased the manuscript for
Du contrat social. Fifteen months later the printing was complete and the Amsterdamer
 16

sent two bales containing the in-octavo pages of the treatise to Rouen, from where they
were to be transported to Paris. Rey had arranged with the Paris booksellers Laurent
Durand, Jean Desaint, and Charles Saillant to distribute his volumes. As he had done with
the Lettre à d’Alembert in 1758 and La Nouvelle Héloïse in 1761, Rey risked shipping the
copies to France prior to obtaining a censor's approval. He was counting on Rousseau’s
intimacy with Malesherbes to assure toleration of Du contrat social.

However, the books never left Rouen. They failed to obtain permission for
shipment to Paris. Rousseau began suspecting that the directeur's skills at protection and
manipulation were slipping. On 9 May 1762 the writer wrote to Rey: “M. de M. is good
and well-intentioned; but, alas, he cannot always obey his kind heart and [adhere to] his
enlightened views, nor can he always accomplish what he would truly prefer."30 Three
days later Desaint and Saillant informed Rey that, having read his advance copy of Du
contrat social, Malesherbes had decided to interdict the book's distribution and sale. It
wasn't even a question of requesting cancels. On 13 May Desaint and Saillant wrote again
to Rey. Concerned for Rousseau’s physical safety, they noted that an unnamed magistrate
(Malesherbes?) had recommended the removal of Rousseau’s name from Du contrat
social’s title page. The principles enshrined in the book were capable of causing its
author great harm in France. Desaint and Saillant doubted whether Rey’s books would be
returned to him. Orders had been sent to the French provinces warning against the
circulation of Du contrat social. Rey asserted that Malesherbes’s sudden action had been
forced on him by unknown parties.31

Quite possibly the pressure put on Malesherbes derived from Parlement, with the
directeur's father, Chancellor Lamoignon, serving as intermediary. Rousseau adamantly
wrote Rey that Du contrat social fit into the category of a tolerated book in France. He
noted that it had entered the country legally and did not libel the French government. It
discussed monarchies theoretically, not specifically. "…I neither have gone nor could go
beyond the bounds of a purely philosophic and political discussion…." Rousseau did not
even consider the possibility of a censor's examination. As a republican, he believed in
his inherent right to criticize monarchies. Now he felt betrayed.32

On 24 May 1762, Duchesne's Émile (bearing the false imprint of "Néaulme,

Amsterdam") went on sale in Paris. On 1 June, Saillant, syndic of the Paris guild of
printers and booksellers, received orders to seize all copies in the city. Police lieutenant
A.-R. de Sartine ordered Duchesne to cease distributing the book. On 7 June the syndic of
the Sorbonne's Faculty of Theology declared Émile to be impious and a threat to public
order. Two days later the Parlement of Paris condemned Émile and on 11 June the book
or a facsimile of it was ritually destroyed at the foot of the grand staircase of the Palais de
Justice.33 It seemed that all the forces of regulative censorship in France were united in
reasserting their authority, and Malesherbes's only recourse was the weak, legalistic
argument that Émile never had been properly examined by his bureau. Contradicting the
assertion of his own inspector d’Hémery, that permission to publish and distribute Émile
had been awarded “tacitement,” the directeur wrote to Chancellor Lamoignon: "One is
 17

mistaken by believing that a permission tacite is a word whispered in a person's ear,

leaving no trace and which can be disavowed. Permissions tacites are awarded following
a censor's report, with the manuscript initialed, as with public permissions; and there are
registers [for them]."34 Technically, this was true, but it also contradicted Malesherbes's
earlier statement, of 1757, to the writer J.-H. Samuel Formey: "Our policy is to permit
works tacitly, or better to tolerate them, because a foreign edition ultimately will gain
entry; and it is more worthwhile for French booksellers and workers to make a profit. But
since it is not acceptable to leave vestiges of this tolerance in writing, ordinarily such
sorts of permissions are accorded verbally."35 By ignoring how ingenious he had been at
manipulating the term "tacite" over the past dozen years, Malesherbes simply was
distancing himself from Émile. He asked Rousseau to return correspondence concerning
the book.

It remained for the Parlement of Paris to deliver the censorship report on Émile,
noisily, retrospectively, and as justification for the book's symbolic punishment. Émile
was attacked for assaulting civil authority, religion, and the established social order. It
was condemned for sanctioning natural religion as central to an educational program.
According to the parlementary indictment, Émile sought to destroy the truth of holy
scripture, prophecies, miracles, the infallibility of revelation, and the authority of the
church. In their place were located impious and detestable principles, an individualistic
humanism, and dependence on unbridled passions. Most significant of all, because
Rousseau, “identified on the title-page of the book," was thrusting his authorship in the
face of his accusers, he was to be placed under arrest, serving as an example to all others
who might have participated in the printing and distribution of such a work.36

The publishing histories of Rousseau's works, to mid-1762, betray the paradoxes

of censorship in France. By no means was Malesherbes's behavior consistent with the
procedures he was supposed to administer and enforce. On two occasions he had made
certain he would secure friendly reports, and in the case of the Lettre à d'Alembert the
censor wasn't even on the roster. Regarding La Nouvelle Héloïse, Malesherbes initially
played by the rules; but subsequently manipulated them in Rousseau's favor.
Malesherbes's activity regarding both Du contrat social and Émile was highly risky. It
did conform to the ideals he expressed the Mémoires sur la librairie. However, structural
and regulative censorship practices were as unreformed in 1762 as they had been in
1759. For his part, while flaunting modern principles of authorial responsibility,
Rousseau depended upon ancien-régime models of patronage and protection. The
disasters of May-June 1762 reveal how badly he and his protector had miscalculated..

********************************************************

As a consequence of the suppressions of Émile and Du contrat social in France,

Geneva, and elsewhere, Rousseau-author became indistinguishable from Rousseau-
martyr. He returned to Paris in 1770, but received stern warnings about expressing
opinions even orally; and the police stopped his salon readings of manuscripts that were
 18

to become the Confessions. No authorized collection of all his works ever appeared in his
lifetime. But were the condemnations of Rousseau's individual books enforced? Jo-Ann
McEachern's bibliographical analyses have identified more than three dozen French-
language editions of Émile prior to 1789. Robert Darnton counts 14 editions of Du
contrat social between 1769 and 1789. During this twenty-year period Darnton also cites
twelve instances of Paris customs confiscations of Émile and three of Du contrat social--
none past 1779.37 My own research suggests that editors and publishers of the
posthumous Collection complète des œuvres de J. J. Rousseau (Geneva, 1780-1782)
experienced virtually no difficulty exporting their books to France. In the quarto edition
of the Collection complète, Du contrat social appeared in volume 1, Émile as volumes 4
and 5, and the Lettres écrites de la montagne in volume 6.38

The pre-revolutionary generation could obtain its Rousseau easily enough,

condemnations notwithstanding. In conclusion, however, I should like to say a few words
about a different form of censorship that affected the Collection complète. It was
censorship by the devoted editors of the work, for the Collection complète was an
experiment in literary rehabilitation arranged by Rousseau's most faithful disciples intent
on preserving in print evidence of the Master's alleged moral purity. Theirs was a
censorship based upon love.

Three individuals were the editorial heart and soul of the Collection complète.
The first, the French marquis René-Louis de Girardin, on whose estate the philosopher
died and was buried in July 1778, considered himself to be Rousseau's incarnation: a
prophet in the wilderness. Girardin "improved upon" whatever Rousseau manuscripts he
could lay his hands on, and envisioned the Collection complète as a weapon of vengeance
with which to assault the writer's enemies. The second disciple-editor, Pierre-Alexandre
Du Peyrou of Neuchâtel, Rousseau's one-time confidant and literary executor, considered
himself a victim, wrongly mistrusted by the philosopher during the last decade of his life.
For Du Peyrou the Collection complète was to be a vast, multi-layered autobiography,
making comprehensible to readers that nomadic and misunderstood life. Du Peyrou
would artfully combine heretofore unpublished manuscripts and correspondence with
known texts, all of which served to offer messages of inspiration from the thundering
warrior. The third disciple, Rousseau's old friend, the Genevan Paul-Claude Moultou,
stayed in the background; but he worried that the autobiographical Confessions, Rêveries
du promeneur solitaire, complete Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, and letters--all being
published for the first time in the Collection complète--might injure individuals and
reputations so severely that the enormous publishing enterprise would be a disaster and
Rousseau's moral vision forever distorted.

For different reasons, each editor assumed a censor's role. Girardin was the most
aggressive. He added a post-face to the Rêveries, suppressed material in the
Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, and was caught by his colleagues hiding
a manuscript of Part 2 of the Confessions. Moultou's timidity had him insist upon
replacing proper names with initials in Rousseau's correspondence and of making at least
 19

nine deletions in Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques.39 Du Peyrou, who did most of the
physical editing, suffered great anxiety over the conflict between scrupulousness and
mission. The integration of Rousseau's correspondence into Du Peyrou's moral
autobiography presented some of the most trying challenges. For example, in a letter
from Rousseau to Du Peyrou in November 1764, the philosopher had written that
Voltaire's "outrages" committed against religion in the Dictionnaire philosophique might
be punished "before human tribunals."40 Certainly, for Rousseau to suggest that a veil of
silence be drawn over a fellow author, was, at the least, disappointing--however much it
could be argued that Voltaire lacked authorial self-discipline. So Du Peyrou removed the
phrase. Paragraphs where Rousseau left in doubt his uncompromising republicanism
were dropped as well.41 Du Peyrou cut out bits and pieces from Part 1 of the Confessions.
For example, Rousseau's homosexual encounter with the Moor during the writer's
conversion exercises at Turin was excised from the Collection complète.42

The omission of the entire Part 2 of the Confessions from the great edition
certainly damaged the Collection's claim to thoroughness. Though Girardin, Moultou,
and Du Peyrou held separate manuscripts of Part 2, they had honored Rousseau's express
wish to keep the work out of print until the deaths of those mentioned in it. In 1789,
however, Moultou's son Pierre published an edition based on his father's manuscript.
Accompanied by a new set of Rousseau's letters and crudely designed as a supplement to
the Collection complète, the work was indeed censored by Pierre--ostensibly to protect
those pilloried in it. For Du Peyrou, however, this wasn't loving censorship. It simply was
a corrupt edition. Assisted by his friend, Isabelle de Charrière, Du Peyrou therefore
published his own edition of the Confessions, Part 2.43 It was unexpurgated. The total
moral autobiography was finished.

While Du Peyrou was at work, Mme de Charrière reflected upon the reasons why
she and her collaborator had decided to publish the Confessions, Part 2, despite
Rousseau's objections from the grave. In 1789, she wrote, a sea change in public
discourse had occurred in French-speaking Europe. As the censorship institutions of the
ancien régime crumbled, the quest for sincérité--that is, transparency or openness--had
overwhelmed traditions of secrecy and deception. "So many veils have been torn aside
that one no longer feels the need to respect any of them."44 In this paper I've been a bit
less blunt than Mme de Charrière. Royal censors like Cadet de Saineville truly believed
they were maintaining quality controls over literature, not perpetuating a culture of
secrecy and deception. Today the censors are gone. Have they been supplanted by the
subtler tyranny of the courts, peer reviewers, editorial boards, and grant committees?
Post-modern sociologists can thrash that one out.
1
Malesherbes, Mémoires sur la librairie, Mémoire sur la liberté de la presse, ed. Roger Chartier (Paris, 1994), p. 100.
2
Bibliothèque nationale de France. Fonds français, ms. 22014, fol. 130.
3

Barbara de Negroni, Lectures interdites: le travail des censeurs au XVIIIe siècle, 1723-1774 (Paris, 1995), p. 21.
4

Pierre Bourdieu considers structural and regulative censorship sociologically, not historically: "La Censure," in Questions
de Sociologie (Paris, 1984), pp. 138-142; __________, "Censorship and the Imposition of Form," in Language and
Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Anderson (Cambridge, MA, 1991), pp. 137-
138.
5

Sophia Rosenfeld, "Writing the History of Censorship in the Age of Enlightenment," in Postmodernism and the
Enlightenment, ed. Daniel Gordon (New York, 2001), p. 127.
6
Georges Minois, Censure et culture sous l'Ancien Régime (Paris, 1995), pp. 137-179.
7

Raymond Birn, "Book Production and Censorship in France, 1700-1715," in Books and Society in History, ed. Kenneth E,
Carpenter (New York and London, 1983), pp. 145-171.
8

Archives du Ministère des affaires étrangères, M et D. France, vol. 182, fol. 313-314.
9

We still await a collective biography of the royal censors. There is much useful information in Catherine Blangonnet's
École nationale des Chartes thesis of 1974-1975, "Recherche sur les censeurs royaux et leur place dans la société au temps
de Malesherbes (1750-1763)."
10

BnF. Fonds français, ms. 21990 (1718-1774), ms. 21987 (1784-1789).

11

BnF. Fonds français, ms. 22138, nr. 143.

12

BnF. Fonds français, ms. 22132, nr. 9.

13

BnF. Fonds français, ms. 22137, nr. 97.

14

BnF. Fonds français, ms. 22191, fol. 27-102. D. Ozanam, "La disgrâce d'un premier commis: Tercier et l'affaire 'De l'esprit'
(1758-1759)," Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes (1955). D. W. Smith, Helvétius: A Study in Persecution (Oxford, 1965).
15
BnF. Fonds français, ms. 22191, nr. 52.
16
Malesherbes, Mémoires sur la librairie, particularly pp. 75-119.
17
See Christopher Kelly, Rousseau as Author: Consecrating One's Life to the Truth (Chicago, 2003), ch. 2.
18

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, III, Lettres écrites de la montagne, "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade," (Paris, 1964),
pp. 781-783.
19

Ibid., 793.
20

Ibid., I, Les Confessions (Paris, 1959), p. 576.

21

Mémoire sur la liberté de la presse, p. 267. Malesherbes misidentified the Discours in question, believing it to be the one
on science and the arts.
22

BnF. Fonds français, ms. 21990, nr. 352.

23

Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. R. A. Leigh (Geneva-Madison, Oxford, 1965-1998), 52 vol.: CC,
III, 59.
24

Correspondance complète, VIII, 29.

25

Correspondance complète, VIII, 117-126, 177-178.

26

Rousseau, I, Les Confessions, p. 512.

27

Jo-Ann E. McEachern, "La Nouvelle Hèloïse et la censure," in Rousseau and the Eighteenth Century: Essays in Memory of
R. A. Leigh, ed. Marian Hobson, J.T.A. Leigh, and Robert Wokler (Oxford, 1992), pp. 83-99.
28

Jean-Jacques Rousseau/Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes: correspondance, ed. Barbara de Negroni

(Paris, 1991), pp. 97-98. The excisions are listed on pp. 316-322.
29

Correspondance complète, VIII, 132-134. The previous two paragraphs derive from my recent book, Forging Rousseau:
Print, Commerce and Cultural Manipulation in the Late Enlightenment, (SVEC, 2001:8) (Oxford, 2001), pp. 27-30.
30

Correspondance complète, X, 23.

31

Correspondance complète, X, 241, 249; XV, 393.

32

Correspondance complète, X, 307-308..

33
Correspondance complète, XI, 7-8, 262-270.
34

Correspondance complète, XI, 59.

35

BnF. Nouvelles acquisitions françaises, ms. 3345, fol. 140.

36

Correpondance complète, XI, 262-267.

37

Jo-Ann E. McEachern, Bibliography of the Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau to 1800, 2: Émile, ou de l'éducation
(Oxford, 1989). Robert Darnton, The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France 1769-1789 (New York, 1995), pp. 58, 42.
38

Collection complète des œuvres de J.J. Rousseau (Geneva, 1782), I, IV-VI. Birn, Forging Rousseau, pp. 155-161.
39

Rousseau, I, Rousseau juge de Jean Jaques, pp. 1666, 1672, 1688, 1710, 1733, 1745, 1753, 1755, 1760.
40

Collection complète des œuvres de J.J. Rousseau (Geneva, 1782), XII, 429-430. Correspondance complète, XXII,5.
41

Collection complète, XII, 568. Correspondance complète, XXX, 124-127.

42

Rousseau, I, Les Confessions, pp. 66-69.

43

Suite de la Collection des œuvres de J.-J. Rousseau, citoyen de Geneve, 5 vol., containing the Seconde partie des
Confessions de J.-J. Rousseau, citoyen de Geneve, édition enrichie d'un nouveau recueil de ses lettres (Neuchâtel, 1790).
44

Isabelle de Charrière, Œuvres complètes, ed. J.-D. Candaux, C. P. Courtney et al., 10 vol. (Amsterdam, 1979-1984).
Eclaircissements relatifs à la publication des "Confessions" de Rousseau, vol. X, 189.