Death of Jean Viardot, bookseller and founder of a new history of bibliophilia in France

Specialist in ancient book, he had contributed to the Somme on “The history of French publishing” published in the 1980s. He died on April 12, at the age of 97.

by

Passionate bookseller, specialist in ancient book and legitimately held for the founder of a new history of bibliophilia in France, Jean Viardot died in Paris on April 12 a few days before his 98th birthday.

As a teenager who is absorbed in reading, Jean Viardot dreams of a career in the study of the literary world. Bachelier (1943), he therefore undertook studies of letters and philosophy at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, then in Sorbonne, but concerns of health and material contingencies will soon lead him into active life, in the “field of Rare book “, if he continues as a free listener to win certificates according to his curiosities.

A bibliographer time, he writes files for the publication of catalogs for the bookseller Edouard Loewy, then for Henri Matarasso (he thus participated in the preparation of the great surrealism catalog of the Matarasso bookstore, in 1949). It is there that he is noticed by the collector Georges Prat, who recruits him as a librarian, then entrusted him with the management of the former Charles Bosse bookstore, in Paris (1953-1954). Returning from a year in sanatorium, Jean Viardot opened, in 1956, independent, his own bookstore in his name, rue Saint-Georges (9 e arrondissement). Address he later transferred rue de l’Echaudé, at 13, then at 15 (6 ^{e ), neighboring with the print merchant Arsène Bonafous-Murat (1935-2011). His bookstore remained active until 1990, when Viardot retired from the profession.}

At the same time, his weekly attendance of the BNF reserve made him integrate the circle of book historians and librarians, signing a number of decisive, scattered articles, but which will later be the base of its resolutely new contributions to the history of French publishing. Reading the prefaces of the public selling catalogs of the XVII ^{e , XVIII e}

é> and XIX e centuries and of course Gabriel Naudé, the Debure dynasty and Charles Nodier, he delivered a very fine analysis of bibliophilic currents and modes, influenced by certain merchants like Debure therefore, or also by events, the sling before the French Revolution.

esthete and scholar

Michelle Perrot, whose husband, the historian Jean-Claude Perrot (1928-2021), dreamed himself a bookseller of ancients and who made the link between Jean Viardot and Roger Chartier, remembers a esthete and a scholar “anxious to root bibliophilia in social history as much as in that of sensitivities, tastes and publishing”.

You have 42.22% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.