SOURCE: Barbier, Frédéric. “The Publishing Industry and Printed Output in Nineteenth-Century France.” In Books and Society in History, edited by Kenneth Carpenter, pp. 199-230. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1983.

[In the following essay, Barbier explains the growth and evolution of the publishing industry in nineteenth-century France, focusing on changes in marketing and demographics.]

In recent years, French as well as foreign scholars¹ have cast light on the profound changes in the economics of publishing that occurred in the nineteenth century. Nearly four centuries after the Gutenberg revolution, there took place what can be called the “second revolution of the book.” It was characterized, first of all, by an enormous jump in the bulk of printed output, in which the periodical press played an ever increasing role. Simultaneously, production and distribution were radically altered. Yet, despite this transformation, which is at the basis of the publishing industry as we know it today, only a few monographs have dealt with the subject. Indeed, one must concede, a synthesis is to a large extent beyond the present state of our knowledge.²

The goal of this chapter is to gather into a coherent picture all the information we possess on the evolution of printed output in nineteenth-century France³ and to show how it was affected by the economic and social changes of the Industrial Revolution. We will conclude by looking more closely into two particular aspects of this evolution—namely, the appearance on stage of a newcomer, the publisher, and the transformation of marketing techniques and structures.

SOCIAL UNDERPINNINGS: FRENCH SOCIETY AND THE PRINTED BOOK, 1811-1914

Historians have coined the expression “blocked society”⁴ to characterize the economic and social history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. A traditional demography, an economy still largely rooted in auto-consumption, archaic financial structures—these were all regulating factors that prevented for the most part major change in social and economic structures. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and first of all in England, the eighteenth century witnessed indexes of changes to come, particularly in the economic realm. From 1780 to 1820 the effects of these changes⁵ were strong enough for the society as a whole to be progressively affected, and expansion replaced blocked economic and social structures. For the first four centuries of its existence the book trade in France fit perfectly within this larger economic and social pattern. Our first goal, then, is to outline the major changes in both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French society, which more or less directly influenced the book market.

First and foremost, demographic growth opened a new potential market for the book trade. The French population increased from 27,350,000 in 1801 to 34,230,000 in 1841 and to 37,672,000 in 1881. It is important to note, however, that in spite of this increase, France lost its place as the most populous European country⁶ and that the rate of increase was progressively declining. This may be one of the reasons why the Industrial Revolution affected relatively slowly the printing industry in France. The rate of population growth was 18 percent between 1750 and 1800 and 24 percent between 1800 and 1850, as opposed to 50 percent and 92 percent, respectively, in the British Isles.

Yet a twofold phenomenon, already begun under the ancien régime, accentuated the effects of population increase in France. First was the development and acceleration of urbanization in general. The percentage of the rural population decreased from 75 percent in 1850 to 69 percent in 1870 and to 56 percent in 1910. Reading, which by definition is an urban phenomenon, was promoted by an increase in urban population from around 6 million in 1821 to 14 million in 1881. Second—and this is an essential factor in the formation of the French publishing industry as we know it today—“of the large cities … Paris increased the most.”⁷ The annexation of the small crown (1860), plus immigration from the provinces, increased the Parisian population from 945,000 in 1856 to 2.3 million in 1886. From the Second Empire on, the population of the suburban districts (Seine, Paris excluded, and Seine-et-Oise) also tended to increase at a rate unheard of until then. These factors, which compounded the ancien régime tradition in which significant publishing was centralized,⁸ favored the growth of printed output, but also caused the geographical disequilibrium that to this day characterizes the book-related professions and activities in France.⁹ Although the short- and medium-term effects of these changes were positive, the long-term results may prove ultimately to be negative.

Aside from demographic growth and urbanization, other factors contributed to the gradual formation of a more important, nationwide market for French publications. First and foremost among these were increased education and, at its most elementary level, the spread of literacy.¹⁰ Chronologically, it is justifiable to distinguish between the part of France north of the “Maggiolo line,”¹¹ which for the most part was literate by the eighteenth century, and a “backward” France, which attained literacy only in the nineteenth century. From this point of view, the second half of the century was not only a period of catching up for the backward regions but also the realization in practice of the drive to universal literacy called for by the principle of equality. “The closing of the gap between north and south, between men and women, was not only the result of a normal compensatory process to be expected over time; it was characterized by an accelerated trend toward literacy in many of the backward departments at the end of the eighteenth century.”¹² During the period 1880-1890, literacy reached the whole of French society, and for the first time access, or rather the possibility of access, to the written word became a mass phenomenon. Schooling completed this development at a higher level. According to the available statistics, the number of pupils increased from 1,120,000 in 1820 to 2,900,000 in 1840. Following the promulgation of the Falloux law of 1850, which encouraged the growth of Catholic education, and the decree of 1852, the number of pupils reached progressively 4,300,000 in 1863 and 4,700,000 in 1877, despite the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. With the law of 28 March 1882, which established compulsory education, the 5 million mark was reached; the percentage rate of enrollment in school rose from 47.5 percent in 1850 to 93.5 percent of the school-age population in 1894.¹³

The traditional economy of the book and periodical was now faced with a new public with new demands. The quantitative growth of the potential reading public was accompanied and compounded by other changes as well (some of these will be passed over rapidly, for even though they were instrumental in the formation of a national book market, they were not specifically French in nature): the extension of roads, the appearance and development of the railroad system (17,000 kilometers in 1870), and luggage and postal services, as well as the possibility of quick payments through money orders.

New needs for communication arose in nineteenth-century industrial society that explain the development of the media as characterized by MacLuhan.¹⁴ Among these, printing was to play an essential role, as exemplified by a change in attitude toward the book by an ever-increasing segment of the population. Without question the 1789 revolution was a decisive element in the new debate concerning the role of literacy and the printed medium, as has been shown by François Furet and Jacques Ozouf: “On 4 November 1790, the Feuille villageoise which campaigned against ignorance in the countryside asked: ‘Why were the rights of man known so late?’ The answer was: ‘Because the people could not read, they could not learn for themselves, and in consequence, let themselves be indoctrinated by others.’ Schooling came to represent par excellence the unlimited power of society over the individual.”¹⁵ One should add that schooling and, beyond that, access to the printed word as the vehicle of all knowledge, were concepts well in keeping with the philosophy of the Enlightenment.

In addition to the pedagogical push of the revolutionary period, economic factors also stimulated educational efforts. The new bourgeois, industrial society needed workers capable of reading and writing (even though the correlation between literacy and industrialization is highly debatable).¹⁶ Throughout the country an increasingly rapid and regular network of communications—whether of persons, goods, information, or ideas—progressively developed. As “there is no room for illiterate workers in modern industry,”¹⁷ chances for upward mobility, or even of belonging to the social structure, were foreclosed for those who had no access to books or periodicals.

The foregoing briefly outlines the elements that explain and underlie this “second revolution of the book” in nineteenth-century France. From then on, the printed word became one of the primary objects of mass consumption. We will attempt in the following to outline the principal functions fulfilled by the French printing industry.

Possibly the most traditional but also the most important of all markets was that for religious works. The typology of religious books can be divided into three main categories. The first, comprising prayer books, Bibles, missals, and choir books, was a sure source of revenue for many provincial printers. (Although the output was massive, the demand could nevertheless be met by traditional printing establishments, and distribution was practically guaranteed.) The efforts of the major printing firms of the First Empire to obtain the privilège for Cantiques within a given diocese are well documented.¹⁸

Stimulated by the work of German historians and philologists, the resurgence of biblical studies between 1863 and 1881 accelerated the publication of translations of the Bible. There was, of course, a direct link between this renewal of interest and the publication of La vie de Jésus by Renan, itself influenced by the work of the German school of exegesis.

The second category of religious publications, works of popular devotion, was even more significant economically. A multitude of small religious texts and, above all, moralizing anecdotes were distributed by peddlers throughout rural areas. Some printing and publishing firms specialized in the massive production of such works, which had both relatively low production costs and virtually guaranteed distribution. The firms of Martial Ardant in Limoges, Mame in Tours, Popelin in Dijon, Vanackère in Lille, and Berger-Levrault in Strasbourg were established along the routes of the peddlers they supplied, from the Haute Garonne throughout France.¹⁹

To these publications, which were produced in massive quantities, can be added religious prints, pious images, “Mementos of my First Communion,” and the like. All were put out for the most part by local printers, but occasionally bore the trademark of specialized firms. The production of the Pellerin firm in Epinal is well known, but as peddling opened a wider market to this kind of imagery, the lithographic firm of Wentzel of Wissembourg was also able to establish itself as a prime producer for this market.²⁰

The works of popular devotion were aimed at two segments of the public at once, the pious and children. This is shown by the proliferation of “bibliothèques”: Bibliothèque religieuse, morale, littéraire from Ardant, Bibliothèque morale de la jeunesse from Mégard (Rouen), Bibliothèque chrétíenne de l'adolescence et du jeune âge, Bibliothèque pieuse des catholiques, and Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne from Mame—to name a few. The extraordinary success of this type of publication is reflected in the bibliography of its most famous author, Canon Johann Schmid. It records no fewer than 2,666 works published up to 1890.²¹ Even though modernized, the religious book remained, as it had been in the seventeenth century, the traditional output of the provinces²² and, along with almanacs, the most widely distributed of all works.²³

The intensity of religious feelings and of religious controversy is evident in the third category. The first best-sellers of modern French publishing were in fact religious polemical works. Eugène Renduel, who opened his establishment in 1828 on the quai des Grands Augustins, had his first major success with Soirées Walter Scott by the bibliophile Jacob; then came a triumph in 1834, with Paroles d'un croyant by Félicité de Lamennais. Renduel put out four editions in-8° and two in 18° within the same year. Three additional editions were published by Daubrée & Cailleux in 1835, and there were a good twenty more by the end of the Second Empire from various publishers, among them Michel Lévy and Garnier frères. As early as 1834, Aillaud in Paris and Gottlob Louis Schüler in Strasbourg published two German translations, while English, Spanish, and Polish versions appeared simultaneously.²⁴ Renduel's success—100,000 copies sold in the first year—enabled him to launch himself in the literary field, a phenomenon we will examine later on. The success of Paroles d'un croyant, in which Sainte-Beuve played a role, marked the beginning of the era of mass production made possible by stereotyping.

The second such success, also in the religious domain, followed basically the same pattern. In 1863, Michel Lévy frères published Book I of L'Histoire des origines du christianisme, La vie de Jésus by Renan. It was an immediate and overwhelming success. The text was reprinted ten times in 1863 and three times in 1864. The same year, Michel Lévy frères also published an abridged edition, which was reprinted fourteen times in 1864 and continued to be published on a regular basis until 1898. Again, in 1870, the publisher attempted to stimulate the market with a quarto edition illustrated with sixty drawings. La vie de Jésus was the single largest publishing success in nineteenth-century France. Within the first four years alone, 1.4 million copies were sold; in its German version, the work was also widely distributed from 1864 onward.²⁵

The other mass market of the nineteenth-century French publishing industry was for children's books. Many of the major Parisian and provincial publishing firms owed their initial success to children's books. The most prestigious of them all was Louis Hachette, who took over the publishing house Brédif in August 1826 and started out with schoolbooks. From 1832 onward, and in association with the old firm of F. G. Levrault,²⁶ Hachette published the Manuel général, ou Journal de l'instruction primaire. After passage of the law of 18 January 1833, Hachette received most of his orders from the Ministère de l'instruction publique, even before taking over, in 1835, the Bibliothèque de l'enseignement primaire from the firm of P. Dupont.²⁷ In 1838, Victor Masson, an ex-clerk at Hachette, established his own publishing house, specializing in medicine and education. Following the same pattern, Armand Colin launched his firm by publishing the Grammaire of Larive and Fleury²⁸ in 1870. New means of advertising—in particular, distribution of examination copies to educators—allowed for a circulation of several million over a few years. The passage of the school laws introduced by Jules Ferry (1882) was directly responsible for the success of Fernand Nathan, who within a few years became one of the leading Parisian publishers. Soon he combined publishing, per se, with the manufacture of educational materials.

Textbooks, however, were only one among various types of educational works aimed at both adults and children. In the encyclopedic tradition of the eighteenth century, a quantity of dictionaries and collections, both specialized and general (such as the Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles from Levrault²⁹ and L'Encyclopédie des gens du monde from Treuttel and Würtz), were put on the market. In some cases, educators themselves played a direct role in the compilation of such works. Louis Hachette was an alumnus of the École normale. Pierre Larousse and Augustin Boyer, who were to establish the Librairie Larousse in 1852, were former educators; they began with educational and pedagogical treatises before launching, in 1865, the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXème siècle (completed in 1876). Finally, parallel to Hachette, the bookseller-publisher Mame exploited the field of religious education and Catholic pedagogy, which we have already touched on.³⁰ The statistical figures at our disposal are scant but nonetheless reflect the massive proportions of the educational market. Educational works, which accounted for 80 titles in 1811,³¹ increased to 275 in 1836 and reached 1,000 in 1890.³² Linked to this phenomenon was the appearance on the market of “recreational” and gift books, the success of which has already been mentioned in connection with the small “bibliothèques” put out by publishers of religious works.

In nineteenth-century bourgeois society, the view of the child was fundamentally altered, and as a result, from 1810 onward the possibilities in the children's book market seemed unlimited.³³ Actually, the movement was begun as early as 1782 by the publication of L'Ami des enfants by Arnaud Berquin, soon followed by L'Ami de l'adolescence in 1785. These were republished throughout the nineteenth century by Didier, Garnier frères, and above all by Ardant and Thibaut, who alone brought out twenty-three printings of L'Ami des enfants between 1875 and 1895.³⁴ Women authors made their mark early in this field. Many of Madame Pauline Guizot's tales, and some of her stories “à l'usage de la jeunesse,” were published in the collections of the Librairie Didier, the Bibliothèque universelle d'éducation and the Bibliothèque des enfants.³⁵ A renewal of the genre took place during the decade from 1850 to 1860. In 1858, the countess of Ségur³⁶ published in the Bibliothèque des chemins de fer Les petites filles modèles, which went through no fewer than twenty successive editions before 1900.³⁷ Then, with Les malheurs de Sophie in 1859 and Les deux nigauds, L'Auberge de l'ange gardien and Le général Dourakine in 1863, the Bibliothèque rose was launched. Publishing children's books became a well-established field (70,000 copies of Les mémoires d'un âne were distributed by 1874), and some publishing firms built most of their success on specialization in this sector. In 1862, Hetzel,³⁸ in collaboration with Jean Mace, started the Magasin d'éducation et de récréation and created the Collection Jules Verne, which, at the time of the takeover of Hetzel by Hachette in 1924, became the Bibliothèque verte.

The third and last mass market that we would like to mention here can be called the “literary trade.” This sector of publishing was most affected by fads and fashions and had as its center Paris, which alone had a reading public capable of turning a literary venture into a best-seller. From the dawn of the century Paris was the scene of many speculative publishing ventures, as shown by the archives of printers, booksellers, and publishers. Most of these deals were struck in the shops of the quai Malaquais and around the Palais Royal. Balzac left us an invaluable description³⁹ of this “little world” and its practices, and some of its financial operations have been studied by modern historians.⁴⁰ The model of a successful literary venture was still a traditional one. With the occasional help of an advertising campaign (we will deal with this aspect later on), the publisher ran several parallel editions of 1,000 or 2,000 copies each, the bulk of which was distributed to the literary clubs.⁴¹ The greatest commercial successes were Corinne by Madame de Staël and the Méditations of Chateaubriand. Both published by Nicolle in 1820, they had sales of 20,000 copies each within three years. Concurrently, the “complete works” format proved very successful and was an excellent source of regular income for publishers, since the editions were sold by subscription.

The concept of a classical literature, which it was deemed useful and above all in good taste to own, lay behind the new editions of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, as well as the launching by Lefèvre in 1824 of his new Classiques français collection. A key figure in this feverish speculation was Ladvocat, the publisher of the “jeune littérature,” who did not hesitate to pay as much as 300,000 francs to buy up the rights to the Oeuvres of Chateaubriand and who published Casimir Delavigne, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, and Sainte-Beuve, among others. Fashion, financial tightrope walking, and the need constantly to provide novelties to the literary clubs steadily raised the price of manuscripts of the Romantics. In 1830, Mame paid 6,000 francs for the first edition of Hernani⁴² and barely broke even. In 1832, Victor Hugo received 15,000 francs from Gosselin and Renduel as an advance on Quinquengrogne, a work that was never completed. The widely used practice of borrowing money put the publisher at the mercy of even small delays in return of income. Thus, Ladvocat went bankrupt in 1832.⁴³

The progressive reestablishment of the market was due initially to an aesthetic renewal that brought on the glorious era of illustrated works, with Tony Johannot, Gigout, and others as central figures; above all, however, the “Charpentier revolution” (1838) spurred the growth of the literary trade market. Gervais Charpentier, a former clerk of Ladvocat, strove for “more type to the page.” His aim was to sell the first printing at cost and to realize a profit on the following printings by using stereotype. The Collection Charpentier, which started out with the publication of La physiologie du goût and La physiologie du mariage, sold for 3.50 francs per volume and had an unprecedented success. Competition soon arose. Established in 1836, Michel Lévy launched the Bibliothèque dramatique, followed by the Bibliothèque Michel Lévy and the Bibliothèque verte. In the latter, he republished Madame Bovary and also acquired Baudelaire's literary rights upon the author's death.

The Second Empire (1852-1870) witnessed a twofold development. First, as a direct consequence of literacy and of the greater ease and regularity with which distribution could be carried out, the periodical press made considerable advances. Polydore Millaud's Petit journal, which started in 1863 at a price of 5 centimes, sold 259,000 copies in 1865.⁴⁴ Part of its success came from serialization, a practice first used in 1836 by La presse and Le siècle and quickly adopted by the major periodicals. Concurrently with this boost in circulation for periodicals and with the popular success it brought to some authors, there was a break with literature per se. A popular literature, recognized as such, appeared. The “thunderbolt” of Les Misérables in 1857,⁴⁵ a genuine literary success, was the last of its kind. During the 1860s, it was Eugène Sue, Paul Faval, and Ponson du Terrail who dominated the literary scene. Their works, sold in parts at 10 centimes each, ensured the success of their publisher, Dentu.

The constant competition between the periodical press and the printed book, which reached its peak under the Third Republic (1875-1914), caused a ceaseless search for novelty, in a pattern similar to the one at the beginning of the century. In 1874, Calmann-Lévy published 1,724,000 volumes, while at the same time works in parts proliferated. In this context, the crisis of 1892 can be seen as one of genuine overproduction. The market was no longer capable of expansion, for literacy had been achieved and the economy had been restructured. The last decade of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of a recession for the French publishing industry.

The chief conclusion to be drawn from this brief outline is that the nineteenth century was the point of transition between the traditional civilization of the book and the post-Gutenbergian civilization described and analyzed by MacLuhan. Within a general context of growth, it was a period of collision. New tendencies, marked by the development of a mass reading public, met and battled traditional structures. Statistical analysis will help us refine this image.

STATISTICS OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH PUBLISHING

To go beyond this somewhat qualitative description, we rely on the use of trustworthy statistical data to draw a more definitive picture. Although bibliographical lists do exist in the copyright deposit registers and in the archives of the Bibliothèque nationale,⁴⁶ no series of statistics have been drawn up from them, aside from a few limited attempts.⁴⁷ As fundamental as these sources are, they have to be put aside in favor of others that are more selective, such as the following retrospective bibliographies: La France littéraire by Joseph Marie Quérard,⁴⁸ which records about two-thirds of the production between 1811 and 1838, and the Catalogue général de la librairie française,⁴⁹ the primary source for statistics on the second half of the century.⁵⁰ The Bibliographie de la France, published from 1811, was used by Robert Estivals in a first attempt to assess the printed output of nineteenth-century France.⁵¹ The shortcomings and inaccuracies of these various publications, which had already been pointed out by contemporaries,⁵² are such that it is not always possible to draw from them overall statistics concerning printed production, much less a number of series of statistics tracing the evolution of different types of books. The following will present some of the statistical information at our disposal.⁵³

The only complete statistical series is that provided by the Bibliographie de la France from 1811 onward. Before turning to it, one should remember that “as far as publishing is concerned, the eighteenth century as a whole, and in particular the period from 1745 to 1775, was a time of expansion and even of great change.”⁵⁴ The curve for the years 1810 to 1914 calls for two kinds of remarks (Figs. 1 and 2). First, in long-range terms, the nineteenth century was really the “century of growth,” with 4,881 titles advertised in 1820, 11,882 in 1860, and 13,362 in 1900. An analysis of average movement shows that growth was rapid from 1810 to 1830, then slowed down until 1848-1850. From that point onward, the graphic depiction of growth shows a large bell-shaped curve that peaks around 1890 and reaches its low point after World War I. That decline had begun at the end of the nineteenth century and was compounded by the two world wars; French book production in 1939 barely rivaled that of the Second Empire, and the highest level of output, 14,849 titles in 1889, was not reached again until recently. Second, in the short run, the curve shows a succession of crises, which indicates how closely tied the fate of the publishing industry was to general conditions, whether economic or political. Apart from the expected crises of 1830, 1848, and 1870-1871, the curve reflects the index of economic activity of industrial France:⁵⁵ There are two periods of expansion, under the Restoration and the Second Empire, and two relatively difficult periods, under the July Monarchy and the Third Republic. In the latter case, the decline in book production reflected the progressive erosion of the climate of affluence.

Overall, the series thus obtained seems consistent with the other statistical series at our disposal. From 1770 to 1880-1890, the movement fits within phase A of a Sémiand cycle, whereas the correlation of our results with population data shows a linear ratio of about 62 percent (the ratio is markedly better with the exclusive use of urban population data, as opposed to data for the population as a whole). The series is also consistent with the export statistics of the French book trade, as established for the years 1815 through 1913, relative to a base index of 100 for 1913 (Fig. 3). It is also compatible with partial departmental statistics, such as those for the Bas-Rhin, whose printed output has been established for the years 1841 to 1869⁵⁶ (Fig. 4). Thus, even though it remains impossible to establish annual figures of production in absolute terms, it seems that the range and the general picture of the curve obtained from the Bibliographie de la France are in fact representative of the actual situation.

To complete these remarks, let us review the results, partial as they are, of the other documentary series mentioned above. For the second half of the nineteenth century, the Catalogue by Lorenz, Jordell, and Stein, even though less exhaustive, allows for a “much more precise [analysis] and a faster, more accurate tabulation than the disorderly presentation of the Bibliographie de la France.”⁵⁷ This analysis enabled Christophe Charle to trace the main literary trends and to show a succession of cycles between 1840 and 1905. A period of growth, compounded by literary speculation that extended grosso modo from 1840 to 1890, was followed by a leveling-out period lasting a decade, followed in turn by a surge in the number of titles at the beginning of the twentieth century. This last increase is, in fact, the only element that jars with our results and can be explained probably by the fact that Charle's statistics are weighted toward literary works. Since these reflect the aggressive publishing policies of firms such as Fayard, more weight is given to re-editions and translations at the beginning of the twentieth century.

From a statistical point of view, Charle's tabulations allow us to follow the evolution of production in various literary genres during the second half of the nineteenth century; the figures are consistent with results obtained elsewhere. A quick overview reveals “the first characteristics of this evolution [as being] the rapid growth of the novel, which became the main genre, whereas under the July Monarchy, as far as the bulk of production is concerned, poetry and plays were predominant.”⁵⁸ The number of novels published increased from some 300 in 1877 to about 750 in 1895, despite the fact that the overproduction mentioned previously had resulted in a drastic drop in overall output to the level of twenty years before. Publishers attempted to alleviate this structural crisis by traditional means, such as the “disastrous discount-price war,” or by methods that bordered on swindling, such as putting new wrappers on old editions. Publishing output in poetry and especially drama was less sensitive to the general economic situation, but reflected it nevertheless.

The end of the Second Empire witnessed profound changes in reading habits. As mentioned by J. J. Darmon, the homogenization of the book market brought about the decline and then the disappearance of book peddling.⁵⁹ “The rural readers who could afford it, replaced the Bibliothèque bleue with new works distributed by the railroad, a phenomenon which accounted for the wide distribution of the novel. Others, less well-off, switched to the one sou press, which served as the literary support for the serialized novel.”⁶⁰

Statistical figures published on the occasion of the 1900 World Fair reflect the considerable growth of the provincial press. From 1868 to 1889, the number of nonperiodical publications decreased by 29 percent in Paris, but remained constant in the provinces. During the same period, the number of registered periodicals multiplied 2.5 times in Paris, and 12 times in the provinces. These figures, though not entirely definitive, do reflect the general trend. Circulation increased in the same proportions; for example, Le Matin, which sold 75,000 copies in 1889, reached 1 million copies in 1914, a year in which the combined circulation of 41 Parisian political dailies was 6 million copies.⁶¹

The following table shows both the stagnation of the Parisian trade in level of output of nonperiodical, copyrighted titles and the marked increase in the number of periodical titles. The pattern of evolution was similar, although more pronounced, in the departments. These figures enable us to estimate at about 40 percent the number of small editions and job printings, which do not show up in the Bibliographie de la France but which are taken into account in the statistics of the copyright deposit register.⁶²

We shall complete this overview with a geographical survey of publishing and printing in nineteenth-century France. The French geography of the book differed radically, for example, from that of Germany during the same period because of the polarization between the capital, to which could be joined the main provincial centers, and the rest of France. The majority of printing firms were established in Paris, which alone had the market capable of creating and sustaining new structures of production such as “book factories” employing several hundred workers (Fig. 5). These, of course, differed radically in their organization from the traditional printing shops of the ancien régime.⁶³ Only a handful of provincial printing firms, such as Berger-Levrault in Nancy,⁶⁴ and above all, Mame in Tours, could be compared with the new Parisian establishments⁶⁵ (Fig. 6). The fact that the number of printing firms in the capital was officially limited to sixty must also have accelerated the process of concentration and modernization.

However, various samplings taken from the copyright deposit list reveal the darker side to the concentration of publishers in Paris. The crisis of the French publishing industry at the close of the nineteenth century was above all a Parisian crisis, with a drop in titles from 11,092 in 1845 to 10,009 in 1855, followed by 9,951 in 1865, 10,396 in 1875, 7,404 in 1885, and 4,618 in 1905. Provincial production, which was more directly tied to regional or local needs, was less affected by economic crises and fluctuations. In fact, it seems to have benefited from the process of expansion and integration that characterized the national market during the second half of the century.

PUBLISHING OUTPUT IN PARIS AND THE DEPARTMENTS, 1869 AND 1889

(INDEX BASE: 1869 = 100)

paris	1869	Index	1889	Index
Nonperiodicals	9,937	100	7,248	73
Periodicals	852	100	2,243	263
departments
Nonperiodicals	15,708	100	15,863	101
Periodicals	3,894	100	43,215	1,100

This is reflected in the tendency toward the multiplication of titles by provincial presses, even though circulation remained relatively low.

To a lesser degree, the same polarization can be observed among the departments themselves: in 1885, 16 departments (18.6 percent) yielded 7,292 titles (58.1 percent, Paris excluded); at the other end of the spectrum, 25 departments (29 percent) yielded only 702 titles (5.6 percent). Geographically, the dividing line is once again a variant of the “Maggiolo line” oriented on the axis Le Havre-Lyon. This disparity is attributable in part to the establishment of a number of large printing firms outside the capital, either in the provinces (as in the case of Mame) or in the communities surrounding Paris. These locations presented a threefold advantage: proximity to the largest of French markets, financial benefits (exemption from city taxation), and better control over the work force.⁶⁶ Between 1860 and 1914, the departments of Seine (Paris excluded), Seine-et-Oise, and Seine-et-Marne participated increasingly in the printed production in France, whereas the capital became the center of new “tertiary” activities revolving around the book trade. Paris was the favored location for the main offices of the great publishing firms and the first specialized distributors. The following section will be devoted to these various phenomena.

DEMANDS AND STRATEGIES: PUBLISHING AND DISTRIBUTION

The major changes in the economics of publishing in nineteenth-century France could not but cause significant modifications in the structures of production and distribution. We will not cover the problems of manufacture per se, the evolution of printing establishments and the technologies having already been the subject of detailed studies.⁶⁷ Instead, we will begin with the publisher.

The profession of publisher in France developed from a set of new economic conditions and problems peculiar to the nineteenth century. Until the revolutionary period and the Restoration, a privileged few controlled the book market within a given area. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century a few individuals, motivated by their speculative temperament, developed to the fullest the possibilities of publishing. Their success stemmed primarily from their monopoly of the ideology of the time. If we compare the success of Plantin with that of Petit, Cramoisy, or Panckoucke,⁶⁸ we see that it was not so much the means they used that varied, as it was their political leanings. The dates of the establishment of the great publishing firms under the Restoration and the Third Republic are a clear indication of a departure from the past: Dalloz (1824), Hachette (1826), Garnier (1833), Belin (1834), the Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence (1836), Calmann-Lévy (1836), Masson (1837), Privat (1839), Klincksieck (1842), Delmas (1848), Beauchesne (1851), Larousse (1852), Fayard (1855), Dunod (1858), Delagrave, Gauthier-Villars and Lethielleux (1864), Picard, Armand Colin and Tallandier (1870)—to mention only the firms that still exist today. On the other hand, after 1870, the establishment of new firms almost came to a stop, a sign of the quasisaturation of the market and a presage of the crisis to come twenty years later.

Initially, most of these new firms were launched with school or university publications. This link between the publishing world and the school system, or more broadly the educational system, constituted a new type of privilege for the trade and was, above all, a new way of supporting the political power of the time. The control of a given market (or as we would say today, the occupation of a particular “slot”) allowed for wide distribution at very low risk, a sufficient but necessary condition for the formation of new structures of production that affected both the manufacturing stage, with its twofold process of mechanization and integration, and the distribution stage. This principle was well understood by those provincial firms that based their development on specialization in a certain type of work, which in turn became their trademark in the public eye. Such was the case of F. G. Levrault, who for a while was the publisher of the Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles, authored by most of the professors at the Museum of Natural History in Paris before becoming, thanks to the Annuaire militaire, the foremost military publisher. Similarly, Mame was the foremost publisher of Catholic devotional works, and Hetzel specialized in children's books; some firms even specialized in a given distribution slot, as did Treuttel and Wurtz, the first importers of German books into France.

From the example of these firms, we can see that the problem for them was renewal in the face of change. In contrast to Charles Joseph Panckoucke,⁶⁹ the last great publisher of the ancien régime, a Louis Hachette was perfectly able to handle this challenge. As mentioned before, Hachette started his publishing firm in 1826. He took full advantage of the shift in political rule in 1830, and benefited from the passing of the law on elementary education in 1833. While specializing in textbooks, for which he obtained a quasi-exclusive privilege from the government, he also managed to launch the Revue de l'instruction publique, the Manuel général de l'instruction primaire, L'Ami de l'enfance, and others.⁷⁰ Once this basis was well established, he was able in 1852 to expand his activities in the direction of literary publications. Here the risks were greater, but the children's book market played a backup role. The concession, granted by the Compagnie des Chemins de fer du Nord, for the sale of publications in all the major stations of the system, and the launching of the Bibliothèque des chemins de fer ensured him a good start. Several years later, in collaboration with Charles Lahure, Louis Hachette started the Journal pour tous, which published illustrated novels at a circulation rate of 150,000 copies, followed by the Semaine des enfants in 1857.

Chronologically speaking, Hachette's third orientation was the publication of dictionaries, which soon became a major branch. This field had already ensured the fortune of his competitor, Larousse. As early as 1841, Louis Hachette had started the publication of the Dictionnaire de la langue française by E. Littré. He went on to publish the series of Dictionnaires universels, the Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie, the Dictionnaire universel des contemporains by Vapereau, the Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques by A. Franck, the Dictionnaire du commerce by Joanne, and others.⁷¹ Already at this time, the range of activities of the firm dictated the formation of a new type of organizational structure, one that is still in use in publishing firms. Beside the traditional departments, such as accounting and secretarial (which handled general correspondence, registration, and mailing of orders), new “departments” sprang up, such as the classics department, which was headed by René Vaubourdolle from 1924, and the general literature department.

Hachette's fourth orientation, dating back to the very end of the nineteenth century, completed in a logical fashion the structure of the firm. In 1897, he purchased the establishments of Périnet and Faivre and branched out into the new field of distribution. A rapid chronology of this new venture is as follows: When the Messageries Hachette were incorporated in 1918, the firm started to distribute for other publishing firms, notably Gallimard, from 1932 onward. On the foreign front, Hachette bought up in 1927 the shares of the Agence de librairie et de publication, which formed the nucleus of the new foreign department. The final and logical steps of this progressive buildup of the firm were the purchases in 1920 of the printing firm of Brodart and Gallois and in 1923 of the bindery firm of Joseph Taupin.

The sequence of this extraordinary success is clear. Every two or three decades, Hachette renewed itself by diversifying, and on each occasion monopolized to a large extent what proved to be a major field of the economy of the book. One can easily imagine how difficult it must have been to coordinate existing publishing activities with the task of opening a new market, particularly in the field of general literature. New legal structures⁷² and technological developments permitted total control of the market for the distribution of a given work and brought about a new economy of publishing during the Second Empire. Two elements played a fundamental role here: first, the elimination of piracies, in particular Belgian ones, and second, a new policy regarding pressruns, which we will discuss shortly.⁷³

David Bellos's study on the size of printings, based on statements of the printers themselves in the first half of the century, reflects the traditional character of the printing trade at the time.⁷⁴

In the course of the nineteenth century, very few works were issued in large numbers, on a regular basis. … Best sellers and some works in constant demand were stereotyped. This method, known since the end of the eighteenth century, was widely used during the Restoration for the reimpression of classical authors. From 1830 on, stereotyping permitted frequent reimpression, in small numbers, of works with a guaranteed distribution.⁷⁵

The common practice, in Paris as well as in the provinces (Strasbourg in particular), was to run off a succession of small printings of no more than 1,000 or 2,000 copies each. Around 1860, the major publishers began to adopt another strategy that amounted to speculation on hypothetical best-sellers, whose sales would counterbalance the failures or financial shortcomings of other titles. Public opinion, and consequently advertising, became all the more important, while scandal itself was made to play its role. Michel Lévy launched his “Bibliothèque” with Madame Bovary, which had been turned down by Jacotet, and the 1857 trial of Flaubert's novel ensured the book's success. Lévy was to use the same strategy for Les fleurs du mal and La vie de Jésus. Since that period, successful literary publishing ventures called increasingly for large investments, both to withstand losses until best-sellers were found and to finance the serialized popular collections that stimulated the market. Thus, in 1878, Flammarion published Michelet, Hugo, and Zola at 0.10 francs an issue. Thematic collections multiplied, while Pêcheurs d'Islande (1886) went through 440 printings within a few years, and Zola's novels were regularly issued in printings of 100,000 and sometimes 180,000 copies. Fields as yet undeveloped stimulated the creation of new firms, which were of lesser importance, no doubt, but all the better rooted for being more specialized. The Librairie Champion is an interesting example of such a new firm.⁷⁶ These examples of speculation and the new publishing enterprises suggest, then, that the 1890 crisis was caused by overproduction in an already saturated market.

The new policy concerning edition sizes reached its logical conclusion in the practices of one of the main figures of the nineteenth-century French publishing world, Arthème Fayard. His father, originally from the Puy-de-Dôme, had opened a bookstore in Paris in 1857. Arthème followed in his father's steps in 1894, and launched his own collection, the Modern bibliothèque, in 1904. Texts of Maurice Barrès, Marcel Prévost, Paul Bourget, and many others were published in illustrated volumes that sold for 19 sous (95 centimes) and were regularly issued in runs of tens of thousands of copies. The immediate success of the first collection allowed Fayard to launch a second, Le Livre populaire, as early as 1905. In this collection, following the publication of Chaste et flétrie by Charles Mérouvel, he republished the best-sellers among the serialized novels⁷⁷ and sold a 700-page volume for 65 centimes. In the same vein, Fayard launched in 1913 the Meilleurs livres, a collection of classics priced at 0.10 francs per volume, and the Maîtres du roman populaire in 1914. Important as this phenomenon is for the history of publishing, it is equally so for literature. The widely circulated “popular novel,” so dear to Fayard, received official recognition as a genre of its own with large printing runs. Yet publishers such as Gallimard competed against this new genre by publishing a “better brand of literature.” In the aftermath of the World War I, Flammarion, the publisher of Jules Romains and Maurice Dekobra, issued 600,000 copies of Victor Marguerite's La Garçonne.⁷⁸ Thus, the “Arthème Fayard revolution” carried to its logical end an evolution initiated in the first half of the century.

Since the structures of distribution were necessarily linked to production, they were in their turn profoundly altered by new publishing policies. For example, advertising traditionally took three forms. One was the publication of catalogs, which were issued either periodically (hence the wealth of catalog collections at the Bibliothèque nationale),⁷⁹ or on the occasion of major events such as book fairs, whose catalogs form the basis of German bibliographical statistics. Similarly, the catalogs of some nineteenth-century firms were, in essence, current bibliographies of a specialized nature for that period. Such was the case for the Treuttel and Würtz catalogs of English and German works. Another traditional advertising element that was used to promote a particularly significant work was the prospectus. A small advertising tract, composed either by the author or, more likely, by a writer paid by the publisher, the prospectus recounted the general theme of the work and occasionally provided an outline; mainly, it specified the conditions of sale.⁸⁰ The third element, dating from the birth of professional book-trade periodicals, was the announcement of newly published titles, in particular in the Bibliographie de la France, and advertisements that recorded parts of the publisher's backlist. In addition, publishers sometimes distributed free copies of new publications to selected periodicals in the hope of getting reviews.

Overall, such advertising practices were aimed almost exclusively at professionals in the-book trade. The exchange of catalogs and complimentary copies and the granting of commissions, whether reciprocal or not, were among the methods of a system perfectly adapted to the distribution of a few hundred or possibly a few thousand copies of a book among relatively small, geographically isolated, yet very well-defined groups. At its very best, this system could achieve distribution throughout Europe, as happened in the case of Panckoucke's 1817 edition of Victoires et conquêtes … des français de 1792 à 1815, which was distributed by means of a commission system in about one hundred French and foreign cities simultaneously.⁸¹ Although such cases were rare exceptions, the example shows clearly how the success of an important edition was linked directly to the publisher's ability to secure exclusive rights to a given market through deals with his colleagues.⁸²

With the advent of mass publication, which began with the “Charpentier revolution,” the process was progressively reversed. The triumph of cheap popular editions and of the periodical press was accompanied by an actual reversal of advertising practices. Advertising was no longer geared to members of the book trade, but rather the general public. An advertising innovation, the poster, appeared at the end of the reign of Louis XVI and achieved unprecedented success under the Restoration. In Balzac's terms,

the poster, the new and original creation of the famous Ladvocat, flourished for the first time on walls. In no time at all, Paris was full of the colorful imitations of this new form of advertisement. … To escape the tyranny of the journalists, Dauriat and Ladvocat were the first to invent the poster, and they caught the fancy of Parisians with their use of decorative types, bizarre colors, vignettes and later on lithographs; they turned the poster into a visual poem.⁸³

As an immediate reaction to the appearance of the poster, announcements in journals became more refined; they began to vary in their choice of typeface and layout and then became illustrated in their own right. “In 1824, the Bibliographie de la France reverted to its weekly format, and the new typographical makeup of its two to four-page feuilleton, with no continuous pagination, was modified. Varied use of type of different size and body, eye-catching presentations, and blurbs transformed it from a mere notice of publication into a genuine advertisement. This major change was completed by 1834.”⁸⁴ The last phase of this evolution, which, as David Bellos has pointed out, attests to the formation of a general reading public, was characterized by the appearance of distinctive wrappers that became the symbol of a firm and of its publications. Yellow covers were the mark of the Bibliothèque contemporaine of Calmann-Lévy, which published the fourth edition of La vie littéraire by Anatole France as early as 1889; the novels of Hector Malot were published in the Collection Charpentier, which later became Fasquelle's; and, at the turn of the century, the works of Edmond About were published by Hachette and printed on the presses of Paul Brodard in Coulommiers. A great deal of Fayard's success can be attributed to the distinctive appearance of his collection, which was displayed repeatedly in all the booksellers' windows.⁸⁵

In addition to innovations in advertising, the organization of book distribution changed profoundly. As mentioned earlier, the traditional channels of distribution were twofold: book peddling in the rural areas and the bookstores in the cities.⁸⁶ The work of J. J. Darmon, supplemented in some cases by specialized monographs, shows that the nineteenth century as a whole, and in particular the period from 1820 to 1870, was the great era of book peddling.⁸⁷ Peddling actually enabled certain publishers, such as Wentzel, to launch and develop their firms to levels never before attained. Another well-known example is the Alsatian printer Le Roux of Strasbourg, who published 50,000 copies of Le grand messager boîteux in 1832 and another 100,000 copies in 1863. This particular work was issued “in a square octavo, illustrated with woodcuts and sold through peddling” in an almost entirely regional setting.⁸⁸ The book-peddling practice declined, however, as the remote and isolated regions increasingly came within reach of a national distribution network whose efficiency permitted the punctual distribution of periodicals even in rural areas. In itself quite significant, the progressive elimination of book peddling in the years after the fall of the empire coincided with the rapid expansion of the provincial press and the peak period of railroad development, which under the “Freycinet plan” called for the addition of 3,000 kilometers of local lines to complement the main system.

For this period, Claude Savart has drawn up statistics from various directories and statements that portray accurately the general evolution of bookstores between 1841 and 1901.⁸⁹ The fundamental issue confronting bookstores was raised in an article published in Le Siècle in 1869 and entitled, “Has the abolition of the licensing system, which prohibited sale outside of the cities, promoted a movement of decentralization in the points of sale?” Such decentralization was, in effect, one of the benefits the partisans of “freedom” expected from the 1870 amendment.⁹⁰ Overall, the results of that legislation are clear: The number of booksellers increased along a curve consistent with the rise in printed output, with a marked acceleration under the Second Empire that culminated in the decade of liberalization from 1870 to 1880. That period was followed in turn by a deceleration in growth until the end of the century, a time when even the number of booksellers started to decrease. A geographical analysis (Fig. 7) reveals the permanence of the traditional structures, with the “Maggiolo line” once again as demarcation. The only significant evolution in bookselling took place at the very end of the century, which saw an acceleration in the number of booksellers in the departments of the southeast. Bookselling remained an urban phenomenon; and, what is more, in most large cities studied, the increase in the number of booksellers did not follow the curve of demographic growth. It is paradoxical that in a period that is rightly considered the height of printed production, the system of distribution seems to have disintegrated, due to the disappearance of peddlers and the mediocrity of the network of booksellers.

Countering this twofold phenomenon, however, were newly formed channels and networks of distribution. In 1816, a first step was taken in a new direction when the bookseller-publisher Lefèvre sent his chief clerk, Hautecoeur, on rounds to the main provincial booksellers to obtain orders for his new publications. The appearance of this newcomer, the traveling salesman, clearly indicated the trend toward the formation of a national market for all major publications. It also marked the very beginning of specialized networks of distribution other than bookshops. The first such network dates back to 1839, the year in which Louis Hachette and Firmin Didot struck a deal to establish in the provinces an exclusive system of correspondents and booksellers to whom alone they would send their new publications. In practice, this first network was completed with the establishment of railroad station bookshops, the contract for which was given to Napoléon Chaix, one of the founders of the aforementioned Messageries Hachette. It is noteworthy that, besides such independent and well-structured systems, which were soon backed up by a “sale or return” policy,⁹¹ an important part of the market, in particular the international sector, was dominated by commission firms that sprang up as early as the July Monarchy.⁹² Very little, however, is known about the relative importance of these various networks, and we are restricted for the most part to a qualitative description of the major trends of the century. The 1890s witnessed the official organization of the profession and the appearance of regulations. (The French national booksellers' association was created in 1891, and the first minimum-price list, an attempt to cope with a problem still very predominant today, dates back to 1892.)

Although the evolution of printed production in nineteenth-century France, in terms of structures of publication and distribution, seems particularly complex and sometimes contradictory, the century as a whole witnessed a twofold movement. First, the earlier period, which ended with the Second Empire, was a phase of expansion characterized by the entry of the general public into the age of the printed word. The book became the most important sociocultural means through which the cohesion of the new industrial society was ensured, particularly in terms of ideology. The second phase, though less uniform in appearance, consisted of a series of conflicting tendencies between 1870 and 1914. With the liberalization of the book professions and the law of 1881, the height of institutionalization was reached, but this was seemingly more a consequence of the preceding era than the result of tendencies specific to the end of the nineteenth century. Another quite important phenomenon, in our opinion, was the polarization of the reading audience that resulted from the new development, in distinct opposition to each other, of a “genuine” and a “popular” literature. Of the two, the latter was, of course, more important for both the printers and the publishers of the industrial age. Never before had such circulation figures been reached on a regular basis. Yet the “popular” market also presented certain risks, for its public was the more volatile of the two. Finally, the formation of a nationwide market, and above all the development of the periodical press, led to intense competition. For a while, growth was maintained through speculative means, no doubt artificial in nature; nonetheless, book production reached its peak around the years 1880-1890. Threatened by competition from other media in a market that saw no demographic growth and little economic growth in comparison with those in other European countries,⁹³ the French book industry began to decline at the end of the nineteenth century, on both the national and the international front.⁹⁴ The year 1880, the peak of the civilization of the printed book, also marked the end of the “Gutenberg galaxy” in France.

Notes

1. Noteworthy are the works of Robert Escarpit (see the bibliography in L'Écrit et la communication, Paris, 1973) and Marshall MacLuhan, La galaxie Gutenberg (Montréal, 1967).

2. Most of the work has been carried out under the auspices of the École nationale des chartes, Paris: F. Barbier, Nouvelles recherches sur l'imprimerie strasbourgeoise (Paris, 1976); B. Vouillot, Imprimeurs et libraires parisiens du Premier Empire (Paris, 1979), etc. We also have available a number of studies of particular firms, such as Mame, Hetzel, Hachette, Fayard, and others.

3. We will not here go into the periodical press, which has been the subject of exhaustive studies, notably Histoire générale de la presse française (Paris, 1969-1976).

4. E. Le Roy Ladurie's inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, “L'Histoire immobile,” Annales; économies, sociétés, civilisations 29 (1974): 673-692.

5. Two works are essential for this period and provide a very complete bibliography: E. Labrousse et al., Histoire économique et sociale de la France, Vols. 2 and 3 (Paris, 1970-1976); and P. Léon, Histoire économique et sociale du monde. Vol. 3: Inerties et révolutions, 1730-1840 (Paris, 1978).

6. On these points, see the bibliographies in the works cited in note 5.

7. Labrousse, Vol. 2, p. 231.

8. J. Cain, R. Escarpit, and H.-J. Martin, Le livre français, hier, aujourd'hui et demain (Paris, 1972).

9. Only a small number of French publishers now have headquarters in the provinces, the main one being Privat in Toulouse. My own research on Strasbourg has shown that it was impossible for a provincial publisher to attain national importance in the nineteenth century without at least opening an “établissement” in Paris.

10. The bibliography is given in F. Furet and J. Ozouf, Lire et écrire: L'alphabétisation des Français, de Calvin à Jules Ferry (Paris, 1977).

11. M. Fleury and P. Valmary, “Les progrès de l'instruction élémentaire, de Louis XIV à Napoléon III,” Population 12 (1957): 71-92; F. Furet and W. Sachs, “La croissance de l'alphabétisation en France,” Annales; économies, sociétés, civilisations 29 (1974): 714-737. An overview is given by F. Furet and J. Ozouf, “Trois siècles de métissage culturel,” Annales; économies, sociétés, civilisations 32 (1977): 488ff.

12. Furet and Ozouf, Lire et écrire, Vol. 1, p. 57.

13. A. Frost, Histoire de l'enseignement en France, 1800-1967 (Paris, 1977).

14. MacLuhan, op. cit.

15. Furet and Ozouf, Lire et écrire, Vol. 1, p. 97.

16. Ibid., pp. 245ff.

17. R. Oberlé, “Etude sur l'analphabétisme à Mulhouse au siècle de l'industrialisation,” Bulletin du Musée historique de Mulhouse 67 (1959): 99-110.

18. F. Barbier, Trois cents ans de librairie et d'imprimerie, Berger-Levrault, 1676-1830 (Geneva, 1979).

19. J. J. Darmon, Le colportage de librairie en France sous le Second Empire (Paris, 1972).

20. The bibliography is given in my communication to the Congrès des sociétés savantes, Caen, 1980, “Le colportage bas-rhinois sous le Second Empire.” In press.

21. According to Bibliothèque nationale, Catalogue général des livres imprimés.

22. Livre et société dans la France du XVIIIème siècle, 2 vols. (Paris and La Haye, 1965-1970).

23. G. Bollème, La Bibliothèque bleue: Littérature populaire en France du XVIIIème au XIXème siècle (Paris, 1971).

24. English edition (Paris, Belin, 1834); Spanish (Marseille, Barile and Boulouch, 1834; and Paris, Rosa, 1834); Polish (Paris, Pinard, 1834).

25. Ten editions, ranging from a “Billigste Volks-Ausgabe” to a “Pracht Ausgabe,” came out in 1863 and 1864, and Kayser's Vollständiges Bücher-Lexikon records 23 impressions of those editions during those two years.

26. On this firm, see Barbier, op. cit.

27. The printer Paul Dupont published a number of pieces on the products that he displayed at the different world exhibitions, as well as a remarkable Histoire de l'imprimerie, 2 vols. (Paris, 1854). His enterprise is particularly well known, thanks to the Notice historique (Paris, 1849) and his own Une imprimerie en 1867 (Paris, 1867).

28. La première année de grammaire … was published in 1871, and 201 successive editions came out up to 1917. The Seconde année and Troisième année were likewise published by Armand Colin: 78 editions of the Seconde année appeared up to 1893, 74 editions of the Troisième année up to 1925. Along parallel lines, A. Colin published in the same collection the “Livres du maître.”

29. On this problem, see Barbier, op. cit., pp. 325-329.

30. The great printer-publisher in this field is Mame of Tours. For an account of this firm, see A^d Mame et cie: Imprimerie, librairie, relivre (Tours, 1862).

31. It should be noted that these figures are only for works announced in the Bibliographie de la France. The actual number of titles published was larger.

32. Note 31 applies here as well; it does seem, though, that the curve itself is representative of the actual situation.

33. We do not have for the nineteenth century a work comparable to Philippe Ariès' L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime (Paris, 1960). A quick survey of French printed literature for children has, however, been made by Odile Limousin, Recherches documentaires pour une histoire de la littérature de jeunesse française. See certain chapters of this thesis in Bibliographie de la France (1971), no. 40, pp. 593ff. (Chronique).

34. Arnaud Berquin, poet from the Gironde, was a celebrated writer for children. He also helped to edit the Feuille villageoise and Moniteur at the start of the Revolution. For a checklist of his works, see Dictionnaire des lettres française, XVIIIème siècle (Paris, 1960), Vol. 1, pp. 182-183.

35. Pauline de Meulan (1773-1827) married Guizot in 1812. She devoted herself to a literary career at the beginning of the Revolution and participated in editing the Publiciste of Suard.

36. Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, XVIIIème siècle (Paris, 1960), Vol. 2, p. 391.

37. Thanks to the kindness of Henri-Jean Martin, figures are available on the number of copies printed of Malheurs de Sophie from 1864 to 1900:

    Year	Number
    1864	5,516	1876	—	1888	11,000
    1865	—	1877	11,000	1889	—
    1866	5,511	1878	—	1890	11,000
    1867	—	1879	11,000	1891	—
    1868	5,488	1880	—	1892	11,000
    1869	5,515	1881	13,200	1893	—
    1870	5,977	1882	—	1894	—
    1871	—	1883	11,000	1895	—
    1872	5,500	1884	11,000	1896	11,000
    1873	12,000	1885	—	1897	—
    1874	—	1886	2,200	1898	11,000
    1875	11,000	1887	11,000	1899	16,500
    				1900	—

    This table permits three observations about the policy of a large publishing firm in the second half of the nineteenth century: (1) Overall policy had been modified little and remained based on a succession of reprintings; (2) there are two periods of rupture, in 1872-1873 and 1898-1906 (a year in which the pressrun exceeded 22,000 copies); and (3) the crisis at the end of the century is clear—the number of copies published declined from 70,400 in the decade 1881-1890 to 49,500 in the decade 1891-1900.

38. On Hetzel, see Magasin d'éducation et de récréation, supplement to No. 511 of 15 June 1886; A. Parmenie and C. Bonnier, Histoire d'un éditeur et de ses auteurs (Paris, 1953); and De Balzac à Jules Verne: Un grand éditeur du XIXème siècle, P. J. Hetzel, (Paris, 1966), which is the catalog of an exhibition.

39. An article by Françoise Parent, which is in preparation, (Annales; économies, sociétés, civilisations, 1979, p. 1037, note 16), is a study of the area around the Palais-Royal. See also the notes in B. Vouillot, L'Imprimerie et la librairie à Paris sous le Consulat et l'Empire, Ecole des chartes dissertation, 1979.

40. F. Barbier, “Quelques documents inédits sur l'abbé Delille,” in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 189 (1980): 211-228.

41. F. Parent, “Les cabinets de lecture dans Paris; partiques culturelles et espace social sour la Restauration,” Annales; économies, sociétés, civilisations (1979): 1016-1038.

42. Victor Hugo, Hernani, ou l'honneur castillan, drame … (Paris, Mame and Delaunay-Vallée, 1838).

43. Ladvocat served as the model of the Romantic publisher depicted by Balzac in Illusions perdues.

44. Histoire générale de la presse française (Paris, 1969), Vol. 2, pp. 327-329.

45. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (Paris, Pagnerre, 1862), 10 vols. in 5. The verso of the half titles bear the address: Bruxelles, chez A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et cie.

46. On these problems, see the remarks of David Bellos at the colloquium held at Oxford in 1977 on the theme of “Publishing and the Book Market in France and England in the Nineteenth Century,” published as “Le marché du livre à l'époque romantique, recherches et problèmes,” Revue française d'histoire du livre, no. 20 (1978): 647-660.

47. Ibid., p. 649.

48. One of the rare studies on French printed output written at the beginning of the twentieth century was by E. Morel in “Le livre français et la production mondiale,” Mercure de France, 16 November 1912, pp. 760-774.

49. O. Lorenz, Catalogue général de la librairie française (Paris, 1867-).

50. See C. Charle, La crise littéraire à l'époque du naturalisme: Roman, théâtre, politique (Paris, 1979).

51. Estivals' statistics come from the table that appeared on the occasion of the centennial of the Bibliographie de la France in 1911, Vol. 100, 2nd series, no. 46 (17 November, 1911): 230-231.

52. G. Picot, “Le Dépôt légal et nos collections nationales,” Revue des deux mondes, 1883, 3ème livr., pp. 622ff.

53. For some countries, considerably more information is available. In particular, Germany has the classic work of J. Goldfriedrich and F. Kapp, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1886-1913); and the more recent study of I. Rarisch, Industrialisierung und Literatur: Buchproduktion, Verlagswesen und Buchhandel in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1976).

54. H.-J. Martin, “La librairie française en 1777-1778,” Dix-huitième siècle 2 (1979), pp. 87ff.

55. On this problem, see Labrousse et al., op. cit.

56. F. Barbier, “Le monde du livre à Strasbourg, de la fin de l'ancien régime à la chute de l'Alsace française” (Paris, 1980), unpublished thesis. See also F. Barbier, “Le commerce international de la librairie française au XIX^e siecle (1815-1913),” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 27 (1981): 96-117.

57. Charle, op. cit.

58. Ibid.

59. Darmon, op. cit.

60. Charle, op. cit.

61. Histoire générale de la presse française, Vol. 2 (Paris, 1969).

62. My own research on the copyright deposit for ten-year intervals confirms this proportion, as does the general tendency of the curve obtained from the Bibliographie de la France.

63. Some studies have been carried out on this subject, based on concrete cases. They were reported on the occasion of a colloquium organized by the Institut d'étude du livre in Paris in 1979-1980 on the theme of “Espaces du livre.” Analyses were given of traditional space of production based on the example of the Société typographique de Neuchâtel and industrial space of production on the basis of a factory constructed by Berger-Levrault in Nancy in 1878. See also F. Barbier “Les ouvriers du livre et la révolution industrielle en France au XIX^e siècle,” Revue du Nord, forthcoming.

64. Ibid.

65. We have important information on a number of these firms: Berger-Levrault, Mame, the printing shop of Paul Dupont and l'Imprimerie nationale in Paris and Casterman in Tournai.

66. A. N., F. 18/2371.

67. M. Audin, Histoire de l'imprimerie: Radioscopie d'une ère, de Gutenberg à l'informatique (Paris, 1972).

68. P. Renouard, “Quelques documents sur les Petit, libraires parisiens et leur famille,” Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile de France 23 (1896): 133-153; H.-J. Martin, “Un grand éditeur parisien au XVIIème siècle, Sébastien Cramoisy,” Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1957): 179-188; S. Tucoo-Chala, Charles-Joseph Panckoucke et la librairie française, 1736-1798 (Pau and Paris, 1977).

69. Tucoo-Chala, op. cit.

70. J. Mistler, La Librairie Hachette de 1826 à nos jours (Paris, 1972).

71. Ibid. See also A. Rey, Encyclopédies et dictionnaires (Paris, 1982).

72. F. Barbier, “Le commerce international de la librairie française au XIXème siècle,” op. cit.

73. F. Barbier, “Chiffres de tirage et devis d'édition: la politique d'une imprimerie librairie au début du XIXème siècle,” Bulletin d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, no. 11 (Paris, 1978): 141-156.

74. Bellos, op. cit.

75. The case of the abbé Jacques Delille is an example of this preindustrial policy on the size of editions. The ample documentation provided by the archive of Berger-Levrault shows that this publishing model was dominant throughout the nineteenth century, so much so that the “industrial” model was quite marginal for most French printers of this period.

76. J. Monfrin, Honoré Champion et sa librairie, 1874-1978 (Paris, 1978).

77. I owe thanks to Henri-Jean Martin for his kindness in supplying information from the very rich dossier of documents concerning the Librairie Fayard.

78. Some documentation concerning these editions (statistics concerning pressruns and sales) are now in the archive of Flammarion.

79. 8° Q 10 A and Q 10 B.

80. Some examples, notably a prospectus for Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles, are treated in Barbier, Trois cents ans de librairie et d'imprimerie. For the beginning of the nineteenth century, see also B. Vouillot, “Imprimeurs et libraires parisiens,” op. cit.

81. Victoires et conquetes … des français de 1792 à 1815, 27 vols. (Paris, 1817) by General Beauvais, V. Parisot et al. Volume 1 includes the names of booksellers who agreed to take subscriptions, and the prospectus, according to which one paid 6.50 francs in advance, and for each successive volume upon receipt of the preceding.

82. Here, again, the example of Delille is highly informative.

83. Illusions perdues, pp. 173 and 313 of the edition of the Librairie générale française.

84. Bibliographie de la France, 150th anniversary number (1961), p. xvi.

85. Literary prizes provided another means of promotion, and the principal ones came into being precisely during this period.

86. Booksellers of this period recognized that there was a difference between an urban public, which could support a professional book trade, and a dispersed rural public, which one could hope to reach only by itinerant peddlars. One might be able to draw a parallel between the latter and the system of bookmobiles used today.

87. See notes 19 and 20.

88. Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin (Strasbourg), Vol. 18.

89. Claude Savart, “La liberté de la librairie (10 septembre 1870) et l'évolution du réseau des libraires,” Revue française d'histoire du livre, no. 22 (1979): 91ff.

90. Ibid.

91. This practice was basically very simple. The publisher addressed directly “d'office” new publications to a certain number of booksellers and credited their account. At the end of a certain period, the booksellers had to return unsold books, and the accounts were then balanced.

92. In the case of Strasbourg, which we have studied, the phenomenon was particularly clear, for Eschenauer and Co., a commission house, occupied the first rank in the international book trade of that city in the nineteenth century.

93. See Léon, op. cit.

94. This is demonstrated by a progressive reversal in the direction of the French book trade's imports and exports. At the end of the nineteenth century, the export surplus is in large measure a result of the growing French-speaking colonial empire.