ABSTRACT

In order to expand the horizons of existing studies on the “Franco-German” axis of culture transfer in the history of nineteenth-century publishing, this chapter highlights the publication of foreign-language editions through several modalities of operation of the book industry (not only German) gravitating around the Leipzig fairs in the period before and immediately after the first binational agreements on copyright. It addresses several aspects of this pan-European trade: genres and formats of culture transfer, ephemerality and performativity of knowledge transfer, and the shifting status of non-hegemonic languages in the trade. The essay ultimately identifies in the campaigns for copyright a structuring force in the rise of cultural nationalisms at the expense of a previous internationalist model of production and dissemination.