Louis Alexis Hocquet de Caritat was a French-born

Champagne, France

Champagne is a historic province in the northeast of France, now best known for the sparkling white wine that bears its name.Formerly ruled by the counts of Champagne, its western edge is about 100 miles east of Paris. The cities of Troyes, Reims, and Épernay are the commercial centers of the area...

 bookseller and publisher in New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He operated a rental library and a reading room located in 1802 at "City-Hotel, Fenelon's Head, Broad-Way

Broadway (New York City)

Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...

." He served as the "authorized distributor of Minerva Press

Minerva Press

Minerva Press was a publishing house, noted for creating a lucrative market in sentimental and Gothic fiction in the late 18th century and early 19th century...

 books'" in the U. States. He stocked imported titles in English and French language, and occasionally non-print items such as "sparkling white champaign wine."

One of Caritat's contemporary admirers wrote in 1803:

"I would place the bust of Caritat among those of the Sosii of Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

, and the Centryphon of Quintillian. He was my only friend at New-York, when the energies of my mind were depressed by the chilling prospect of poverty. His talents, were not meanly cultivated by letters; he could tell a good book from a bad one, which few modern librarians can do. But place aux dames was his maxim, and all the ladies of New-York declared that the library of Mr. Caritat was charming. Its shelves could scarcely sustain the weight of Female Frailty, the Posthumous Daughter, and the Cavern of Woe; they required the aid of the carpenter to support the burden of the Cottage-on-the-Moor, the House of Tynian, and the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne; or they groaned under the multiplied editions of the Devil in Love, More Ghosts, and Rinaldo Rinaldini

Christian August Vulpius

Christian August Vulpius was a German novelist and dramatist. His sister married the noted German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.-Biography:...

. Novels were called for by the young and the old; from the tender virgin of thirteen, whose little heart went pit-a-pat at the approach of a beau; to the experienced matron of three score, who could not read without spectacles."

Further reading

• H Caritat's Literary Room. Morning Chronicle; Date: 06-08-1803
• Caritat, ed. Bibliothèque américaine: contenant des mémoires sur l'agriculture, le commerce, les manufactures, les moeurs et les usages de l'Amérique; l'analyse des ouvrages scientifiques de ce pays, ainsi que de ceux des Européens qui y ont voyagé; et des extraits des journaux publiés en Amérique, sur tout ce qui peut intéresser le commerc̜ant et l'homme d'état; par une sociéte de savans et d'hommes de lettres. Paris, 1807. Google books

Issued by Caritat

• John Davis. The original letters of Ferdinand and Elisabeth. 1798
• Charles Brockden Brown. Wieland; or The transformation. An American tale. NY: printed by T. & J. Swords, for H. Caritat, 1798
• François René Jean, Baron de Pommereul. Campaign of General Buonaparte in Italy, during the fourth and fifth years of the French republic. By a general officer. 1798
• Charles Brockden Brown. Ormond; or The secret witness. New-York: Printed by G. Forman, for H. Caritat, 1799.
• Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Beauties of the Studies of nature: selected from the works of Saint Pierre. New-York: Re-printed for H. Caritat, bookseller, stationer & librarian, by M.L. & W.A. Davis., 1799.
• Johann Georg Zimmermann. Essay on national pride; translated by Samuel H. Wilcocke. New York: Printed by M.L. & W.A. Davis, for H. Caritat, bookseller and librarian, 1799.
• Thomas Morton. Speed the plough: a comedy, in five acts. New-York: re-printed by M.L. & W.A. Davis, for H. Caritat, bookseller, no. 153 Broad-way, 1800.
• M.G. Lewis. The East Indian: a comedy, in five acts. New-York: re-printed by M.L. & W.A. Davis, for H. Caritat, bookseller, no. 153 Broad-Way, 1800.
• Helen Maria Williams. The political and confidential correspondence of Lewis XVI: with observations on each letter. 1803

Catalogs

• The feast of reason and the flow of the soul. A new explanatory catalogue of H. Caritat's general & increasing circulating library. 1799
• Catalogue des livres francais qui se trouvent chez H. Caritat, libraire et bibliothécaire dans Broad-Way, no. 157. 1799

About Caritat

• George Gates Raddin. An early New York library of fiction : with a checklist of the fiction in H. Caritat's circulating library, no. 1 City hotel, Broadway, New York, 1804. New York : Wilson, 1940.
• George Gates Raddin. Hocquet Caritat and the Early New York Literary Scene (Dover, N.J., 1953)
• Leroy Elwood Kimball. "An account of Hocquet Caritat." Colophon, 1934