The bookstore poster in 1830s France

The bookstore poster established itself as a particular genre in the 1830s in France. It is in fact a medium of expression which embodies and combines the rise of the novel, illustration and lithographic representation. Intended to be posted inside stores rather than in the streets, announcing successive deliveries of volumes and generally calling on customers to subscribe to their purchase, this type of poster experienced a marked popularity during the Romantic period, which will decline under the Second Empire.

There will subsequently remain editions of posters popularizing the works to be published, but they will leave the interiors of bookstores for the walls of cities, and will be the result of original creations, printed in chromolithography in a larger number of copies. The romantic bookstore poster first highlights popular stories, some of which are inscribed in collective memory, such as those of Alexandre Dumas, Eugène Sue or Paul Féval. Literary genres specific to the period, such as “Physiologies” and comic almanacs, as well as illustrated documentary or historical books also have a repertoire of posters, often astonishing in their inspiration — see the various works devoted to the “Garden plants” and its exotic fauna.

The bookstore poster is generally modest in size, 70 cm high at most, and printed in lithography in black ink, sometimes enhanced with one or two colors. The illustrations are most often taken from those of the works, frontispieces in particular, and enlarged, accompanied by texts specific to the poster, whose lettering, often handwritten, may have been produced by lithographers (notably at Lemercier). Among the most notable creations, the posters of Tony Johannot (1803–1852), Paul Gavarni (1804–1866), de Grandville [presented in the file “Jean-Jacques Grandville (1828-1847)”]. But many unknown authors, such as Charles Guilbert, or anonymous ones, provided remarkable drawings, wonderfully evoking the spirit of the time.