La Gazette de Baltimore“: The New Worlds in the Books of Extracts of an Unknown Author

Abstract

The study is based on an unusual literary genre, called ""livres d'extraits"" (books of extracts), books of notes relating to various fields of human activity. The enormous source of approximately 11,000 pages was created at the exile court of the French king Charles X, and the unknown author benefited from an extensive corpus of contemporary press and scholarly literature. He (or perhaps she) was interested in all fields of sciences and technology, nature and travelling, history and geography, philanthropy and medicine etc. Last but not least, he paid attention to both American continents.