ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the books sold from stalls in the Palais de Justice in the late 1500s and early 1600s and Parisian households where some of these purchases could be found. It traces the female reader and male professional reading practices many L'Angelier legal titles and new literary offerings such as Montaigne's Essais and Pasquier's Letters available in households of royal officeholders as well as notaries and lawyers. The Parisian bookseller Abel L'Angelier, whose father, uncle, mother, stepfather, half-brother and wife all worked in the book trade within the Palais de Justice, began to distribute steady sellers such as The New Style and Protocol Manual of the Chancellerie of France, Which Follows the Methods and Forms Practised Today from an early point in his career in 1570s in order to supply the cash flow needed to publish new literary works. He continued to sell these types of new and improved' versions of legal and administrative guidebooks into early 1600s.
