University Presses of France

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“PUF” redirects here. For other uses, see PUF (disambiguation).

University Presses of France (French: Presses Universitaires de France or PUF) are the largest French university publishing houses, founded in 1921 by several professors.

In 2000, PUF were reorganized, with the larger publishing group Flammarion taking 17% of the capital and the conglomerate Maaf Assurances taking up 9%. A similar tendency toward the constitution of an oligopoly has been observed by French newspapers, with titles like Le Monde, Libération or even L'Humanité accepting to turn themselves toward private financing.

Almost all French students know the collection Que sais-je? (a quote from Montaigne: "What do I know?"), created in 1941 by Paul Angoulvent. The collection is based on a unique format of 128 pages, in which specialists are invited to ruminate a specific theme. Today, there are more than 1,300 titles, constituting a vast encyclopedia covering a broad range of subjects. Many of the titles have been translated into up to forty-three languages, while the PUF have sold around 160 million books since first published.