Garnier Publishers: from France to the Transatlantic Space

Garnier Booksellers-Publishers was, in relation to the production and circulation of culture, the first international company specialized in books.¹ It existed for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, working mainly with French, Spanish, and Portuguese texts, occupying European and American national spaces.

Studying the circulation of cultural goods becomes more complete when the contacts between the different parts of the globe, here delimitated as those which cross the Transatlantic space, are considered jointly. In this sense, the "time of publishers"² begins with knowledge of the relations between technical transformations and the expansion of transport and communications, as well as phenomenon resulting from increasing urbanization, which resulted in literacy programs related to national languages, and consequently the expansion of reading and writing. Together, all of this allowed nineteenth century publishers, booksellers, and entrepreneurs to create commercial networks, including representatives and even branches in other countries to which were extended the desire for action, as well as opportunities, always seeking "the best typographical and economic conditions for printing works, decentralizing (...) the centers for the composition of writing, printing of texts, and sale of books."³

Garnier's case leaves it clear that a company acting at the international level can also participate in the emergence of national literature. In the communication of spaces, time was stacked due to the effects of change for which the actors of contact between cultures were responsible. In the list of Garnier's Transatlantic actions, the most studied case is that of relations between France and Brazil, but the same type of action was also present in part of Spanish speaking America.

Having become an international company in the first half of the nineteenth century, Garnier Frères bookshop and publisher, with a head office in Paris, assumed a different structure from other companies which had previously had head offices in Europe and branches in the Americas, such as Bossange⁴ and Paul Martin,⁵ or of other professionals who had founded bookshops around the world, but which were kept independent of each other, such as the specialist medicial publisher Jean-Baptiste Baillière.⁶ To construct a distribution network in the Americas and some bookshops-publishers, with the best known being the one in Rio de Janeiro and Garnier's representative in Mexico, after their establishment in Paris as booksellers-publishers the Garnier Brothers created a mixed trust involving French publishers (Delloye in 1841, Dubochet in 1848, and Langlois-Leclerq, 1839) and the acquisition of Libreria Española y Classica from Vicente Salva Pérez (1849). The trust was established between the appearance of this bookshop in London (1824) and its transfer to Paris (1835), but its acquisition by the brothers from Normandy expanded the road towards Spanish America for the Garniers.

In the first generation of publishers-booksellers, there were nine Garnier brothers, amongst whom three were especially important in the history of the international circulation of cultural goods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Auguste Garnier (1812-1887), Hipollyte Garnier (1815-1911), and the youngest one, Baptiste-Louis Garnier (1822-1893), who had settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1838 or 1844 (the sources diverge, Vapereau⁷ talks of 1838; Senna⁸ establishes the date of 1844, replicated by others studying the history of books in Brazil). Together the three became the pioneers of this important nineteenth century publisher, which is being studied due to its original insertion in a global scenario, with important activities in Brazil, but also in other Latin American countries.

Although little is known about Garnier's activities in Spanish speaking South America, between the 1890s and 1920s Garnier Booksellers-Publishers became a fundamental publisher for Hispano-American literature all over the world. Research about Garnier's operations in Brazil has progressed rapidly, but the knowledge of exchanges between Europe and Latin America in general need to be expanded and to become as well mapped as relations between France and Brazil. Antonio Miguel Alcover (1912), chief historian of the Cuban National Archive, using the concept of 'Latin America,' complained of the disorganization of bookshops and publishing houses in Cuba at the time of the publication of his essay, also pointing to the absence of Cuban books in the large bookshops in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Santiago, Lima, La Paz, Quito, Bogotá, Caracas, and Guatemala. This sheds light on the fact that, notwithstanding the Cuban absence, there were intense exchanges between these capitals of countries in the Americas. Alcover also shows that Cuban literature was unknown in the Americas, but that where this circulation existed, as in the case of certain collections of poems by Heredia and Placido, this was due to "the Mauccis from Barcelona and the Garniers from Paris," which "in their large shipments to Latin America, profited from a dozen special editions of these poets. Europe was always supplying the market of the Americas, even with books that were genuinely American products!"⁹

Alcover's indignation about the scarce production and circulation of 'genuinely American' Cuban literature suggests some important things: some repertoires of reading were shared by Americans, and also that there was an induction of this sharing of printed material and readings, governed by European publishers who captured local production, publishing it in European presses and returning it to the Americas in a 'book' form. In other words, the widely described method used by Baptiste-Louis Garnier in Brazil, of having Brazilian manuscripts printed in Europe, was also used for the 'national' production of various Latin American countries: manuscripts travelled east along the Transatlantic paths, from where they returned in print form, which meant that in the nineteenth century the definition of the 'time of publishers' was equivalent to a transnational network of writers, booksellers, revisors, translators, and publishers, amongst other professionals, in the constitution of a circulating object called the 'book' and indeed all sorts of printed materials.

The print revolution which the Garniers operated is notable due to its originality, especially given their modest origin which did not allow their success to be predicted , even though they had shown a clear intention of dominating the book trade throughout Latin America.¹⁰ Sons of farmers, it is not known exactly how Auguste and Hipollyte Garnier set themselves up as booksellers in the prestigious Palays-Royal gallery in 1833, after having briefly been employed in other Parisian bookshops. Removing their brother Pierre from their business in 1852,¹¹ they accumulated capital at the beginning of their operations thanks to the publication and sale of forbidden items, such as erotic books, which had been under strong censorship until the end of the Restoration period (such as Justine ou les Malheurs de la Vertu (1791) by Sade and Rideau levé ou L'éducation de Laure (1786) by Mirabeau, amongst others). Over time, they also profited from usury, speculation on the stock exchange (the mission of François-Hippolyte), property at the time of the reform of Paris carried out by Mayor Haussmanns and, finally, the traditional operations of the bookshop. To show the wealth they amassed, it is enough to mention that on his death in 1911, Hippolyte's fortune was assessed at twenty-five million francs, including cash, property, and the capital and business of the bookshop-publishers.¹² Restricted to the beginning of the Garnier's career, licentious literature may have been extended to the beginning of Garnier's activities in Brazil, as the youngest brother, Baptiste-Louis, is said to have crossed the Atlantic to print and redistribute in South America prohibited pamphlets, amongst other things. More important than the startup capital was the final sum: of the twenty-five million francs accumulated as a fortune by the Garniers of Paris,¹³ the business in Brazil, after the death of Baptiste-Louis, contributed 1500 contos de reis (1,500,000 reis), corresponding at the time to around US $250,000, as shown by recently encountered documents related to the succession of Baptiste-Louis Garnier.

In his bibliography dictionary written and revised when the Garniers were still alive, Gustave Vapereau informs us that Baptiste-Louis Garnier settled in Brazil in 1838, running the principal branch of the Irmãos Garnier commercial house, of which he would later become owner. Were there other branches apart from this one in Rio de Janeiro? While it is not possible to answer this question at the moment, it is known that the Garniers and Don Jose Maria de Andrade in Mexico had formed some sort of association in 1852.¹⁴ Although the commercial basis of this Franco-Mexican partnership is unknown, the Garniers of Paris restored relations with the Bossanges and with La Antigua Libreria del Portal de Augustinos no. 3, being present in this space in Mexico City, and establishing with Don José representation and co-publishing relations,¹⁵ as shown by an 1852 announcement in Catálogo da Libreria de Garnier Hermanos, Sucesores de D. V. Salva: co-publication with the aim of releasing a Nuevo Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana.

Although it needs to be expanded by new studies, this latter information is crucial to understanding part of the Transatlantic business between the bookseller-publisher Baptiste-Louis Garnier, other booksellers in the capitals of new American countries or in Paris, Garnier Frères & Garnier Hermanos, and finally other French and European typographers and publishers. In relation to books, in France the Garniers solidified their work over time through the offering of the collection "Chef-d'oeuvre de la littérature française,"which gave rise to the modern "Classiques Garnier," with their yellow covers and which circulated widely in the twentieth century – and still do - in Europe and the Americas; they did the same with the production and sale of schoolbooks, dictionaries, and grammar books. In 1930, when Auguste-Pierre Garnier, the great nephew and heir of the Garnier brothers, received the French Legion d'Honneur for service for commercial expansion in France and abroad, the awarding of this title was justified as follows: "diffusion of classic French authors abroad, especially in Southern American countries; publications in Spanish and Portuguese of classic and contemporary French authors; the most important collection of works for the practical teaching of living languages; an important service of representation and exportation to other countries of all the works published by French publishers in the commercial center in Rio de Janeiro."¹⁶

At the beginning of this history, the international commercial partnership between the brothers created an intense circulation of books and people. Until the end of the 1850s in Brazil Baptiste-Louis constructed lists of books for sale, covering various subjects, technical books, schoolbooks, religious works, and literature, offered to the public through catalogues and every type of publicity in newspapers (advertisements of various sizes and importance, sponsored reviews). Among the books sold many were from the catalogue of his publisher brothers in Paris, as shown not only by the document cited just above, but also the analysis of the advertisements in nineteenth century newspapers and the catalogues of B. L. Garnier bookshop, showing that Garnier acted as a sales representative in Rio de Janeiro for books published by other French publishers, an aspect still not given importance in the specialized bibliography. The universalization of the taste for reading in the nineteenth century was thus inexorably linked to the circulation and commercial offering of books and printed material by these and other publishers.

The more studies about the Garnier brothers advance, the more certainty there is that there was a rupture in the 1850s and the beginning of the 1860s,¹⁷ as Baptiste-Louis stopped being the 'representative' of Garnier Frères in Rio de Janeiro and became an autonomous publisher. Investing in his own business during the second half of the nineteenth century, in addition to book sales Baptiste-Louis came to dominate book publishing in Brazil, which he did independently of his brothers. To his credit, as shown by Senna and Hallewell,¹⁸ he published 665 works by Brazilian authors. Distancing himself from the activities of the French brothers, Baptiste-Louis put in practice a publishing policy similar to other important booksellers in Paris at that time. He invested in his relationship with authors, in researching manuscripts, in the formation of his own collection, as well as the progressive specialization of catalogues and the publication of the complete works of authors deemed to be significant. A paradoxical figure, like a modern publisher, he published the Brazilian writers of the time, establishing with them contracts through which he acquired literary ownership of the published works;¹⁹ at the same time, in the old style, under the patronage of the Emperor Pedro II, he constructed collections of Brazilian classics, gaining importance by using the prestige of French editions.²⁰ Baptiste-Louis Garnier sent the manuscripts of these authors for typesetting and printing in Paris and other European cities, associating himself with the quality of these publications, which had clear printing, were well cared for, used better quality paper, and lacked errors. This was at a time when the Brazilian literati complained of the difficulties faced in the composition and revision process when their texts were printed in Rio de Janeiro.²¹ As a result, due to the European professionalization of the printing process, added to the experience of the publisher, problems with the composition of books in the Garnier publishing house declined increasingly. However, this demanded the presence of ever more competent readers of Portuguese on French soil. Since the quality of products was one of the strategies for sales and capturing a share of the Brazilian market, since the beginning of the 1860s the publisher had a copyreader living in Paris, Jules Henri Gueffier, about whom more detail will be provided below.

Unlike what happened with Cuban literature, at least taking into account Alcover's report, manuscripts would travel in one direction and books return, but more than this was involved: the consequence of this process was that over time the Brazilian literature published by Chez Garnier would come to be translated into different European languages. O Guarani by José de Alencar (1829-1875) and Inocência by Alfredo Maria Adriano d\'Escragnolle Taunay (1843-1899) were translated more than once into German between 1872 and 1914, circulating in periodical and book format.²² Both novels were also translated into French between 1863 and 1907.²³ In the case of José de Alencar's novel, it also gained a Spanish version and from this it appeared in Italian, resulting in the opera Il Guarany, with music by Antônio Carlos Gomes and a libretto by Antônio Scalvini, which opened in the Scala Theater in Milan on 19 March 1870.

Baptiste-Louis Garnier operated with a market logic close to what was developed by the publisher Michel Lévy in France, imitated by other French publishers. In the middle of the 1850s Lévy had created a new system for the production and sale of books, which gave rise to a revolution in the price of books in France. In this system, titles were published in collections in an economic format; in other words, they were as cheap as possible in terms of materials (paper, manner of binding, cover, etc.), and sold at very cheap prices (one franc or less) and for this reason had very large print runs (more than 3000 copies). In Brazil, an analysis of some of the early editions of O Guarany show that from the second edition of the book onwards (1864) it was published by Baptiste-Louis Garnier, who adopted some of Lévy's strategies: he had it printed in Paris and presented the public in Brazil with two new editions of O Guarany, the second edition in octavo and the third in octodecimo. By simultaneously issuing two editions of José de Alencar's novel, in order to take advantage of the same typographic composition, Garnier addressed the book at two different publics, or at least two different uses, for handling by readers and collection in libraries and reading cabinets. With the books in hand, it can be seen that the second edition of O Guarany was made with high quality paper, an octavo format, a stitched spine, and a good quality cover (made with resistant paper card), to be sold in Brazil at four thousand réis. The third edition, made in the popular octodecimo format, was printed in newspaper paper, with a cover made from low grammage colored paper, to be sold for two thousand réis. It can be assumed that the third edition was aimed at a broader public and higher sales. Also in relation to the comparison of the actions of Michel Lévy and Baptiste-Louis Garnier, both quickly bought the copyright of authors and sought to make a profit from the print run and/or sales. However, Garnier was forced to adapt Lévy's project to the practices operating in the South American market, so that he operated with lower print runs than in France and combined Lévy's system with an older one, prior to the popularization of book publishing in France, when books were still expensive. Finally, Garnier had his books printed in Paris, in typographers used to working with Portuguese (Simon & Raçon for example) and also put them for sale in the French capital in Durand bookshop (and not in the Garnier bookshop), as can be seen in the inside cover of the editions of O Guarany discussed here.

During his trajectory of more than fifty years in Brazil, Baptiste-Louis Garnier was decorated by the Emperor Pedro II with the Order of the Rose,²⁴ the principal Brazilian honorary decoration, thanks to the services rendered to Brazilian literature, having also made efforts to obtain a Portuguese award. Even after his death in 1893, with the business of the publisher/bookshop being carried on by his successor, Garnier publishing house continued to catalyze literati, journalists, writers, intellectuals, as well as to function as a point for the concentration and debating of ideas. In 1903, with the intention of communicating directly with its readers and expanding sales, the extremely important Almanaque Garnier was launched. This publication, which persisted until 1914, became, according to Dutra,²⁵ a space for the debate of political ideas organized around the Brazilian Academy of Letters, recently founded in 1897, in such a way that Almanaque Garnier became "an instrument for the popularizing of a political and educational project, that of the construction of a republican nation, for which they had the support of various notables from the field of letters."²⁶ The granting of imperial awards highlights the importance of Casa Editorial Garnier in Brazilian public life, a role which other Latin American publishers played, around which were gathered an educated or semi-educated public. Like Maucci in México and Biblioteca de La Nacíon in Buenos Aires, Garnier was "was one of the important redoubts of intellectual independents who acted outside the state, seeking a direct channel of communication with its public." ²⁷

In the archives of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangers (Nantes, France), documents show the insistence with which Baptiste-Louis, at the end of his trajectory as a bookseller in Brazil, directed himself to France's plenipotentiary minister in Rio de Janeiro, asking for his intervention to regularize the use or attribution of honorific titles to himself. This family habit of national recognition is curious, taking into account the honorific French decoration received in 1930 by the grand-nephew of the Garnier brothers, with whom Baptiste-Louis had little or no contact. But perhaps the latter's demand for honorific recognition (i.e., the granting of a Portuguese order to Baptiste-Louis) may have resulted from his participation in the opening of the Brazilian book market in Portugal,²⁸ in association with the bookseller-publisher Ernest Chardron – also of French origin and who had settled in Porto some years before 1869, where he had founded Livraria Internacional. In the middle of the 1870s Chardron began to include books in Portuguese in his catalogue (translations from French or titles coming from the former colony, alongside the works of Portuguese writers), as well as works in French. Comparing the Chardron and Garnier catalogues in the 1870s, the similarity between both is evident, since in addition to the titles composing the "Livraria Clássica Portuguesa" (a collection started by the brothers José and Antonio Feliciano de Castilho in 1845), both booksellers-publishers shared all the other titles by the Brazilian writers Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, José de Alencar, Pereira da Silva, Machado de Assis, and Luís Guimarães Junior (Queiróz, 2017). It should also be highlighted in relation to this partnership that Chardron advertised and sold in Portugal Jornal das Famílias, a literary periodical which Baptiste-Louis Garnier published, printing it in France to circulate in Brazil between 1863 and 1878. Data from the newspaper itself show that Chardron also acted as a commercial correspondent of Garnier's.

From 1870 onwards Baptiste-Louis increased the translation of novels in Brazil. His actions show that in the hands of nineteenth century publishers the book business was international and literary production crossed frontiers. In the 1870s, in addition to expanding business via Portugal, Garnier released around 80 translated titles in the Brazilian book market, mostly by French and Spanish authors, as listed by Bezerra. In this case, recent research suggests that Baptiste-Louis Garnier worked with the same titles in Spanish-speaking America and one hypothesis is that the translation of some novels into Portuguese was decided in function of the tastes of French and Spanish readers, who had a fondness for the novels of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Emilio Castelar, Enrique Pérez Escrich, and Manuel Fernandez y Gonzalez, amongst others. The works of these four authors circulated between Spain, France, Brazil, and Spanish speaking American countries in the same period. Directly from France, Jules Verne, an author from Hetzel, was undoubtedly the writer most translated by Garnier at this time, but so also were Xavier de Montépin, Arsène Houssaye, Paul de Kock, and Théophile Gautier, among another twenty-seven writers. The principal translation partnerships established included the French publishers Édouard Dentu, Michel Lévy, Ferdinand Sartorius, and Jules Hetzel, who published novels read by a broader public than that of the Garnier brothers' classics.²⁹ Due to copyright questions, which did not protect foreign writers in Brazil, Baptiste-Louis sometimes translated novels directly from newspapers or French books.³⁰ Books on one side, men on the other, Garnier's translators were chosen among Brazilian professionals from the area of literature and the employee who Baptiste-Louis kept in Paris for at least ten years, Jules Henri Gueffier. A recently discovered contract,³¹ signed by Baptiste-Louis and Jules Henri on 10 February 1864, shows that the latter was recruited in Brazil by Garnier to provide printing services in Paris for ten years, to act as his representative with bookshops, and when necessary to act as a translator, very probably in the latter case to translate works written in French into Portuguese, since Gueffier had lived in Brazil and knew the language well (the Gueffier family was linked in Brazil to the typography business and associates of Laemmert; they were printers, for example, of some periodicals written in Rio de Janeiro and printed in French).

Shortly before dying, and when already sick, Baptiste-Louis Garnier sought to sell his bookshop, but gave up when he did not receive the 8000 contos de réis at which he assessed his goods and business. After his death on 1 October 1893, the company returned through inheritance to the ownership of the Garnier brothers in Paris. Hippolyte Garnier was 77 when his brother Baptiste died and was still in charge of the business in Paris. Paradoxically, his attitude shows that at the time of the disappearance of Baptiste-Louis, the Parisian brother was not aware of the commercial potential of Garnier bookshop in Rio. According to a power of attorney which Hippolyte gave to Julien Emmanuel Bernard Lansac in Paris two months after the death of Baptiste-Louis, Lansac, described as an "Parisian commercial employee," went to Rio de Janeiro to accompany the inventory and liquidate the goods and business. It should thus be emphasized that the arrival of the future manager of the Garnier bookshop in Brazil occurred many years before what was previously thought, than what Lawrence Hallewell was able to discover at the time he did his research.³² This power of attorney from what it stated shows us that Hippolyte's initial idea was to liquidate the bookshop in Rio de Janeiro, but shortly afterwards he changed his mind completely and took the decision to maintain Garnier in Rio de Janeiro, once again as a branch of Garnier Frères from Paris. Wanting to eclipse the Laemmert bookshop, Hippolyte commissioned Bellissime and Parradieu, his French architects, to construct a new and magnificent four storey building on Rua do Ouvidor. It replaced the old dusty and dark bookshop of Baptiste-Louis Garnier, included an apartment for the manager on the fourth floor, and was opened with a gala party in January 1900. On this occasion each guest received a signed copy of the novel Dom Casmurro by the them famous writer and president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Machado de Assis.

At the end of this story, Hippolyte Garnier died in 1911 at the age of 95 and Lansac returned to France in 1913; the business was passed to a great-nephew of the Garnier brothers, Auguste-Pierre Garnier, who sent another French manager to Rio de Janeiro, Émile Izard (1874-?). In this period of tensions and wars, the Garniers published progressively less and less books, finally selling the business to Ferdinand Briguiet in 1934.

All of this international circulation of books cannot be understood outside of its relationship with the movements of men. A complete genealogy of the Garnier brothers³³ shows the familial connections between the Garniers and the Fauchons (booksellers and merchants in Paris and Rio), as well as the Vivets (booksellers in France). To the contrary of what is still believed, Baptiste-Louis Garnier kept beside him as employees, as his brothers in Paris had always done, some members of his family who helped him in his business. Émile-Auguste Garnier, for example, a nephew of the Garnier booksellers-publishers through their brother Jean-Baptiste, was in Rio de Janeiro in the 1850s working in the Garnier bookshop. Moreover, an 1859 document, associated with this genealogy, showed recently that the Fauchons, who spent decades in the book business in Rio de Janeiro, worked at first alongside the Garniers:

Auguste Fauchon, who signed together with Garnier the receipt for the sale of books on 1 August 1859, was the son of Sophie Rosalie, sister of Auguste, Hipollyte, and Baptiste-Louis Garnier, married to a Fauchon (Granja, 2013). In the 1890s we can see Ferdinand Fauchon as an established bookseller and publisher in Rio de Janeiro, having inherited from his father Auguste the business, which he administered and was trying to expand. This other great-nephew of the Garnier brothers is described in 1895 as a bookseller and a resident of Rio de Janeiro, residing at Rua do Ouvidor no. 125 (document kept in the National Archives of Paris, Minutier Central de Notaires, Étude XVI, 1493, 1^st October 1895, Dépot par M. François Hippolyte Garnier d'une procuration à lui donnée par M. Fauchon), thus living only a few meters away from Garnier bookshop. Fauchon's parents had worked with Baptiste-Louis, before dedicating themselves to Livraria Enciclopédica Fauchon & Cia, later renamed Livraria Enciclopédica Viúva Fauchon e Filho, Fauchon e Dupont, Livraria da Casa Imperial. In dissension which was not uncommon at the time, Jean-Pierre Aillaud also had come to work in the workshops of Didot Frères in Rio de Janeiro, afterwards returning to Paris, where "he founded a bookshop, publishing works in Portuguese, most for the Brazilian market, with one of his most active translators being (...) Caetano Lopes de Moura".³⁴

In the case of the Fauchons, while the great-uncle Hippolyte Garnier assessed the state of the business left by his brother in Rio de Janeiro, the great-nephew Ferdinand advanced his own business. Both actually got on well, since Ferdinand was appointed executor of Baptiste-Louis' inventory by Hippolyte Garnier, as shown by the documents deposited in the National Archive (RJ). It is important to note that the expansion of the Fauchons sought to take advantage of the international publisher-bookseller methodology adapted in Brazil by Baptiste-Louis Garnier. To start publishing Brazilian literature, trying to assume the market niche of Garnier Bookshop and Publishers, Ferdinand Fauchon's publishing and commercial choices were no different from those that Baptiste-Louis Garnier had been practicing since the 1860s: the publication in Paris of literature written in Brazil, with good quality publications, described as luxurious; investment in various textual genres, with the aim of diversifying collections and dealing with the public in a general manner; even though as a consequence of these two observations, as occurred in the Garnier case, the actual nature of publishing investment resulted in advertising in the media for the commercial house in general.

We have accompanied here some of the steps of these men, over almost a century, between the European and American continents, in relation to books, printing presses, proofs, notebooks, and all sort of material from the world of printing. The movements described by these actors, cultural disseminators, and mediators show that the circulation of printed material is an example of how national frontiers, as they were affirmed in geopolitical terms in the nineteenth century, were constantly ruptured with and surpassed by cultural practices.