Club français du livre

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The Club français du livre ( CFL ; German: French Book Club) was a French publisher. It was founded in 1946 by Stéphane Aubry and Jean-Paul Lhopital . The first publications appeared in 1947. The distribution took place in the form of a book club .

Publishing program and corporate development

The beginnings

The publishing program was based predominantly on classical texts; the target group consisted mainly of progressive intellectuals. The publishing series were called Merveilles , Portraits de l'Histoire and Les Portiques, among others . The first published title was possibly Les Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym , the French version of Edgar Allan Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket . Also in 1947 the publisher published a French version of Machiavelli's Il Principe , Voltaire's works Candide and L'Ingénu, and Prosper Mérimées Chronique du règne de Charles IX .

The following authors were represented in the publishing program in 1947 and 1948:

Most of the books were printed on fine paper. The first artistic director responsible for the design was Pierre Faucheux. The first literary director was Robert Carlier.

In 1949, the publisher established its own literary prize, the Grand prix international du Club français du livre. It was first awarded in 1949 to Elias Canetti, who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature, for his novel Die Blendung .

Further development

Later contemporary authors were added, for example Marguerite Duras and Marguerite Yourcenar as well as Malcolm Lowry with the French edition of Unter dem Vulkan , Au-dessous du Volcan . First publications, for example by Michel Butor , were also part of the program. A little later, the publisher published complete life's works, for example by William Shakespeare , Honoré de Balzac and Pierre Marivaux .

Great emphasis was placed on an appealing, creative design of the books. Due to the layout, the typography and the surrealist and Dadaist-inspired design of the covers, the style of the publisher is still clearly recognizable today, decades later.

The five large volumes of Formes de l'Art appeared in 1955–1957 , bound in gray linen. The editor was André Breton ; he was also the author of the first volume, L'Art magique .

Robert Massin, Jacques Darche, and Jacques Daniel acted as artistic directors. His successor was Claude Grégory . The average circulation per title rose from 1948 to 1957 from 2,500 to 8,000 copies. The publisher published four books a month, including its own new editions.

From 1953 to 1968, records were also part of the company's program. Frank Ténot headed the jazz department of the Club français du disque. There was also a monthly travel magazine called Marco Polo and the science magazine Diagram, revue scientifique.

The success tempted to imitate: The book clubs Club des libraires de France founded in the 1950s and the Club du meilleur livre tried their hand at the same business model.

The first edition of the Encyclopædia Universalis appeared in the 1960s . On the other hand, there was a financial and publishing crisis in the 1960s. In several projects the costs got out of hand, for example in the 1968–1971 edition of Blaise Cendrars' complete works . The publishing program ended up in the book club Le Grand Livre du mois . New editions of former publications of the Club français du livre, for example the Almanach de la Révolution Française , also appeared in the Encyclopædia Universalis.

The Club français du livre company still exists, but in the form of a purely financial holding company that, among other things, holds and trades in literary rights.

literature

  • Pascal Fouché (editor): L'Édition française depuis 1945 , Paris, Éd. du Cercle de la librairie, 1998, pp. 118–167, chapter: Le phénomène des clubs.
  • Anne-Hélène Frustié, Le Club français du livre, 1946-1970 , mémoire de DEA d'histoire du XXe, 1984.

Remarks

  1. ↑ miracles
  2. ↑ Portraits of History
  3. ↑ Columned halls, also in the sense of Stoa
  4. ↑ As of 2007