Robert Darnton introduces us to the shadowy world of pirate publishers, garret scribblers, under-the-cloak book peddlers, smugglers, and police spies that composed the literary underground of the Enlightenment. Here are the ambitious writers who crowded into Paris seeking fame and fortune within the Republic of Letters, but who instead sank into the miserable world of Grub Street-victims of a closed world of protection and privilege. Venting their frustrations in an illicit literature of vitriolic pamphlets, "libelles," and "chroniques scandaleuses," these "Rousseaus of the gutter" desecrated everything sacred in the social order of the Old Regime. Here too are the workers who printed their writings and the clandestine booksellers who distributed them. While censorship, a monopolistic guild, and the police contained the visible publishing industry within the limits of official orthodoxies, a prolific literary underworld disseminated a vast illegal literature that conveyed a seditious ideology to readers everywhere in France. Covering their traces in order to survive, the creators of this eighteenth-century counterculture have virtually disappeared from history. By drawing on an ingenious selection of previously hidden sources, such as police ledgers and publishers' records, Robert Darnton reveals for the first time the fascinating story of that forgotten underworld. The activities of the underground bear on a broad range of issues in history and literature, and they directly concern the problem of uncovering the ideological origins of the French Revolution. This engaging book illuminates those issues and provides a fresh view of publishing history that will inform and delight the general reader.

罗伯特·达恩顿（Robert Darnton），著名的欧洲文化史学者。1939年生于纽约。1960年毕业于哈佛大学。1964年获牛津大学博士学位。1964—1965年担任《纽约时报》记者。1968年进入普林斯顿大学，担任Shelby Cullom Davis欧洲史教授。1999年任美国历史学会主席。2007年从普林斯顿大学荣休，担任哈佛大学Carl H. Pforzheimer教授和哈佛大学图书馆馆长。本人及其著作曾获多项奖励：1995年，《法国革命前的畅销禁书》一书获美国国家图书评论奖；1999年，获法国政府荣誉骑士勋章提名；2004年，获国际符腾堡学会颁发的符腾堡奖；2005年，获美国印刷史学会杰出贡献奖。