Hello! I'd love to tackle this one. My studies focus on pre-French Revolution France, through 1794. For my work I study the education system of France, especially focusing on literature! Also I apologize in advance for any double "n"s anywhere. I ate a sweet potato once while typing and wrecked my laptop's keyboard (edit: these should be fixed now).

Caveat that my answer doesn't go through 1818, as I focus on 18th century. However I do not believe it will be too different in this case-- if anything, education became more systematized once Napoleon waltzed on in, so what I'm going to say would likely apply to even more of the population.

So just starting out with your question of was that well-read for upper middle class: no. Even someone who didn't have a traditional education would likely have read FAR more than those 3 books. Among other creatures I would say that the data I have suggests that is far more than typical beasts of burden.

In pre-Revolutionary France, there were two main pathways to education, both of which could be nipped in the bud at any time. They both had a genesis in the petite ecole, or the "little schools," which in English are commonly called primary schools. These were small, local operations that taught reading, writing, and some basic Latin. There were nominal decrees throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to the effect of "Thou must send thy children to the petite ecoles," but as you might imagine enforcement was lackluster, and to those who were living on the margins already there was too much incentive to keep children at home to work.

Talking about the artisan class through the upper middle class, most children would have gone to the petite ecole before filtering off into the two separate branches.

First, there was the option of private tutoring. This meant bringing teachers into your home to teach their specialty. This was an option for both boys and girls; interestinngly for the latter, it was an option to grant a higher education that normally wasn't available for girls. The future revolutionary Mme. Roland was educated by such tutors. Boys also could have private tutors, and this usually was at the caprices of the parents-- though it does seem that most of the SUPER high up nobility had tutors for their children: usually some of the best and brightest men in the realm. Like paying Beyonce to teach your kid to sing.

Second was the "public" school option. There was on "public" school system in France as we think of it today-- that was Napoleon's waltzing in and doing. This was "public" in the sennse that it was free and open to everyone... terms and conditions may apply. While some schools had managed their endowmennts well enough to cover the boys' fees gratis, others made them pay room and board. So while there was a nominal upkeep fee, these still were not institutions à la the Ivy League schools where you have to be rich to attend. These schools were not uniformly run by the state, although after the Jesuit expulsion in 1762 and the subsequent confiscation of Jesuit schools the gov. played a more managerial role over the 100 or so formely Jesuit institutions.

There were two levels of school: collèges annd universities. The collèges are more akin to modern secondary school systems, and the universities were the ones who granted degrees.

OKAY so what does this mean for your question? Well, if you had gone through either of these educational paths, you would have read PROLIFICALLY! A main basis of the curriculums of the time-- including the much-copied Jesuit ratio studiorum-- was reading of Latin texts. Cicero, Horace, Livy, Caesear, Tacitus; the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, of which the Theology curriculums centered around; the works of Aristotle, usually in their original Greek (although this practice fell off in favor of Latin translations towards the end of the 18th c.) The average middle-class education man (and a not insignificant amount of women) would have read dozens of books in school-- and I haven't evenn mentioned the works of the Enlightenment!

Now, there were those who fell outside of this sphere of educated liberals-- those who were a part of the merchant trades, for example. However the evidence shows that in towns such as Bordeaux, these men were purchasinng many MANY books by the time of the Revolution. They were not the same type of book perhaps, but they still read a wide variety, and often overlapped with the intellectual works of the Enlightennmennt.

So Mr. Creature wasn't doing so hot in terms of quantity, but what about QUALITY? I would say he's doing much better in that department.

Now to dispense with the first... first: I have never come across a discussion of Paradise Lost in my French studies thus far. That doesn't mean it wasn't read in France of course, but I haven't seen its translations mentioned in booklists, curriculums, literary society discussions, etc. Doing a little searching, I found that Chauteaubriand did a translation under the Restoration, so it is possible it wasn't widely available in translation durinng the 18th c.

The other two are meatier. The Sorrows of Young Werther was a romance favorite, though apparently the idea of a "suicide wave" in its aftermath was a myth-- or at least hyberbolic. Goethe was a part of a new wave, of which Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the.... beginning of the wave? Okay how about this-- Rousseau was unique, in spanning two great genres: the rational, calculatinng, prosaic Enlightenment, and the feelinng, sentimental, emotional Romantic period. Rousseau was a little of both: his analytic works inspired political ideology, his more personal writings, however, were always the more popular. While he's known for his Social Contract, his best-sellers were the romance novel The New Heloise, and the deeply (I mean deeply) personal Confessions. It was these latter works that, perhaps, gave Rousseau the influence he had on the minds of the Revolutionaries. Young Werther was a spiritual ancestor of Rousseau, whose emotional attachment, and bared feelings would grab the minds of the late 18th c generation. It was definnitely a "must read" of the era. Good on Creature.

Now we get to my favorite part, the "dessert" of the trio if you will: Plutarch's LIVES! Oh wow, was this popular. It pops up everywhere. When you hear the Revolutionaries mention Sparta? Yeah, they're referencing the Lives. Lycurgus? Lives. Romulus? Lives. Mme. Roland says she took Lives to Church with her instead of the Bible. Plutarch was a mainstay of the educational diet of 18th c. men and women. For anyone not familiar, Plutarch's Parallel Lives (written around 100 AD) were sets of biographies that paired up a famous Roman, and a famous Greek, and gave biographies on the two, ending each chapter with a summary comparison. It's fantastic, highly recommend.

Yes, there was a very popular French translation by Dacier, however many would have read it translated in Latin-- that's certainly how it was read in the pre-Revolutionanry collèges. This was THE BOOK you would have read if you were in the educated classes. It's likely, given how widespread and well-sold the translation was, that those not coming up through traditional education read it as well (Mme. Roland certainly did). This is the feather in Creature's cap. He's got a lot of catching up to do elsewhere-- for example, if he wants to talk-the-talk, dude has to have read a lot of Cicero-- but more than anything else a reading of Plutarch will get him on the right path.

So Creature is well behind those who would be considered well read, but he's at least picking the right books. Even those not in the traditional "educated" classes would have read Creature under the table. I would recommend he do what many others did, who didn't have regular access to books (and couldn't afford to buy many) and take out a subscription at one of the lending libraries in bookstores throughout France.

Hope this helped! If anyone is interested more in reading during the pre-Revolution, I answered this super fun question a while back: In Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Belle, a provincial girl, famously loves to read while Gaston, a well regarded male and community leader seems unable. In pre-revolutionary France how often would a woman be more literate than a man of some renown?