Rosengarten.] -L^ [Jan. 4, 



Tke Paris Book Exidbition of IS94. 



By J. G. Rosengarten. 



{Read before the American Philosophical Society, January 4, 1S93.) 



The November-December number of the Paris Bulletin du Bibliophile 

 contains exhaustive notices of the "Exposition du Livre," opened at the 

 Palais de I'lndastrie, in Paris, during the summer of 1894. To those 

 wlio had the good fortune to see this wealth of illustrations of the whole 

 liistory of books in France, these notices are most useful, for there was 

 no catalogue to guide the visitor through the vast space filled with the 

 treasures of the collectors of Paris. To those who knew of the exhibition 

 only from brief newspaper notices, ii may be of interest to learn some- 

 thing of its extent and importance. 



It had special significance in its fine examples of typography, illustra- 

 tion and bookbinding, but besides these, it had original drawings and 

 engravings, and an almost endless variety of rarities — a whole history 

 of the making of paper and its uses, a complete series of assignats, 

 and great numbers of old specimens of mercantile paper, bills, drafts, 

 shares of stock, stamped papers from the time of Louis XIV to our own, 

 playing cards of every country — a whole series from China for instance 

 — fans, invitations to dinners, fetes and other entertainments, public and 

 private, notices of service in the National Guard, visiting cards, not the 

 commonplace pasteboard of to-day, but rich in vignettes and other 

 ornamental illustration. There was a wealth of theatrical and other 

 posters, in which the French led the way for an artistic development 

 that has since spread all around the world. Autograph letters and 

 documents, dating back for the last tliree centuries, were displayed in 

 great profusion, under the title of "graphology." A whole series of 

 papers showing the papermakers' marks, for a long series of years, was 

 quite an important contribution. 



The newspaper collection was very large, from tlie Gazette de France, 

 founded in 1631, through the whole history of French periodicals. A 

 number of T' Ami du Peuple, much discolored, is said to be the very 

 copy in the hand of Marat, and stained with his blood when he was 

 stabbed in his bath by Cliarlotle Corday. There were all the illustrated 

 journals and newspapers so characteristic of French taste. 



There was a large collection of ornamental letters and other typogra- 

 phical ornaments of the printers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centu- 

 ries, their catalogues, the decrees of Parliament ordering the destruction 

 of condemned books and the punishment of the book peddlers who 

 offered them for sale. There were whole series of printed books and 

 very striking examples of bookbinding, engraving, typography, from the 

 very outset to our own day, the bad and indifferent as characteristic as 

 the good and the best. There was a fragment of the Biblia Puuperum, 



