This influential periodical promised in its first issue to chronicle the activities of luminaries in metropolitan Paris, in the French provinces, and abroad, and to offer good literature to lovers of novels and stories. It was published first under the title Mercure Galant by Donneau de Vise. In 1724 the title was changed to Mercure de France, and the periodical was split into a literary and a political section. This collection provides an unprecedented primary source in which the cultural representations of layers of the French elite and academics can be explored over more than one hundred and thirty-five years in which the modern European world was truly born.