Reading Rooms

The Loi Guizot, passed on 28 June 1833, promoted literacy amongst the French populace. A new business sprang up to meet the new bourgeoisie’s demand for books and newspapers under the July Monarchy, reading rooms known as cabinets de lecture or  cabinets littéraires. There, for a modest sum, readers could peruse onsite or borrow one or more items, according to the rules of the establishment. There were several sorts of reading rooms, from the rudimentary room specialising in onsite availability of cheap publications and newspapers, to the most luxurious, where members, drawn from the aristocracy or haute bourgeoisie, would gather to borrow handsome volumes. This specificity of onsite reading and borrowed documents makes reading rooms precursors of the public libraries that were to appear in France in 1860. 

Sites for staying informed or enjoying literature, the many reading rooms in Paris developed primarily in the Latin Quarter and around Palais-Royal, which were vibrant sites of cultural life at the time. Working-class establishments were often run by women, former seamstresses, dressmakers or washerwomen who found them to provide a source of revenue when they could no longer meet the demands of their trade. But regardless of their clientele, reading rooms generally provided the same selection of publications that were perennially popular with readers: censored books (not only erotic novels, but philosophical or political essays of a liberal turn), as well as fiction, particularly crime fiction, known as romans noirs, and historical novels. Balzac himself was a great admirer of Sir Walter Scott and penned several works of period fiction for this audience.