From A UC Berkeley Library “Romance Collections News” Post:
Thirty-two texts of popular French literature from the Bancroft Library’s collection of Bibliothèque Bleue de Troyes have recently been digitized and added to ARTFL’s Bibliothèque Bleue Online. Hosted by the University of Chicago, the openly accessible database of now 284 separate livrets (booklets) comprises a single searchable corpus for a representative portion of the vast publishing enterprise which was started by printer-bookseller Nicolas Oudot in the early 17th century in Troyes and quickly spread across Western Europe and flourished through the middle of the 19th century. While the length of the texts are usually quite brief and the content varies considerably, they were always aimed at popular consumption. ARTFL’s database, powered by PhiloLogic, includes both the searchable text as well as the digital facsimiles of the often badly worn and cheaply produced chapbooks, which were typically covered in bleue (blue) sugar paper wrappers.
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