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This article revisits the bibliographical works of Firmin Maillard, Jules Lemonnyer and Albert Gagnière, who, in the 1870s, took on the task of identifying printed materials relating to either the Commune itself or to the year 1870-1871 (electoral documents, newspapers, printed ephemera, caricatures). It explores the extent to which these bibliographies intersect with the preoccupations of literary history. After presenting the corpus and pointing out that the three authors’ approach suggests a competitive, rather than complementary, relationship between the historical method and literary perspective, it highlights how these bibliographical works can be seen as prologues to a “literary history in the minor mode”, in that they do justice to lesser genres and authors, rely on an implied periodisation of literary history, and grant this printed material the longevity which it seemed to be constitutively lacking.