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This article seeks to assess the place of literary history in the Catalogue de la bibliothèque d’un amateur published in 1819 by the bookseller, publisher and collector Antoine-Augustin Renouard. It shows how this generically unstable work plays a part in the controversies fuelled by the breakthrough of foreign literary models in France. Blending the apparent impersonality of a catalogue and the assumed subjectivity of a discourse with normative overtones, Renouard takes the scope of the exercise to the next level: more than a simple reference tool, his catalogue becomes reading material in its own right. Between the openness conducive to the pursuit of rare books and a return to aesthetically conservative values, he reveals the uneasy encounter between bibliographical expertise and the shifting landscape of literary values.