On Voltaire's Questions sur l’Encyclopédie

“It may seem misleading to speak of a pirated edition in the case of the Questions, because Cramer did not purchase the text from Voltaire and he possessed no legal right to reproduce it. In fact, the consistory of Geneva would censor him for the book’s impieties in March 1772, while Voltaire dismissed the pirating with witticisms such as the following burlesque edict issued from Ferney: ‘It is hereby permitted to any bookseller to print my silliness, be it true or false, at his risk, peril, and profit.’ Yet Voltaire felt morally committed to his publisher and refused to offend him by collaborating openly with the pirates. He even urged Cramer to fight back against them: ‘You won’t be pirated if you take the right measures, and you can put a notice in Volume II that will discredit the pirated editions.’ In fact, Cramer knew very well that his Questions would be pirated. He merely sought to cream off the demand with a first edition by beating the pirates to the market.”

Robert Darnton, “An Enterprise of Solid Gold,” laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/enterprise-solid-gold. Interesting note on early print era piracy by a master in the field of book history. I’ve been writing on religious book making recently, and similar events took place in the reformation era. As Febvre and Martin noted in their The Coming of the Book, Luther’s various translations of books of the Old and New Testament Bible were pirated a number of times before publication.