Grub Street and Suicide: A View from the Literary Press in Late Eighteenth-Century France

This article investigates the manner in which the French press of the late eighteenth century treated the suicides of Grub Street writers. The main argument is that the secularisation of suicide allowed for new attitudes toward self-inflicted death. One finds that the underground press callously mocked the suicides of hack writers. Secondarily, the article challenges the notion that suicide became 'medicalised' in the eighteenth century, and that contemporaries viewed it solely as an act of insanity.