I can't find a copy of The Age of Liberty: Sweden 1719-1772 for less than $40, but, Stabi not only has it, they have it available for reading online if you have a card. I don't know if it's any good, but it's recent-ish (1986, reprinted or second edition in 2009?), and it's our period.
I have managed to order, for a more reasonable price, a book called Seize the Book, Jail the Author: Johann Lorenz Schmidt and Censorship in Eighteenth Century Germany. Schmidt was a theologian who published a new translation of the Pentateuch, which was considered sacrilegious on two grounds: 1) it claimed to supersede Luther! 2) it followed the Hebrew literally, without interposing millennia of Christian interpretation on the words. (From what little I read of Genesis in Hebrew before burning out on my old method of language study, I can tell you there is a significant difference between what it actually says and the traditional translations, aka what you probably think it says.) And you can see how that led to Schmidt getting included in a book that's about censorship.
Will let you know when the book arrives. I ran across it while looking up Wolff, and the Google excerpts looked interesting.
Well, we can't always have Medici turnaround time! :'D Whenever you get the time is great.
I'm going to try to read the censorship one myself; it's up my alley and contains information I've been wanting to get straight in my head for a while now (like Wolff's story), but I also always welcome your summaries, especially if I'm too busy wrestling Czernin during my reading time.
Re: Bleckwenn, having returned my six June books, I was set to order, but alas, I can only read this book in the reading room. Which is possible again, if one books a time spot in advance. But that's not practical for me in the next few weeks, so it will have to wait.
Alas! Well, as the fox would say about the grapes, it may not have what we want anyway (it's a different book by the same author, and thus a gamble on my part), so there's certainly no rush.
The censorship book arrived in Boston today, so I'm expecting delivery tomorrow. When I'll have time to digitize it, much less read it, remains an unknown.
One thing I'd been meaning to ask, not about a specific book but a topic, was that anything you wanted to tell us about Corsica would be of interest. Everything I know about Pasquale Paoli I learned from reading about Boswell, which gives me hope you know more than I do.
Oh good lord. There's quite a lot about Paoli in Boswell's diaries, evidently, and I even have Boswell's Corsica book somewhere, but I'd have to reread to tell you any stories. The only detail I remember right away is that Paoli while in exile in England served as Boswell's best man together with Samuel Johnson at Boswell's wedding.
I also remember John Wain when explaining the success of the Corsica book in his "best of Boswell" edition stating that every age has their small nation/state billed as an Utopia - he compares it to Cuba as seen in much of Europe in the 1960s. (Not in the US, obviously, and in Europe this stopped being true once more and more stories got out of just how tyrannical the Castro regime was, but for much of the 1960s, the image was basically "noble freedom fighters kicked out corrupt Mafia US sponsored regime, then squared off against superpower and won, fuck yeah!") And in the 18th century pre- American Revolution the role of evil superpower was played alternatingly by France and the HRE while the noble defiant island Utopia home of freedom fighters was Corsica. (And thus Paoli = 1960s European image of Fidel Castro.)
The other thing I vaguely remember is that Napoleon's father Carlo worked for him but young Napoleon himself and the rest of the B(u)onaparte clan had a massive fallout with him thereafter leading to the Bonapartes being banished from Corsica, and conversely Paoli ending up back in British exile again once the guy who supplanted him as most famous 18th century son of Corsica ended up on top of France. But that's it.
Lol, well, I guess you can't know everything! (You come alarmingly close already. ;))
The bit about Castro was interesting and new to me, though. (As someone who's never studied the 20th century outside of the American school system.)
As you can probably tell by all the Spain - Sweden - Tuscany - Corsica exploration, I'm trying to flesh out my picture of 18th century Europe a bit. So far, Spain and Tuscany have not failed to bring the gossipy sensationalism! (I'm pleased that between the guy who thinks he's a frog and the Ruspanti, not to mention the rest of it, we're still delivering on bonkers stories to cahn nearly 2 years later. :D)
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timeasmymeasure
Latest book discoveries
Date: 2021-06-21 02:34 am (UTC)I have managed to order, for a more reasonable price, a book called Seize the Book, Jail the Author: Johann Lorenz Schmidt and Censorship in Eighteenth Century Germany. Schmidt was a theologian who published a new translation of the Pentateuch, which was considered sacrilegious on two grounds: 1) it claimed to supersede Luther! 2) it followed the Hebrew literally, without interposing millennia of Christian interpretation on the words. (From what little I read of Genesis in Hebrew before burning out on my old method of language study, I can tell you there is a significant difference between what it actually says and the traditional translations, aka what you probably think it says.) And you can see how that led to Schmidt getting included in a book that's about censorship.
Will let you know when the book arrives. I ran across it while looking up Wolff, and the Google excerpts looked interesting.
Re: Latest book discoveries
Date: 2021-06-21 04:29 pm (UTC)Re: Latest book discoveries
Date: 2021-06-21 09:36 pm (UTC)I'm going to try to read the censorship one myself; it's up my alley and contains information I've been wanting to get straight in my head for a while now (like Wolff's story), but I also always welcome your summaries, especially if I'm too busy wrestling Czernin during my reading time.
Re: Latest book discoveries
Date: 2021-06-25 01:22 pm (UTC)I'll email you about the Age of Liberty.
Re: Latest book discoveries
Date: 2021-06-25 02:54 pm (UTC)The censorship book arrived in Boston today, so I'm expecting delivery tomorrow. When I'll have time to digitize it, much less read it, remains an unknown.
One thing I'd been meaning to ask, not about a specific book but a topic, was that anything you wanted to tell us about Corsica would be of interest. Everything I know about Pasquale Paoli I learned from reading about Boswell, which gives me hope you know more than I do.
Re: Latest book discoveries
Date: 2021-06-26 12:28 pm (UTC)I also remember John Wain when explaining the success of the Corsica book in his "best of Boswell" edition stating that every age has their small nation/state billed as an Utopia - he compares it to Cuba as seen in much of Europe in the 1960s. (Not in the US, obviously, and in Europe this stopped being true once more and more stories got out of just how tyrannical the Castro regime was, but for much of the 1960s, the image was basically "noble freedom fighters kicked out corrupt Mafia US sponsored regime, then squared off against superpower and won, fuck yeah!") And in the 18th century pre- American Revolution the role of evil superpower was played alternatingly by France and the HRE while the noble defiant island Utopia home of freedom fighters was Corsica. (And thus Paoli = 1960s European image of Fidel Castro.)
The other thing I vaguely remember is that Napoleon's father Carlo worked for him but young Napoleon himself and the rest of the B(u)onaparte clan had a massive fallout with him thereafter leading to the Bonapartes being banished from Corsica, and conversely Paoli ending up back in British exile again once the guy who supplanted him as most famous 18th century son of Corsica ended up on top of France. But that's it.
Re: Latest book discoveries
Date: 2021-06-26 06:43 pm (UTC)The bit about Castro was interesting and new to me, though. (As someone who's never studied the 20th century outside of the American school system.)
As you can probably tell by all the Spain - Sweden - Tuscany - Corsica exploration, I'm trying to flesh out my picture of 18th century Europe a bit. So far, Spain and Tuscany have not failed to bring the gossipy sensationalism! (I'm pleased that between the guy who thinks he's a frog and the Ruspanti, not to mention the rest of it, we're still delivering on bonkers stories to