Western Europe

Overview

Gutenberg's press was working in Mainz in 1454, and the printed book spread from here to the rest of the continent within a generation. French and English became, through colonial empire, the writing languages of authors who never saw Paris or London, as this catalogue shows in almost all its other zones. Belgium and Switzerland write in three and four languages, Ireland chose English after nearly losing Irish, and Luxembourg publishes in a language spoken by some four hundred thousand people.

What circulates

Paris and London translate and distribute for the whole world, and an author from Cairo or Dakar often finds a first international publisher there. That centrality has a reverse side: it decides what becomes readable elsewhere, and many literatures exist outside their own country only after passing through it.

Limits of this grouping

The weight of this zone in this catalogue comes from its publishing and its translation, not from merit: works are more numerous here because they were more printed, preserved and translated. This site's limits page gives the figures for that imbalance.

Works cited

• TaleGrimm's Fairy TalesKinder- und HausmärchenJacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm · 1812Two hundred tales gathered at the beginning of the nineteenth century by two philologists who wanted to give their language a body of stories comparable to that of other languages.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelLes MisérablesVictor Hugo · 1862A former convict builds a new life under another name, and a policeman suspects him.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelOliver TwistCharles Dickens · 1838London, its workhouses and its gangs of child thieves, through the fate of an orphan.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelNauseaLa NauséeJean-Paul Sartre · 1938The diary of a man for whom the most ordinary objects suddenly become unbearable, without his being able to say why.Literature