Découvertes Gallimard

Découvertes Gallimard

Cover of the first volume from Découvertes Gallimard collection, features Desert of Gizeh by David Roberts (19th century).
Author	Various
Country	France
Language	French English
Genre	Humanities, Encyclopaedia
Publisher	Éditions Gallimard Thames & Hudson Abrams Books
Published	1986–present
Published in English	1992–2008[1][2][3]
Media type	Print (Paperback, Hardcover) & Digital edition for iPad
No. of books	730: Découvertes Gallimard (589), Découvertes Gallimard : Série « Une autre histoire du XXᵉ siècle » (10), Découvertes Gallimard Albums (13), Découvertes Gallimard Texto (6), Découvertes Gallimard Tirage limité (2), Découvertes Gallimard Hors série (110)

Découvertes Gallimard (French: [dekuvɛʁt ɡalimaːʁ], literally in English “Discoveries Gallimard”) is an encyclopaedic collection or a series of illustrated, pocket-sized books on a variety of subjects, aimed at adults and teenagers.^[4] It was published in November 1986 by Éditions Gallimard with the first volume The Search for Ancient Egypt^[5] (original title: À la recherche de l'Égypte oubliée), written by French Egyptologist Jean Vercoutter.^[6] These scholarly little books then released in successive volumes, without a systematic plan, each of which is structured like a separate book. The collection currently contains 730 books.

Overview

The A6 paper size is used for these mini books and printed on coated paper, richly decorated with full colour illustrations. Every book of this encyclopaedic collection is composed of a monograph and focuses on a particular topic, the whole series covers all areas of human knowledge and experience,^[7] such as history, archaeology, art, aesthetics, music, religion, culture, civilisation, science, geology, biography, the research of supernatural, et cetera. There are 502 professional authors who have written for the collection.^[4] They usually use timelines and historical perspective to describe a subject,^[8] for example, L'heure du grand passage : Chronique de la mort^[9] (lit. “The Hour of the Great Passage: Chronicle of the Death”), which narrated in chronological order to present the view of death in Europe from the Medieval Period to the 20th century, through historical vision of cultural, social and religious aspects. Almost all the volumes follow the same method, therefore, history is the essential element of perspective of this work. Every volume has around 200 pages with approximately 200 illustrations. Each book opens with 8–10 full-page illustrations or photographs, prefaced by a pull-quote on the inside front cove, which Thames & Hudson director Jamie Camplin calls it a “cinema-influenced trailer”.^[1] At the back of each book is the “Documents” section, here they provide more detailed documentary information and historical records, the sources of all illustrations as well as photo credits, dedicated to those who want to do further research. The novelty lies in the subtle orchestration of the text and the illustration, where successive sequences, inserts and leaflets overlapping in double pages. The publisher promised that they wanted to create “the most beautiful pocket collection in the world” (« la plus belle collection de poche du monde »).^[10]

History

The Découvertes Gallimard collection was born in the Gallimard Jeunesse, based on an idea by Pierre Marchand after the publications of two pocket collections: Découvertes Cadet in 1983 and Découvertes Benjamin in 1984. The Collection was created in 1986 and directed by Élisabeth de Farcy. She chose the authors and organised iconographic campaigns, several editors and iconographers were then gathered, copious illustrations were extracted from heritage resources. Élisabeth explained in an interview with La Croix: "The image should occupy a central place, as in a work of art."^[11] "We've never seen so many things between the first and last pages of a book" is the slogan proposed by Pascal Manry's advertising agency for the launch of the collection. Although the Découvertes was constituted for youth at the beginning, but it soon passed to adult range in the bookshops. The Collection then had a rapid-growth, 105 titles (volumes) appeared in five years. It acrossed the borders first time with a Spanish co-editor in 1989, and 19 countries will finally be associated with it.^[4]

The heydays of the Collection were at the turn of the 1990s, the authors are mainly recruited from academics and curators. Numerous monographs of artists were often published on the occasions of major exhibitions, with a predilection for painters and musicians. Such as Geneviève Haroche-Bouzinac's Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was on sale at the exhibit of Vigée Le Brun's paintings in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.^[12] But in recent years, there were more monographs on the memory of places and large institutions instead of artists, as well as various sociological and religious aspects. And also numerous volumes devoted to writers, for example, the 381st title Marcel Proust : La cathédrale du temps.^[13] Competition has emerged as early as in the middle of the 1990s, circulation and novelties have been decreased gradually, but partially offset by another original collection Découvertes Gallimard Hors série, which is like a spin-off.^[4]

Today, there are about fifteen old titles from the Collection that are updated every year according to the current cultural and scientific research. History is the main point of Découvertes. It is completed by archaeology, art history and science, richly accompanied by unpublished illustrations from ancient times to our days. Thus it forms a solid editorial base.^[4] On 25 March 1994, Découvertes Gallimard celebrated its publication of 200th title Voyages en Utopie^[14] at the Musée national des Monuments Français.^[10] The Collection underwent two successive redesigns, one in September 1998 (n° 359 : Le Théâtre de Boulevard : « Ciel, mon mari ! ») for exterior model (colour of book's back-cover, more explicit signage), and the other in March 2000 (n° 390 : L'Esprit des savoirs) for interior page layout.^[4]

Découvertes Gallimard has been translated into 19 languages^[15] (in fact currently more than 20 languages, see Appendix), including English, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Romanian, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, et cetera. According to Livres-Hebdo, these "French-style documentaries" have sold over twenty million copies worldwide,^[16] with recently emerging markets in the East and Asia. In order to remedy the problems of international proprietaries and reproduction rights of works of art, the co-publishers firstly define a number of titles, then they choose according to their own editorial line, and share the high cost of worldwide photographic rights. Therefore, Abrams Books in the United States chose more titles about traditional cultural subjects, while in Japan, the publisher Sōgensha prefers original titles, such as Les sorcières : Fiancées de Satan^[17] (lit. “The Witches: Fiancées of Satan”) by Jean-Michel Sallmann. In addition, foreign editions are usually co-printed to amortise fees and support countries with small circulation.^[16]

Some of the Découvertes volumes have been adapted into documentary films at the turn of the 2000s, produced by Trans Europe Film and mostly directed by Jean-Claude Lubtchansky.^[18]

Reception

French weekly magazine Télérama praised Découvertes Gallimard, describing the work as “they borrow suspense from the cinema, have efficiency of the journalism, literary temperament is their charm, and art is their beauty”.^[4] German literary scholar and historian Gerhard Prause wrote an article for Die Zeit, reviewed the Collection is an “adventure stands for surprise, excitement and amusement. Boredom is already prevented by the curiosity of vivid illustrations which are accompanied by detailed explanations”.^[19] Rick Poynor wrote in Eye Magazine that the Collection "is one of the great projects of contemporary popular publishing".^[20] Raleigh Trevelyan's article in The New York Times mentioned D-Day and the Invasion of Normandy from the collection, said “all volumes in the Discoveries series are ingeniously designed”.^[21] Art critic John Russell considered these books contain unique information, such as Aelian's authority on the musicality of the elephant or the precise look of Halley's comet as it was depicted in 1835.^[22]

English edition

Books of Découvertes series have been selectively translated into English, published by Thames & Hudson in United Kingdom under the title New Horizons series,^[23][24] which launched its first titles in 1992.^[1] And in United States they were published by Abrams Books entitled Abrams' Discoveries series,^[25][26][27] which the New York Magazine described it “a lively interweaving of simple text and clever pictures”.^[28] These two publishers share the translation costs, the American version is then re-edited to take into account English spelling, or vice versa.^[1] There are more than 100 titles in the series of American edition.^[29] Unlike the French version which every volume has a number on the book's spine, the British version is not put into numerical order.

List of English-translated volumes

Appendix

Title of Gallimard's Découvertes collection in other languages.

References

External links

• List of All Volumes at Gallimard Official Website (in French)
• List of Volumes of Découvertes Gallimard Hors série at Gallimard Official Website (in French)
• Alexander the Great: The Heroic Ideal (Thames & Hudson New Horizons Books) at The Irish Times
• Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Man (New Horizons, Thames & Hudson) at The Irish Times