On July 5, 1778, the Swiss Jean-François Favarger, a sales representative of the Typographical Society of Neuchâtel, mounted a horse and set off on a five-month journey across France, visiting almost every bookstore along the way and compiling unique dossiers on booksellers. The story of his journey could have formed the plot of a picaresque novel, but it ended up in the hands of the American scientist Robert Darnton - and formed the basis of a large study on the formation of the book market in France in the 18th century. Using Favarger's trip as a plot outline, Darnton tells in detail how the book business functioned in practice, how literary texts reached French readers, and how the semi-legal trade in reprinted or censored books took place in the pre-revolutionary years. The author pays special attention to the motley variety of people who inhabited this world of books: censors, printers, booksellers of all stripes (from metropolitan guild members to traveling booksellers), owners of small shops, illegal private entrepreneurs, etc. All of them played an extremely significant role in the dissemination books, but the history of literature completely forgot about them, and they all sank into oblivion without a trace. One of the objectives of this book, according to the author, is to restore historical justice and bring them back to life. Robert Darnton is professor emeritus at Princeton University, professor and director of the Harvard University Library, specialist in the history of 18th-century France, author of the books “Mesmerism and the end of the Enlightenment", "Poetry and the police. Communication network in Paris in the 18th century”, “The Great Cat Massacre and other episodes from the history of French culture”, “Censors at work. How the state shapes literature.”