ABSTRACT
Although all three newspapers were founded during the seventeenth century, their emergence, development, and existence were marked by highly divergent conditions and parameters.
e Gazette was established in 1631 in Paris and was, from its foundation, a semi-ocial organ of the royal government. Brought into being with the active assistance of Cardinal Richelieu it embarked upon “a career in the service of the monarchy”3 and maintained the monopoly bestowed upon it by the monarchy nearly until the Revolution in 1789.4 It was founded by the royal physician and court historiographer éophraste Renaudot; and in the period from 1672 through 1679 that interests us, was published by François and Eusèbe Renaudot.5 On into the eighteenth century the Gazette remained the property of the Renaudot family who had owned their own print shop since 1643.6 e journal could be purchased in Parisian bookshops or borrowed for reading for a slight fee at a stand at the Pont Neuf.7
