Librairie Galignani

Librairie Galignani was a Paris‐based English‐language publisher, bookseller, and circulating library, which supplied British travelers with newspapers, magazines, and books. During the tour of Switzerland in 1833, for example, when John Ruskin suffered a minor illness, his father and his cousin, Mary Richardson, cheered him up by finding “some English books from a library” along with “2 or 3 volumes of Gaglianiʼs [sic] Magazine” (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 106). The magazine was one of two monthly journals published by the firm, the Repertory (ca. 1807–25) or Galignaniʼs Monthly Review and Magazine (ca. 1822–25). There was also a daily, the Messenger (ca. 1814–1904) (Barber, “Galignaniʼs and the Publication of English Books in France”, 269, 284, 272–74).

Among its book publications, Galignani issued the series Standard Modern Novels and Romances, which entertained English travelers and expatriates with contemporary British poetry and prose. The editions were issued in duodecimo, a size convenient for travel, but printed using excellent type and engravings, and edited for correct and complete text—in some cases, text more complete and reliable than what could be found in London editions. As piracies, the volumes were priced significantly cheaper than corresponding London editions, and sold in paper‐covered boards—disposable volumes that could be shared among travelers at a hotel and left behind for othersʼ enjoyment (Barber, “Galignaniʼs and the Publication of English Books in France”, 269, 284, 272–74).

From his youth, Ruskin retained one of Galignaniʼs outstanding volumes in the series, The Complete Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats (1829), an edition that, at the time of publication, was superior to any British edition of Percy Shelley as well as providing and the only available edition of Keats in a collected form (Barber, “Galignaniʼs and the Publication of English Books in France”, 269, 284, 272–74; Dearden, The Library of John Ruskin, 76 [no. 556]).