But we would have had a problem of light

Isabelle Gallimard: Family history

At the bottom of a Paris Court, along with artists, an apartment on two levels opens onto a large garden. A good smell of wax welcomes the visitor. The beginning, stacks of books available to look, here there, placed on a Chair, a chest of drawers. "Books to keep, offer or bound for the campaign." "Pending also read", said the master of the places, Isabelle Gallimard, CEO of the editions of the France mercury. Resonate the sound of Willie, the Habs cocker of children in the household. "The first apartment in which I installed had no library, Isabelle Gallimard recalls." I considered that the books were made to be given. I was not attached to them. Daughter of editors I had the feeling that I could always find books that I liked. And then maybe I was too surrounded library during my childhood and my teenage years. The need to keep has been progressive. "Since then, books, become"books", here are their place. The storage was not immediate. "I needed me capture the scene." The first books to have disposed of their space were those of the Pléiade, housed in the grand salon of the ground floor. "Grouped under a staircase at the beautiful steel ramp, five hundred and twenty-four volumes and forty-seven of the most prestigious collections Gallimard albums hide slices Golden fine gold behind their back of Morocco. It is derived in part reserved to the members of the family. In the apartment, the scheduling of the various libraries replied "to a Publisher Organization" but emotional tiering of books also. Among the structures inherited from its parents and grandparents Yvonne and Gaston, the most precious are housed in the House, as a beautiful young girls in flower edition dedicated by Marcel Proust to Gaston Gallimard or Verlaine Edition annotated by the latter.

A history of family of publishers says over the shelves. In a corner developed, just before the stairs, sixty-nine titles in the collection "The time found" the France mercury, inherited them as his mother, remind watermark place of Simone Gallimard in the publishing world. From 1958 until his death in 1995, it enriches a fund editorial alongside Pierre Reverdy, Louis René De forest, Paul Léautaud, Henri Michaux, Eugène Ionesco or mile Ajar, alias Romain Gary.

Mercury France, Gallimard and two territories surveyed since childhood and that remain separated in the huge library of the lounge room to eat. On the one hand the different collections edited by France mercury, the other from the Gallimard House presided over by his brother Antoine. "Initially, I had in mind something like the library my grandfather in the Val-André circular." But we would have had a problem of light. "It took thus sacrificing a piece of wall. Without regret.

Hervé de La Martinière: Photography and fiction

Little furniture, objects and books in the universe of Hervé de la Martinière, a contrast with his Office in the street wanted Christine invaded volumes and manuscripts. Located on the top floor, his Parisian apartment gives on roofs and greenery. Stripped style: beige, pistachio or white walls with, across the wide clear floor slats. This soothing framework seems as out of time and its excitement. Shelves two fairs reveal the attachment of the Publisher to the collections of pocket, small volumes striated back, aged, who have cited him right as far as the beautiful books. "It is through paperback books that I discovered reading," says the editor. They formed the first library, incorporated in adolescence after surgery of the ear to a slap in the face given by a teacher. On the side of these early works include photography, fiction, preferably American books with a particular affection for Philip Roth and Carson MacCullers. Some French authors, deemed "essential", such as Flaubert, Maupassant, Rimbaud and Verlaine.

The selection is tight. Fall and remain that the books he loves replay or connecting it to meetings or friendships. It is in the kitchen that Hervé de La Martinière selects new entrants. And nothing is definitive. The Parisian apartment country house, works travel envisaged replay and the need to browse them. Thus these books of photographs arranged on a long table of the show to which he returned regularly. There, a composite choice of works where those of Yann-Arthus Bertrand that he himself has edited do the lion's share of.

All also present on the shelves and the chimney of the show, family photos signed by almost all by the photographer in the world seen from the sky. On a chest of drawers, upside down, asked other framed photographs are waiting. "The time gives place to things," observed the pattern of one of the first global illustrated books publishing houses.

Diane Saddlemakers: Couture editorial

In the Publisher of art books Diane de Selliers, books travel at the rate of the desires of readings, emotions and publishing projects. Play room, shelf by shelf or painted in trompe l'oeil, they circulate, are ordered and accumulate in the family apartment on the top floor of a hotel particularly 18th that serves also as Office.

"The distribution of books was naturally", explains Diane de Selliers. In the House where they accumulate from floor to ceiling, "those who are particularly at heart, and to which I return regularly." Like Flaubert, Stendhal or Tocqueville. The complete collection of the works it has published sits in the entry. Fourteen volumes of a great eclecticism, ranging from the Fables of La Fontaine by Oudry to Alice in the country of the wonders of Lewis Carroll with drawings of the contemporary artist Pat Andrea, the last, just released. With one to two editions a year, the editor is confined to the major texts of French and foreign literature. Unpublished illustrations, the closest translation of the original text and a duration of design which may vary between three and seven years... Diane de Selliers is the haute couture editorial.

She worked on the preparation of his works in the spacious and bright room. Piano in white glazed tail, large canvases by Gérard Garouste, Arman sculpture, offices - hassles of 18th century - and beautiful black marble fireplace compose a framework she wanted without shelving. This does not prevent papers, books and magazines all over. In the dining room, shelving stop at hip height to allow the walls to the lithographs of the Divine Comedy by Dalí. Other journals, exhibition catalogues and booklets of Opera alongside multiple editions of Don Quixote, the Iliad and the Odyssey consulted for the publication of these works by his publishing house. The different versions of the thousand and one nights,

She would like one day edit, are collected separately. Those of the Dante's Divine Comedy that it was published in 1996 with drawings of Botticelli are a piece of furniture. "I return regularly to this fundamental book in my life." Through my job of editor, I create my ideal library, a book with one another. "Books that have a presence that envelope in silence.

Jean-Bertrand Pontalis: for books, images

"Apparent order cache disorder, congestion and the difficulty of select, to eliminate", said Jean-Bertrand Pontalis bluntly in his Paris office walls covered with books. The psychoanalyst, writer, Director of collections by Gallimard, says: "one day, my wife told me:" this is no longer possible: should sort. "." After a quarter of an hour, I was exhausted, unable to make choices. We went to the coffee. There, a man arrives, said very much enjoyed my last book and gives me a plate of his poems. It was distributed! "Difficult to choose and to maintain the flow of incoming books, especially when the fields of interest also embrace much philosophy, psychoanalysis and history than poetry, essays, literature and art. "My shelves reflect the variety of my fields of interest and the stages of my life." I had a lot of philosophy books when I was doing my studies. Today, I no longer buy and read little. The first complete editions of Marx in French that I knew when I was close to the Marxist currents, I have given them. I have kept only the volumes of La Pléiade. "Ditto for American literature discovered under the leadership of Jean-Paul Sartre, in particular Faulkner and Hemingway.

Apartment family on the ground floor, where are installed art books and novels, and his Office in the first, where he reads and receives, remain two separate universes. Single common benchmark: the more than century-old tree whose generous foliage stretches before Windows. Is no mixture in the Office, wide room punctuated by three Windows. On the wall include psychoanalysis books and dictionaries. The trials and the works of philosophy are band part on another. The classification obey alphabetical order. Placed here and there, photographs, prints and postcards. Merleau-Ponty in shorts, Sartre smoking a Gypsy corn to the flora, portrait of Nietzsche, photo paper of j. BC. Pontalis 9 years taken a summer at Cabourg, facing the sea... A line of leather, books bound volumes: "My corner Narcisse", said. More intimate place with couch and armchair, the small adjoining room is devoted to poetry and the collections he leads, the new journal of psychoanalysis that he founded to the collection "one and the other" created by Gallimard - "My little library of authors whom many have become friends." Here again, images arranged in books and in a corner, safe eyes, a series of photographs of family will be nothing.

Hubert Nyssen: A proliferation of lives

The MAS of Paradou, in the Valley of the leases, it lives with books. They are allies, accomplices, for the founder of Actes Sud. Their pervasiveness refers to the inevitable question of storage, in other words the separation. But the exile the more distant it imposes them is located right in front, two steps into the fold where Hubert Nyssen has created the famous Publishing House.

"The presence of the books is also vital as reading," said the man whose personal library, installed on the floor, opens on a vast granary. Here, in this universe teeming lives and books, Hubert Nyssen writes, reads, corresponds and receives its visitors. In the introduction: a Quartet of Haydn, a good smell of pipe and the winds of the mistral in the foliage of Sycamore planted before the House. Hubert Nyssen library tells a life - the life of man, reader, writer and editor. Organized by genres (dictionary, poetry, novel, essays, history...), it also offers with objects memories, drawings and photographs "ordered ways to interact with each other." Each refers to a particular story, at a time, to a meeting with his love of the book and... women also. "A library is a place of magic, more than a magical place, a theatre whose stage, the game belong to us," he said. On the bathroom door, Hubert Nyssen was painted in trompe l'oeil library where "friends and relatives who regretted not having written found a book signed their name". The photos Panel placed at the entrance suggests other complicity. Covered with tight portraits with each other as new meetings, those who did acts South with him, writers of the House as Paul Auster, Nina Berberova, Nancy Huston...

Last year, the donation of a portion of his library at the University of Liège has left him disoriented sometime. Almost all of his attic wall is emptied with a single stroke of all books published by his publishing house. His wife, Christine the beef, translator of Paul Auster and Alberto Manguel, helped to reorganize the vast "territory of memory and emotion", inseparable in him "of the book read, mauled and annotated.

"I believed that the books were made to be given." I was not attached to them.

Isabelle Gallimard

"It is through the Pocket Books that I discovered reading."

Hervé de la martinière

"Through my job, I created my ideal library."

Diane saddlemakers

"The apparent order cache disorder."

Jean-bertrand pontalis

"The presence of the books is also vital that their reading."

Hubert nyssen

Published last September, to the Saddlemakers Diane editions: Alice in Wonderland and the other side of the mirror of Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Pat Andrea, and the middle ages flamboyant, poetry and painting. Bookstore for the editor, 20, rue d'Anjou, 75008 Paris. Tel.: 01 42 68 09 00.

France mercury, in the "Collection blue": good night, sweet prince of Pierre Charras and paradise of Sami Tchak puppies.

Gallimard, in the collection "Voi" high: j. BC. Pontalis, a selfish reading by Daniel Pennac, audio CD; in the collection "White": Les Bienveillantes de Jonathan Littell; in the collection La Pléiade: works III (Moby Dick, Pierre or the ambiguities), Herman Melville. Last book published in j. BC. Pontalis: The brother of the previous, Gallimard.

In the editions of La Martinière: the sea. Future of the Earth, and Philip Plisson, two thousand years of gardens.

In Actes Sud: The library at night of Alberto Manguel and Nancy Huston fault lines.