Margaret Schotte
Jean Deshayes' Library:
A Hydrographer in Early 18th-Century Québec
From the perspective of book historians, New France is often perceived as something of an intellectual backwater, removed from the literary and scientific advances of the metropole. And yet new arrivals carried over a steady supply of books with them from France, and printed materials circulated throughout the community by means of estate sales and bequests. Recent studies of the used book trade in Québec are uncovering local binding practices, and drawing upon notarial records for material evidence regarding the commercial valuation and distribution of books in New France.
The library of Jean Deshayes (d. 1706), royal hydrographer at Quebec, stands out from other personal and institutional collections in the colony. Favouring specialized technical texts over theological or legal ones, and practical vernacular works over those in Latin, this modest collection sheds new light on French navigational education at the turn of the 18th century. A close study of Deshayes?s posthumous inventory?one of the most detailed extant records of a professional library in New France?reveals not only the transatlantic impact of the Académie des Sciences, but illuminates questions surrounding Deshayes the reader, teacher, and author.