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Robert Darnton

Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard University

Harvard University

Areas of expertise

  • - The history of books

Major works

The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie; The Literary Underground of the Old Regime; The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France; The Case for Books, Past, Present, and Future; and_ Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature_.

About me

Robert Danton retired in July 2015 as the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian at Harvard University. He has published extensively on the history of books since its emergence as a distinct field of study in the 1960s. Among his books are_ The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie_; The Literary Underground of the Old Regime; The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France; The Case for Books, Past, Present, and Future; and_ Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature_.