04 Aug Bibliotheque Miniature: the literary pearls of the PAYOT publishing house
The collection BIBLIOTHEQUE MINIATURE edited by the publisher PAYOT is the last series of which we will talk before the summer break. We want to study these particular books for the elegance and the beautiful shape they take in the appearance. Refined binding embellish these texts consisting of a cover in fine satin fabric with various and different decorative elements for each single booklet: floral and vegetable motifs, geometric and abstract patterns of a thousand colors. The cuts are golden and, leafing through the first pages of one of the many volumes, you can appreciate the engraving with wheat ears gathered in two bunch and an elegant inscription that report the name of the series BIBLIOTHEQUE MINIATURE on one side and the title of the work on the other. This along with the name of the author are also reported in a small label on the front of the book; we report the titles kept in the library:
-BAUDELAIRE Charles, Les fleurs du mal
-BRIZEUX, Auguste, Marie
-CHENIER, André, Idylles
-DE MUSSET, Alfred, Un caprice. Comedie en un acte
-DESBORDES-Valmore, Marceline, Elégies
-DE VIGNY, Alfred, Les Destinées. Poémes philosophiques
-FRANCE, Anatole, Pensées philosophiques choises par Maurice Solovine
-HEINE, Henri, L’intermezzo
-LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Riflexions ou sentences et maximes
-JOUBERT, J. Pensèes
-KHAYYAM Omar, Les Rubaiyat (traduction nouvelle de F. Roger-Cornaz)
-LEPRINCE de Beaumont, Jeanne-Marie, La belle et la béte
-MARIVAUX, Pierre: de, Le jeu de l’amour et du hasard
-NOAILLES, Anna Elisabeth (comtesse) Poésies
-PASCAL, Blaise, Pensees choisies / par G. Michaut -Pensées d’Épicure. Précédées d’un Essai sur la morale d’Epicure
-SHAKESPEARE W. Sonnets (traduction nouvelle de F. Roger-Cornaz)
Cataloguing research has shown that the topics covered include poetry, philosophy and pedagogy,
but also history and politics. The choice to publish this collection dates back to 1918 or shortly before,
at the end of the First World War and we know that 75 volumes are published.
The PEYOT publishing house was actually born much earlier and precisely in 1886 in Switzerland, in
Lausanne, although it soon moved to Paris where in 1912 it opened a library specializing mainly in
history and science. Over time, the fields of interest have expanded to geography and economics, but
there remains an interest in the greatest Swiss writers of the 21st century such as E. Rod, C. F.
Ramuz and R. De Traz.
We like to conclude this meeting with a sentence taken directly from the description of this necklace given by the chronicles of the time: “Une collection de bibelots typographiques exécutés avec goût à l’intention des lecteurs raffinés; une collection de perles littéraires que le public féminin aime tout particulièrement. Chaque volume 7 x 10 cm.” and that we translate into english below: “A collection of tastefully executed typographic trinkets for refined readers; a collection of literary pearls that the female audience particularly likes. Each volume 7 x 10 cm.”