Mellot, Jean-Dominique <br/><br/>
“Losses and profiles”: Eighteenth century “blue” editions from Rouen and preserved collections 

 -  2022.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> In an attempt to reconstitute the corpus and the volume of the Rouen “Bibliothèque bleue” of the eighteenth century, this research uses the different archival sources at our disposal. The inventory after death of the printer-bookseller Jean-François Behourt is especially utilized. This document identifies no less than 533,953 copies related to 188 titles (119 of which had a stock of more than 1,000 copies). It depicts, through a comparison with inventories from Troyes, a typical “blue” publisher of the eighteenth century, owner of presses, titles, and stocks in quantities comparable from one location to another, and at least 40 percent of whose publications were of a religious nature. In the face of these observations based on inventories, what has been preserved is rather meager: Eleven titles published by J.-F. Behourt were found, out of the forty most published in his inventory—a lesson in prudence in the approach to what the Bibliothèque bleue was in the last century of the Ancien Régime.