Chapter 1 traces the transformation of the art market across the revolutionary era, drawing on recent scholarship to consider how the French Revolution changed the availability of artworks and the cultural meanings attached to their preservation. These processes are observed through the writings of Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain, whose manuscripts and publications documented the demise of the old regime of curiosity he knew in his youth. The introduction argues that the eclipse of corporate institutions and the attack on the privileged orders changed the meaning of collecting by opening the title of amateur to much wider social constituency whilst nonetheless retaining the idea that the correct exercise of taste was even more important in the disorderly new circumstances. The chapter traces the emergence of dealers in art and curiosities across post-revolutionary Paris and argues that the revamped category of the amateur was simultaneously dependent upon but hostile to these new commercial forces.

The changing market for rare books forms the focus of this chapter, looking at the impact of the French Revolution not just on the dispersed libraries of the old regime, but the emergence of new ways of classifying and consuming historic editions. It identifies the expanded market for rare books from the 1790s: both the resourceful dealers who were able to exploit the demand for works by historic printing houses, and the restless bibliophiles who scavenged across the city on the hunt for rare editions. It reconsiders why this period saw the rise of the so-called bibliomaniac, as well as the growth in new ways to classify rare books (via bibliography) and new forms of bibliophile sociability. Touching on key figures such as Charles Nodier, Guilbert de Pixéricourt, Antoine-Augustin Renouard and Arthur-Marie-Henri Boulard, the chapter argues for a mode of book collecting that was self-consciously anachronistic, seeking to celebrate the pre-revolutionary world of elite learning.