Joseph Smith was a passionate book collector, assembling a large and important library over his long life. In the 1730s, together with the young scholar Giovanni Battista Pasquali, he also founded the Pasquali press, which was to produce some of the finest publications in mid-century Venice. The Pasquali bookshop in Campo San Bartolomeo and Smith’s palazzo on the Grand Canal became meeting places for the Venetian literati, where the latest Enlightenment ideas could be discussed, especially in the fields of literature, science, mathematics and architecture.