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Once in power, Bonaparte signed an average of nearly 2,000 letters per year, in other words at least six letters per day. A considerable mass of correspondence that sheds light on his thinking, his method; in a word, the man. When in 1854 Napoleon III decided to publish his uncle’s correspondence, certain parts of Napoleon’s correspondence were already known to the public: already during his lifetime, Napoleon’s writings were circulating, so fascinating was the fate of the deposed emperor. But the project of a general edition of Napoleon I’s correspondence is unprecedented. What is more, the creation of a commission to achieve this editorial work is unprecedented. Jacques-Olivier Boudon traces the history of this editorial project, from the source - how Napoleon wrote - to the critical reception of its publication by contemporaries during the Second Empire, but also by later historians of the 19th and 20th centuries. A perfect introduction to the exhaustive publication of these letters, begun in the early twenty-first century.