Two recent books from Droz offer insights into the French publishing world of the sixteenth century. Just over a hundred books published in Paris between 1535 and the first decade or so of the seventeenth century reflected the literary activity of Italians living in France and French writers with an aptitude for Italian letters and bilingual editions: in short, an intersection of two cultures during a period when Italians found a foothold in France, particularly in the environs of the royal court. Professor Balsamo contributes a thoughtful essay analyzing the context for these currents. His succinct introductory discussion will be of interest to historians as well as literary scholars with a particular curiosity about Italian influence on French culture under the Valois and Henri IV. The meat of the book is the bibliography, compiled as a project of the Franco-German research Eurolab, which focuses on vernacular languages in the early modern period. The bibliographic descriptions of the 109 items included are admirably complete and well documented. Organized alphabetically by author, the bibliography is rendered even more useful by a chronological index, and is indexed as well by publisher and by date of the grant of privilège.
Tight constraints restricted the coverage of the project to just the first issue of books published in Paris (plus two strays published by the house of Mettayer at Tours). These parameters kept the project manageable, but a real assessment of the effect of Italian-language books on sixteenth-century France would of course have to include Lyon imprints and all the reprints of the Paris editions. If the project ever sees an expanded or new edition, adding the reference numbers from the USTC (Universal Short Title Catalogue) would render this tool more interoperable with standard reference sources. Professor Balsamo and his colleagues are to be commended for an invaluable bibliography that sheds light on book history, the book trade, and cultural currents at work in the era. Academic libraries are advised to collect this title while the book is in print.
Les poètes Français de la Renaissance et leurs “libraires” is based on a colloquium held in Orleans in June 2013, addressing the relationships between French sixteenth-century poets and the bookmen who printed, published, and distributed their writings. These proceedings group papers on Parisian poets, poets who published from Lyon and other provincial poets, the poets of the Pléiade, humanist poets, and Christian religious poets. A variety of perspectives on the book trade’s approaches to publishing poetry emerges, with considerable synergy cross-pollinating the conversation among and between the panels and papers. Only a few of the twenty-one individual papers can be highlighted in the available space.
It is impossible to understand the ecosystem of the early modern French publishing industry without examining the privilège system, the legal protection offered by the state to published works. The typical sixteenth-century grant assigned the privilège to the publisher, not to the author. Michèle Clément contributes an interesting paper, “Les poètes et leurs libraires au prisme du privilège d’auteur au XVIe siècle: La proto-propriétè littéraire,” which examines cases in which a poet held the privilège for his own work. Clément includes the full text of several such privilège grants, from 1505 (to Pierre Gringoire) to the unusual grants to Ronsard in 1554 of control over the publication of all his works, a formula repeated in 1558 for Joachim du Bellay. The text of a 1566 privilège jointly to a publisher and an engraver, for an emblem book, is also reproduced.
Jean Balsamo’s paper, “Les libraires du Palais et les poètes (1530–1610),” focuses on the publishers and booksellers who maintained shops among the bustling corridors of the government complex that housed the Parlement and other offices of state. He gives an accurate overview of the municipal layout of the book industry (which was not, as some writers imply, exclusively clustered around the university on the Left Bank). Professor Balsamo’s research has made him more alert than many scholars in the field to the business aspects of the book trade, all too frequently overlooked in literary scholarship. The footnotes in his paper lead in many promising and well-selected directions for anyone seeking to explore further.
An engagingly crafted paper by Emmanuel Buron, “La pratique du poème liminaire comme analyse pragmatique de l’acte éditorial: Jodelle, Etienne Groulleau et André Wechel,” explores insights gained from an attentive reading of the paratexts in a number of publications of the era. The paper examines and explains the apparent mystery that Jodelle, a poet notoriously reluctant to commit his own major works to the printing press, is nevertheless frequently to be found as author of preliminary verses in other authors’ works. A paper from the volume coeditor Denis Bjaï, “Un imprimeur orléanais de la Renaissance et ‘ses’ poètes: Autour d’Eloi Gibier (1551–c. 1587),” sheds fresh light on the publishing career of a well-known Orleans bookman of the second half of the sixteenth century. Droz published an important bibliographic monograph on this printer by Louis Desgraves in 1966, but even at the time there was clearly more to tell. Professor Bjaï’s further work here is very welcome.
In a paper on the prominent Lyon printer Jean de Tournes (active 1540–64), Mireille Huchon continues an argument begun elsewhere, airing doubts that poetry published under the names of Pernette du Guillet and Louise Labé were, in fact, written by women. Huchon situates those publications in a chronological account of the poetic output of the presses of Jean de Tournes. Michel Magnien pursues in this volume signal work already begun on the career of the important humanist publisher Michel Vascosan (active 1532–76). His paper “Vascosan éditeur de Guillaume Du Mayne (1556)” highlights three collections of the poetry of du Mayne, a protégé of the prominent humanist Guillaume Budé. These three collections, all published in 1556, illustrate an era in Vascosan’s catalogue after his pivot toward publishing works in French vernacular. French literary history did not pause very long to contemplate or admire the poetry of Guillaume du Mayne, and has never seen reason to reassess its importance. Professor Magnien investigates the life and works of this frankly minor man of letters but makes a persuasive case that these three volumes of his poetry assume an importance for historians of the book that they may lack as moments in French literature. They were produced with the same care and sophistication in design and typography as the books in other genres that have perpetuated the reputation of the house of Vascosan with connoisseurs and collectors, and constitute an interesting anomaly in the work of a publisher who was not particularly known as a sponsor of vernacular poetry.
Two papers address Ronsard’s publishers. Remaining contributions address publishers’ relations with such writers as Philippe Desportes, Clément Marot, Théodore de Bèze, Guillaume Du Bartas, Charles Fontaine, and less familiar poets of the era. It is useful reading for book historians, literary scholars, and all interested in the French publishing landscape.
