Adamantios Korais’s ‘The Greek Library’ (1805–1827): An Ingenious Publisher and the Making of a Nation

Abstract

The Greek Library, a successful twenty-year long publishing venture based in Paris and addressed to a Greek readership within and beyond the Ottoman Empire, is the first ever series in the history of the Greek book. This simple (but still unacknowledged) fact may be enough to make it an interesting topic of inquiry — especially because it does not come from the strong languages of the printing industry. The Greek example may indeed — as it is hoped — shed some light from the margins on the transformations and the potential of a thriving printing culture in early nineteenth-century Europe. The very existence of such a series in this pre-independence Greek context is a clear indication of the dynamism of a peripheral, small, in quantitative terms, and poorly organised book market. It may also offer intriguing evidence about the possibilities of this still novel publishing strategy in the European print industry, i.e. the production of books in themed series packaged and marketed as distinct recognisable groups. The elementary question that this chapter attempts to answer is ‘why a Greek series in the early nineteenth century?’