TABLE OF CONTENTS
A1. Geographic location
A2. State, administrations and administrative publications
A2.1. King's printers
A2.2. Regional authorities and institutions
A2.3. Cities and local jurisdictions
A2.4. Military institutions
A2.5. Law and custom
A3. The church
A3.1. Dioceses
A3.2. Religious orders and congregations, brotherhoods, seminaries
A3.3. Religious clientele and devotional books
A4. Educational market
A4.1. Schools and education
A4.2. Colleges
A4.3. University of Caen
A5. Academies
A6. Cultural institutions
A6.1. Literary societies
A6.2. Theatre
A6.3. Music
A7. Leisure reading popular literature
A8. Social groups
A8.1. Freemasons
A8.2. Social structure of book owners and buyers
B. The legislative and regulatory framework
B1. Numerus clausus and the Code de la librairie
B2. Certificates for admission as a printer
B3. Local regulations
B3.1. Community of trades
B3.2. Caen chamber syndicale
B4. The system of privileges and permissions
B4.1. Privileges
B4.2. Simple permissions
B4.3. Police permissions
B4.4. Books without permission or privilege
B5. Censorship, approval
B6. Legal deposit
B7. Procedural time limits
B8. Arrangements in the application of legislation
C. Printers and booksellers as a social group
C1. Group structure
C2. Social relations
C2.1. Links with local elites
C2.2. Involvement within the corporation and local institutions
C2.3. Commercial networks and disputes
C2.4. Family relationships and matrimonial alliances
C2.5. Master / worker relations
C2.6. Wealth and taxation levels
D. Printing, the little world of the book
D1. Printers
D1.1. The changing numbers of printers
D1.2. Qualifications and training
D1.3. Capital value
D2. Location of the workshop in urban space
D3. The workshop
D3.1. Location within the house
D3.2. Equipment
D3.2.1. Presses
D3.2.2. Type fonts
D3.2.3. Paper
D3.3. Personnel
D3.4. Work organization: concurrent production
D4. The bookshop
D5. Additional activities
D5.1. Binding
D5.2. Periodical publications
E. Printed output: local and regional
E1. Quantification
E2. Catalogues of booksellers and libraries
E3. Typology
E3.1. Formats
E3.2. Typography and ornamentation
E3.3. Illustration, engravers
E3.4. Music
E3.5. Languages
E3.6. Texts: genres and subjects
E3.6.1. Literature
E3.6.2. Society and politics
E3.6.3. History
E3.6.4. Science
E3.6.5. Medicine
E3.6.6. Industry and trade
E3.6.7. Popular literature, almanacs and chapbooks
E3.7. Periodicals
E4. Edition sizes and prices
E5. A local edition?
E6. Clandestine production
F. Distribution networks
F1. Bookshops and points of sale
F2. Types of points of sale
F2.1 Wholesale booksellers
F2.2. Retail booksellers
F2.3. Additional activities: bookbinding etc
F3. Other trades related to printing
F3.1. Bookbinders
F3.2. Print merchants, card makers
F3.3. Papermakers
F4. Non-specialist merchants
F5. Library sales
F6. Street hawkers and booksellers
F7. Libraries
F8. Broadcast networks
F9. Bibliographic information
F10. Transportation
G. Revolution or evolution?
The publication by Droz in Geneva just before the Covid-19 lockdown of the Dictionnaire des imprimeurs, libraires et gens du livre en Basse-Normandie 1701-1789 by Alain-René Girard, Ian Maxted and Jean-Dominique Mellot comes at the end of an international collaboration extending over a period of some thirty years. The volume was published in the Prosopographie des gens du livre en France series for the period 1701-1789 and is based on the researches of Alain R. Girard, conservateur responsible for the extensive Normandy collection in the Bibliothèque Municipale (now Bibiothèque Alexis de Tocqueville), in Caen. It was a hard blow to historians of the book when Alain died unexpectedly at the age of 50 on July 28, 1996, during his vacation, leaving many bibliographic projects unfinished. In 2007 his widow Geneviève Girard, examining papers in a cupboard in her office, found 538 pre-printed sheets with the heading "Prosopographie des hommes du livre en France XVIIIe-XIXe siècle / Basse-Normandie”, including 185 for the period prior to 1789. The pro forma employed certainly differed slightly from the one that had been used for Lumières du Nord, the first volume in the series, and the volume of the Prosopographie devoted to Paris, but the discovery was greeted with enthusiasm by Frédéric Barbier and Sabine Juratic of the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, who went to Caen to examine this documentation, the fruit of important regional research for a project which aimed to compile a biographical dictionary of the book trades for the whole of France. Among Alain's papers was also a quantity of transcripts, photocopies and extracts from documents from the archives of Paris, Caen and Alençon.
A friend and opposite number of Alain Girard, I had worked for many years as a local studies librarian compiling collective biographies of the book trades in England, especially in London and Devon. It was therefore accepted that I would endeavour to organize and transcribe the files, to integrate the notes taken from the archives and to prepare the whole for publication. Alain had also left notes for a history of the book in Lower Normandy, especially for the period 1700-1850, so this survey, translated from the introduction to the biographical dictionary, is based on the broad lines of this sketch, even if it was not possible to develop all the sections Alain indicated.
Alain’s research spanned the three departments of Calvados, Orne and Manche. The problems of distance and survival of the archives had the effect that all the cities of Lower Normandy could not be covered in the same detail, but it is likely that almost all the master printer-booksellers who were active in the region have been included. As for the journeymen, the booksellers, the bookbinders, the hawkers and all the other categories of "gens du livre", one cannot hope to draw up a definitive list of them. In the introduction and especially in the biographical sketches, I present the full range of our research, which covers a field perhaps more extensive than for previous volumes in the Prosopographie.
As a beginner in the field of French book history, I am pleased to express here my sincere gratitude for the support and encouragement of the many people who assisted me in this project. First Geneviève Girard, who allowed me to take Alain's notes and transcribe them in England. Frédéric Barbier and Sabine Juratic, from the Institut d'histoire moderne et contemporaine (CNRS, Paris), readily welcomed the "upstart" that I am and answered my questions with patience. They also put me in touch with other researchers. Archives and library staff have been willing to share their knowledge. My gratitude extends to Bernard Huchet, successor to Alain Girard at the head of the Fonds norman at the Bibliothèque municipale in Caen who sought out Alain's projects kepy in the library and provided images to illustrate the final publication; to Sylvette Lemagnen, director of the Bibliothèque municipale in Bayeux (now redesignated Les 7 lieux), who directed me towards collections of local imprints not yet fully cataloged; Frédéric Inderwildi, from the University of Neuchâtel, who gave me access to his index of correspondents from the Société typographique de Neuchâtel; to the unknown collaborator whose handwriting is found on many of the prosopographic records relating to Alençon (my investigations in this city could not lead to any identification); to C. Pellegrin, conservateur at the library of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, for her suggestions on the identification of the engravers who worked in Lower Normandy in the 18th century; to the staff of the Calvados departmental archives, also those of Orne and Manche, and the Musée de Normandie in Caen for their assistance.
But above all I take great pleasure in recognizing the splendid contribution of Jean-Dominique Mellot, conservateur général curator at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, who devoted so much time carefully correcting my text and adding many valuavle details, especially on the itinerant booksellers, which he researched so thoroughly. It is in recognition of his contribution that I am proud to be able to associate his name with that of Alain Girard on the title page of the final publication.
Elsewhere on the Exeter working papers in book history website can be found lists of imprints and transcripts of many of the archival documents that formed the background material for this book.
There are undoubtedly many errors or omissions, but I will end this foreword by avoiding the traditional formulas of humility and by preferring to them the more provocative and more robust declaration of the editor of the Sanctuary of a troubled soul by Sir John Hayward (1607) on the errors remaining in his text: "I must [...] profess that they are: first I know not where, second I think not many, third I care not what."
Ian Maxted, locked down in Exeter, June 2020
This page last updated 26 June 2020.
