Archives of Sexuality and Gender: L'Enfer de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France

CONTENT Gale's new addition to the Archives and Sexuality of Gender introduces the “Hell” segment of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, an infamous private collection of “forbidden books” established in the 1830s and kept under lock, accessible only to the director-general, to preserve the moral values of the time. L’Enfer consists of more than 2,400 works, preserved due to their unique status as banned books. The collection includes literary works, manuscripts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs with erotic and illicit themes (e.g., the Flagellation Collection). Books in the collection date from the 1530s through the 2010s. Most of the titles were published in French, and there’s a smattering of works in English, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish. Due to its unique nature, L’Enfer is considered one of the most sought-after private cases (or segregated collections) for the study of sexuality and censorship. The archive includes a detailed history of L’Enfer, its roots and continued growth, ties to the rise of erotic literature in France, and the use of L’Enfer as a classification, as well as the difficulty of accessing this restricted collection (even for research), and L’Enfer’s closure in 1969 (it reopened in 1983). Given the nature of the contents, the introduction is also available in French.

USABILITY Like the other collections in the Archives of Sexuality and Gender, L’Enfer features options for basic and advanced searching, as well as the option to view all documents in the collection (currently, 2340 monographs). Results can be filtered by several facets, including collection, subcollection, source library, document type, etc. The topic finder helps users find additional topics and sources relevant to their search, while a term frequency tool serves as a visual resource for further exploration and keyword analysis. When previewing results, the record lists the document’s title, author, publisher, year of publication, page count, archive, collection, and the title’s L’Enfer number. Alongside the record is a thumbnail of the title’s cover and a button that opens a keyword preview window, which highlights instances of the chosen keyword(s) in text. The items in the collection are presented as high-quality, text-searchable scans with plain-text transcripts. Users have the option to search within a title, allow keyword variations, and view term hits via a list of linked results in the item. Titles also include a table of contents and list of illustrated works (where relevant), as well as options for sharing, saving, printing, and citing.

PRICING Pricing starts at $6,923 for the collection, with a hosting fee that starts at $64 annually. Public library pricing is based on population served and starts at $4,830 for the collection, with a hosting fee that starts at $44 annually. Academic library pricing is based on an institution’s full-time enrollment and other institutional variables. Subscriptions are available upon request. Institutions holding two or more Gale Primary Source collections receive complimentary access to the Gale Primary Sources cross-search platform which allows users to discover connections between other archival collections published by Gale. Request a free trial at https://bit.ly/3PReOPI.

VERDICT As Gale’s introduction notes, the works in L’Enfer are often considered taboo, but a digital archive makes it easy for researchers to access these hard-to-find materials without the perceived stigma of a title request. The documents in the collection are perfect for research on sexuality and gender, cultural studies, literature, French cultural history, and more. Note that most of the sources are in French, which might make this archive harder to use for non-Francophone researchers