In France, the established men of letters (gens de lettres) had fused with the elites (les grands) of French society by the mid-18th century. This led to the creation of an oppositional literary sphere, Grub Street, the domain of a "multitude of versifiers and would-be authors". These men came to London to become authors, only to discover that the literary market simply could not support large numbers of writers, who, in any case, were very poorly remunerated by the publishing-bookselling guilds.

By what century in France had the men of letters fused with the elites?