The Establishment of Periodicals | 47for instance, where they had a monopoly position as newspaper publishers.
In France, where the semi-official Gazette largely enjoyed a monopoly posi-
tion, the dependent state of editors is striking: they were either related to the
family of the privileged newspaper publisher Renaudot, came from aristocratic
or ecclesiastical circles, or were intellectuals such as poets or historians who
received state pensions.
Newspapers already had a fairly wide-ranging readership in the seven-
teenth century. Academics, government officials and the upper classes were
their primary target groups, but tradesmen, craftsmen, soldiers and women
were also part of their audience. The annual subscription for a Hamburg news-
paper would cost a craftsman from Cologne about 2 per cent of his annual
income, which was a handsome sum but still affordable (Würgler 2009: 39).
Since newspapers were read out in inns, shops and other public places, in the
cities at least, even illiterate people could get information as listeners (Winkler
1998: 811). The wives of wealthy men were not the only women with access
to newspapers. Printed news was equally available to women who kept inns
or pubs, coffee house staff, housemaids and female newspaper sellers, to name
a few. Even if these women were unable to read, it was easier for them to
discover something about the content of the paper with the help of literates
with whom they came into contact. Yet the disparity between East and West is
undeniable: while readerships were drawn from a wide range of society in the
United States, England, and the Netherlands, the Russian audience consisted
mainly of aristocrats and a few wealthy merchants (Plambeck 1982: 51). Even
in absolutist France, it is estimated that half of all readers belonged to the aris-
tocracy while the remainder came chiefly from wealthy backgrounds (Censer,
in Barker and Burrows 2002: 161).
Numbers and circulation were quite low at first. It is estimated that in the
late seventeenth century the average circulation figure in the German terri-
tories ranged between three and four hundred copies, which meant that the
total of all newspapers amounted to around twenty or twenty-five thousand
copies. Newspapers such as the French Gazette or the English London Gazette
of the 1680s, which were issued in restrictive absolutist countries, quickly
attained a high circulation of more than one thousand copies. Nevertheless,
the available number of newspaper copies remained low, even if one takes into
account those which were imported from abroad. According to recent esti-
mates there were at least thirty readers per newspaper per country, adding up
to a very respectable weekly readership in Western Europe (Bellingradt 2011;
as many as forty readers are suggested by Winkler 1998: 810). Papers were not
only passed on within households, to neighbours or inns; institutions such
as universities, schools, public offices and monasteries also had subscriptions.
Courts and city councils usually received complimentary copies. Collective
subscription quickly became common as well. The earliest newspaper-reading