Lair
Constantin Lair typifies the quasi-legal dealers in small towns and at the margins of the book trade. Selling books was but one of several activities—teaching school, taking in boarders, cultivating a vineyard—that he cobbled together in order to maintain a position in the bourgeoisie of Blois. His relations with the STN indicate the demand for literature among the local notables, and they are especially revealing about the precarious finances of small-scale bookselling.