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De Gulden Passer. Jaargang 80 (2002)

De Gulden Passer. Jaargang 80

(2002)– [tijdschrift] Gulden Passer, De–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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From Antwerp to Lyons: the making of a bookseller's vocation, François de Los Rios 1727-1820
Dominique Bougé-Grandon1

‘Thirdly, they claim that despite the fact that he had worked for booksellers, he can not have acquired a knowledge of the trade because he had never worked as an errand boy; from which they conclude that he was unable to familiarize himself with this trade; and that he hardly knew the French language.’2

It was with these words that the community of Lyons booksellers - whose comments were as severe as their intentions were ill-disposed - refused a certain François de Los-Rios's application to join their ranks in 1768. The audacious newcomer from Antwerp was criticized for not having learned the bookseller's trade in the time-honoured fashion, i.e. by serving his time as an apprentice and by working as a journeyman for a recognized bookseller. In addition, the booksellers were particularly mocking with respect to the foreigner's lack of mastery of the French language. So who was this Los-Rios who tried to set up in business in the 1760s on the banks of the Rhone, more than seven hundred kilometres from the estuary of the Schelde in his native Flanders?

Los-Rios, who was born in Antwerp in 1727 and died in Mechlin in 1820, was a familiar figure in the Lyons book trade throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. Intelligent and endowed with a keen business sense, he arrived in Lyons as a young man after some years of travelling which took him from from Antwerp to Paris and to Rome. For fifteen years or so he worked as an assistant (commis) for various well-known booksellers before finally obtaining the brevet, or dealer's certificate, which allowed him to set up as a bookseller in his own right in 1767. Los-Rios became a bookseller, not by going through the usual apprenticeship, but rather thanks to twenty years of experience of the trade which forged his character and

taught him the profession. As he pointed out himself in his autobiographical writings, these years were a crucial factor in his career.3

The present article concentrates on this period of development as it was portrayed in Los-Rios' own writings and as it can be traced through archival material to be found in Lyons. A close examination of these events provides us with a better understanding of the everyday reality of the Lyons book trade during the second half of the eighteenth century and of the somewhat unusual path which Los-Rios's vocation was to take.

Los-Rios's early life

The life and the personality of François de Los-Rios have already aroused considerable curiosity among Belgian and French bibliographers and bibliophiles.4 They have also caught the interest of historians working on the city of Lyons and its population during the Enlightenment.5 Los-

Rios himself, eager to leave his name to posterity, left numerous autobiographical notes and reflections on his profession, which shed light on his character and on the principal events in his life.6

It was Paul Bergmans who first established that Los-Rios was born in Antwerp in January 1727, son of Paul de Los-Rios and Marie-Catherine Lodewyckx.7 Los-Rios for his part claimed he was born in 1728, the date

which appears in the frontispiece of the Bibliographie instructive, published in 1777. Curiously, this date would appear to have been corrected by the engraver. We also learn in his marriage contract that his father - who had died by this time - was a grocer to trade.8 We know nothing of his mother however or about his childhood in Antwerp. Nor did Los-Rios leave any specific information concerning his parents.

A letter written by André de Bory in 1762 seems to suggest that the young Los-Rios left Antwerp somewhat precipitately: ‘Allow me to recommend the interests of a young man of standing [...], he is very likely of the house of Los-Rios, youthful carelessness having made him abandon his family.’9 We have no information, however, concerning the kind of ‘youthful carelessness’ to which the writer refers. The first events which Los-Rios himself tells us about are the exceptional circumstances of his arrival in France: ‘12th May 1745, on the day following the battle of Fontenoy, I left the Los-Rios regiment, of which one of my relatives was colonel in command and governor of the city of Ath in Flanders, and I arrived in Paris on the 18th.’10

As regards Los-Rios's relationship with the marquis of the same name, it seems indeed that it was real though distant, for François belonged to a poor branch of this great family of Spanish origin.11 Moreover the inhabitants of Lyons made no mistake on this point. Following the appearance of the obituary of the bookseller in the Archives historiques et statistiques du Département du Rhône, a certain Mr G. de M. wrote the following letter to the newspaper: ‘I knew fairly well the Los-Rios about whom you speak [...]. The fact is that he was born of an illegitimate branch of the illustrious Spanish family of the same name.’12 As for his presence at the battle of Fontenoy, however, there is no written evidence confirming Los-Rios's statement.

The itinerant years

The experience acquired by Los-Rios in the book trade before coming to Lyons is described at length in the autobiographical passages of his OEuvres. These descriptions, often quoted by his biographers, are our only source of information concerning this part of his life. In the OEuvres, Los-Rios makes no attempt to write his autobiography as a continuous narrative for his principal desire is to provide an account of how he learned the bookselling trade. For this reason he gives a long description of the time he spent working for the bookseller Gabriel Valleyre:13 ‘A few days later [the battle of Fontenoy and my arrival in Paris] I started work with Mr. Gabriel Valeire, printer and bookseller in St. Severin street, as a store clerk - in other words as servant to the other clerks whose orders I had to carry out.’14

Los-Rios lived on the sixth floor of Valleyre's premises in an attic storeroom which was already encumbered with books to the point of blocking out the light from the windows. This situation was to inspire his first initiative in his career as a bookseller. With the agreement of his employer he set about selling off the firm's unsold stock. Each Sunday, with the help of two young Savoyard assistants, he installed his merchandise on the quai de la Ferraille and proceeded to auction it off. The sale brought in a total of 1,964 livres for his employer.

Los-Rios also provides various other details in his accounts of his time in Paris - concerning his relations with Jean-Samuel Cailler from Geneva;15 his visits to the fair at Saint-Germain; his acquaintance with the director of the Dupuis printing office; and the pleasure he took in putting on puppet shows during which Cailler sold counting books at 6 sols each

(which he bought at 24 sols for a dozen). We have no information as to how long Los-Rios stayed with Valleyre.

In 1750, we find him in Italy. He had made the journey on foot, arriving in Rome with 21 sols in his pocket. At this point in the account he describes another interesting and fruitful experience when he worked for an Italian second-hand bookseller named Badetto16 who asked Los-Rios to compile the catalogue and sell a book collection which he had just acquired. The bookseller in question, who was lame and hunchbacked and was nicknamed Gamba Corta, was born in Frascati in 1690 the son of a footman in the service of Cardinal Azolini. ‘Excerpt concerning my journey to Italy in 1750, my arrival in Rome, my encounter with Gabriel Badetto, secondhand Vatican bookseller who exercises at the foot of the Vatican steps.’

Los-Rios also took charge of a bale of rosaries, religious prints and medals which he sold along with various almanacs, prayer books and religious songs: an activity which gave him an opportunity to discover many aspects of the city. ‘I was set up and received as a trader without having been apprenticed and without a letter patent; thanks to which I was allowed to exercise my activity not only in cafes and other public places such as passages, cloisters, galleys [sic], etc., but also within the palaces of cardinals where I was free to go everywhere except the kitchens and dining rooms.’17

It was perhaps during this period that he was able to visit the Vatican library where he saw several precious manuscripts including a ‘Hebrew bible in one of first scripts which appeared in the world’. He stayed in Rome for six months before selling his stock to another peddler and returning to France.

Los-Rios' itinerant beginnings give us an insight into the first stage in the formation of the young man's character. These professional experiences, whether real or imagined, reveal a personality in gestation in which we can already see the characteristics of the bookseller Los-Rios: inventiveness, opportunism, tenacity, a sense of business and relations, a desire for independence and a certain wiliness!

Los Rios's arrival in Lyons

It was probably on his return from Rome that the young man stopped in Lyons where he settled, thus beginning the second period in his professional education. Los-Rios worked as a clerk for several important booksellers while at the same time developing a plan which would ultimately allow him to set up on his own account. This process took place in three stages: he first of all sought a wife who would be useful to him in his projects; he then set about getting himself known; and he then took steps to obtain the necessary permission to set himself up as a bookseller.

If Los-Rios's application for recognition of his bookseller's brevet by the community of printer-booksellers in 1768 is to be relied on,18 he had already worked ten years with the Lyons printer and bookseller Aimé Delaroche and seven years with Jean Deville. A summary calculation would indicate that he arrived in Lyons sometime around 1751. His detractors emphasized the fact that he was at this time no more than an ‘errand boy’. On the other hand, at the time of his marriage in 1760, he is described as an ‘assistant bookseller’ living in Grande rue Mercière.19 It seems more than likely that he was employed as a ‘foreign correspondence clerk’. Of the booksellers of Lyons, Los-Rios has this to say: ‘The correspondence that they maintain with Paris, Holland, England and Germany allows them to easily acquire the books produced in these various countries. They make point of employing foreign assistants because of the correspondence which they maintain in many different languages.’20 Indeed it seems likely that Los-Rios read and perhaps spoke several languages: Latin, French, Spanish, and Flemish or Dutch:

Ac ne forte nimis commendatio verbosa videatur, ut nullius est fere non libri exemplar apud me singulare, ita cujus operis parandi te, amice lector, cupido incesserit, hoc mihi tum Latino, tum Gallico, tum Hispano, tum denique Batavico Belgicove idiomate cura quam citissime perscribendum.21

Marriage

On the 1st July 1760 Los-Rios married Marie-Thérèse Mesplet, daughter of the Lyons journeyman printer Jean-Baptiste Mesplet, of rue Mercière, and Antoinette Capeau:

On the first of the said month [...] I married Mr. François Los-Rios, bookseller, adult son of the late Mr. Paul Los-Rios, grocer of Antwerp and of Miss Catherine Lievans who had duly given her permission, and Miss Marie Thérèse Mesplet, minor daughter of the present Mr. Jean-Baptiste Mesplet, printer, and of Miss Antoinette Capeau. Those present were Mr. Benoist Biolley, typefounder, Benoist Rapillon, printer, François Mongin, manufacturer-trader, the required witnesses who guaranteed the liberty of the parties to marry and their current place of residence in this parish, and who signed with the couple to be married.22

It is worth looking a little closer at Los-Rios's future wife and her family. Marie-Thérèse was the sister of Fleury Mesplet,23 a citizen of Lyons who became famous by being the first French-language printer in Canada. According to his biographer Jean-Paul de Lagrave, Fleury had a younger sister named Marie-Thérèse, born on 13th February 1739. Their mother Antoinette Capeau was the sister of Marguerite Capeau who had married François Girard, an important printer in Avignon whom she had succeeded. As for Antoinette Capeau she had been in trouble with the police having been arrested with two other women in Lyons in 1747 for transporting prohibited books which they introduced into the city (under their skirts!) on the pretext of bringing them ‘quickly’ to the bookbinder.24 The books, which had been printed in Avignon and were still in sheets or quires, came from François Girard. Antoinette Capeau served a short prison sentence for her efforts.

The marriage contract25 between Marie-Thérèse and François de Los-Rios indicates that it was the widow Girard, printer and bookseller of Avignon, who provided the dowry. It is stipulated that the couple would inherit 3,000 livres.

[The widow Girard] gives by irrevocable donation between persons to the said future spouse, her niece, the sum of three hundred livres of which a hundred
and fifty livres in deniers cash and a hundred and fifty livres in the form of furniture, effects and household materials [...]. Thus the aforementioned future husband will take care of the aforementioned sum of three hundred livres and promises to give it to the aforementioned future spouse or to her legal successors should the situation arise without need for any other form of recognition or receipt. [...] also gives to the aforementioned future spouse, her niece, the sum of three thousand livres payable one year after the death of the aforementioned donor [...].26

Los-Rios's ‘marketing strategy’

The Affiches de Lyon,27 a local periodical founded by Aimé Delaroche, tells us about the second stage of Los-Rios's plan: making himself known in the city. In the autumn of 1760, shortly after his marriage, Los-Rios was mentioned in the Affiches de Lyon with the publication of several advertisements whose purpose was to make his name known. The announcements give the address of his workshop as the entrance to the Halle de la Grenette, next to rue Tupin (it should be remembered that during this period he was supposed to have been working for Delaroche or Deville!). Moreover, his commercial activities were not restricted to books. On the 19th November 1760 he described his business as follows:

[Los-Rios] sells prints, clippings, geographical maps, large and small wallpapers of a new type of manufacture which he will undertake to put up for private individuals [...]. He can also copy writings for the public, and even write letters for those who are not able to do so. He also sells books on the principles of the writing. For the convenience of the public, he undertakes to receive registrations and to provide addresses to those who do not wish to visit the Bureau d'avis.

In 1761, four announcements appeared in his name. One dated the 2nd of December indicated that he was offering 150 duodecimo volumes for sale; and on the 17th he offered: ‘a selection of small amusing, recreational

almanacs, songs and other publications at 8 sols each, handsome New Year's gifts with mirrors and the like, an assortment of Hours and several fine well-printed prints with which to decorate one's chambers.’

In 1762, he is described simply as a ‘print merchant in the Halles de la Grenette’. This year saw three further announcements and at this point he figures among those who moved on the fringes of the Lyons book trade, distributing books without really being entitled to, and regularly pursued by the established bookseller-printers. It is important to note the extremely diversified nature of Los-Rios's activities at this time and their similarity to those of what we would now call a ‘service company’. For his own part Los-Rios indicated clearly that he worked ‘for the convenience of the public’.

What kind of professional support did Los-Rios benefit from at this time? Looking at the names of those who signed his marriage contract as witnesses in 1760 we find the names of the booksellers for whom he worked: Aimé Delaroche and the widow Delaroche, Jean Deville and Jeanne Pestre Deville. These booksellers were well known in Lyons. Aimé Delaroche (1736-1793) was a prosperous printer and bookseller and competed for the post of printer to the King - a position which he did not obtain. He specialized in religious books (the Valfray collection) and contemporary works as well as offering subscriptions to numerous newspapers. Jean Deville (1733-1791) was the only one of the Deville brothers to have continued as a bookseller in Lyons after their bankruptcy in 1748. According to the Bourgelat report28 (of which we shall say more later), he did ‘Paris business only and is rightly generally well thought of’.

The marriage contract was also signed by Benoît Biolley, ‘master typefounder in Lyons where he lives in the rue des Maronniers, in the parish of Ainay’ and by the Lyons printer Benoît Rapillon. The latter was journeyman printer who married Marie Degouin, a close relative (daughter?) of André Degouin, a former journeyman and dealer in second-hand goods who was very severely punished in Lyons in 1735 for having distributed protestant books. However, the signature of a witness on a marriage contract does not necessarily imply a real commitment or a solid personal relationship. There is no trace of significant support during this period from established Lyons booksellers. Whatever the situation in the case of Los-Rios, the official community remained at this time a very selective organisation.

The situation of the Lyons bookselling trade in the 1760's

It is important to recall that the economic situation of the Lyons bookselling trade was difficult at this time and that the number of master printer-booksellers had been fixed at the very low figure of twelve by the royal authorities. In order to resist the efforts of their Parisian colleagues who heavily dominated the market, Lyons booksellers chose to defend their local monopoly. Though the enterprising Los-Rios lacked neither projects nor business acumen, openness of spirit and willingness to accept newcomers were not the order of the day. In answer to the criticisms quoted above with regard to his capacity to speak French, Los-Rios answered his detractors:

The demander, born in Antwerp in Flanders, has in truth kept the accent of his native country; for which reason it is said of him that he hardly knows the French language but in spite of this circumstance, he challenges his opponents to translate as well as he is able to and for which he would provide proof, if the brevet which he bears did not exempt him from the necessity to produce a chef d'oeuvre.29

We have a particularly clear vision of the state of bookselling in Lyons in the 1760's thanks to the report prepared by the inspector of the book trade Claude Bourgelat for the Direction de la Librairie in 1763. Bourgelat, who was also director of the Manège de Lyon, was appointed inspector of the Lyons book trade in 1760. This spirited correspondent of the Academy of sciences who contributed several fine articles to the Encyclopédie became director of the Veterinary School of Maison-Alfort in 1764. During the four years during which he assumed the responsibilities of inspector of the book trade in Lyons, he was an active defender of the new ideas and of the rights of Lyons printers and booksellers in the face of their Paris counterparts.

The report which he drew up in 1763 provides us with an extremely interesting picture of the state of bookselling in Lyons. As a whole the report is a plea on behalf of the Lyons community of booksellers which Bourgelat defends against the excessively general accusations levelled at them by their Parisian colleagues. He identifies and provides numerous details for each of the twelve Lyons printers and booksellers30 (who accounted for a total of thirty active presses out of the fifty-one officially in exis-

tence in the city), as well as twenty-four booksellers. Of the printers, most of them, such as ‘Messrs La Roche, Pierre Bruyset, Valfray, Jean-Marie Bruyset, Jean-Marie Barret and Louis Buisson’ particularly merited the confidence of the sovereign. In Bourgelat's view only a few, such as Réguilliat and Regnaud, Cutty and the widow Vialon, were printers of so-called ‘bad books’.

Bourgelat denounces two ills which he considers to be responsible for all the others: the presence of peddlers, ‘dishonourable individuals, of no fixed abode, nameless, as unknown to the booksellers who always respect religion, government and morals as they are useful to those whom no brake can retain’, and the production of the Avignon book trade which, operating beyond the frontiers of the kingdom, acts with total impunity and escapes the rules of competition.

The ‘brevet de libraire’

It was in this context that François de Los-Rios embarked on the third phase of his strategy: that of obtaining a bookseller's brevet. Though the task was not easy he benefited from the support of several influential members of the of Lyons academies31 and of the learned world in general. During the period during which he had carried out his business in the Halles de la Grenette, he had come to be appreciated by his clientele. He had been effectively accepted despite the lack of any official recognition. As we have seen in the above-quoted publicity announcements, he offered his services to the market, thereby obtaining a foothold in the second-hand book market which was emerging at this time in Lyons.

There is proof that Los-Rios made use of his Paris connections to obtain the recognition which he was unable to obtain in Lyons. On this point a letter which the academician Bory32 sent directly to Malesherbes is quite explicit. One learns moreover that Los-Rios also had the favours of the Intendant of Lyons.33 Thus Bory states that: ‘Bookselling is the only resource

on which he can call to live. Mr the Intendant to whom I have spoken on this subject several times has always granted him his protection.’34 Nevertheless Los-Rios's case was difficult to defend. On 24 March 1762, on the occasion of a complaint made by the Jesuits concerning the distribution of slanderous tracts, searches were carried out on the premises of three Lyons booksellers suspected of circulating this type of publication. Los-Rios was among them (Louis Cutty, and Miss Olier were the two other ‘booksellers’ investigated). Both his shop in the Halles de la Grenette and his home in rue Mercière were visited. Luckily the search proved negative.35 However, the agents and assistants of the community of printers and booksellers remained very suspicious with respect to Los-Rios and, bearing in mind the document which we quoted at the beginning of the present article, other measures were doubtless taken against him.

Finally, on 14 September 1767, Los-Rios obtained the King's permission to exercise as a bookseller in the capacity of a ‘foreign candidate’. As such he received: ‘a brevet or lettres de maîtrise of the art of bookselling as indicated on the receipt of the said day signed by Bertin, registered by the Comptroller general of finances, the coming third October.’36

However, Los-Rios would continue to find it difficult to obtain recognition of this brevet by his peers! In two successive requests to the lieutenant general of the Lyons police, he tried to force the agents of the Community and their deputies to register him ‘in the quality of master bookseller’. But the booksellers resisted on several points: the opportunity of a bookseller's brevet, Los-Rios's lack of any official training, his poor understanding of the French language, and his involvement in the distribution of ‘bad books’. The ordinance which he obtained on 20 January 1768 would provide him with an equivalent to his reception, installation and the registration of his brevet. The Community appealed in turn to the King's council. A ruling dated 18 March 1768 finally ordered the registration of Los-Rios's brevet, so putting an end to the debate.

The other ‘brevets’ of 1767

Los-Rios's registration was the object of a dispute with those whom he called his ‘enemies’, which he was able to win thanks to the support of influential relations. The battle was rendered all the more complicated by the existence of a parallel dispute between Los-Rios and the booksellers Flandin, Cellier, Berthoud and Morlet. Having gone into partnership with them in order to obtain the brevet, he then refused to pay his share of the costs (as did Flandin). Mention is made of this affair in a printed report drawn up by Pierre Cellier, one of the protagonists in the dispute.37 Los-Rios's principal argument was that he had obtained his brevet thanks solely to the intervention of Bertin38, the treasurer of the parties casuelles of the King. It is not known how the affair ended, but we do know that Flandin, Cellier, Morlet and Berthoud were also granted a brevet by the King in 1767.

Nothing is known either of subsequent relations between Los-Rios and his erstwhile associates, though we can give a few details concerning the career of each. A former peddler, Bernard Flandin was, like Louis-Joseph Berthoud and Los-Rios himself, one of the Société typographique de Neuchatel's Lyons correspondents. Claude Morlet and Pierre Cellier were both proprietors of reading rooms. Cellier, whose activities are better-known thanks to a study which was published several years ago,39 acquired, one after the other, two reading rooms which assured his success. Morlet, who had been a writer, book-keeper and tailor before going into the bookselling trade, did not manage to make a go of the latter activity.

Los-Rios, bookseller

Los-Rios thus completed his professional education and attained his objective of establishing himself as a bookseller on his own account. He was still only a ‘harlequin bookseller cum second-hand bookseller cum general second-hand dealer’, but he had obtained his bookseller's brevet and the foundations of his future success were laid.

Though his bibliographical knowledge remained to be perfected, he had already acquired the qualities of a good trader as well as an extensive and valuable experience. Thanks to his marriage he had a foothold on the professional ladder and he had developed a certain illicit business. He had recognized the importance of regularly published advertisements in the local press and he had understood that it was necessary above all to work ‘for the convenience of the public’. From then on he was well aware of the fact that the powerful are not avaricious for gifts if one can procure for them the books which they desire.

He had also understood the necessity of a regularly-maintained network of correspondents. The fact that he was a foreigner - a factor which was held against him by the agents of the Community - gave him an important advantage when it came to widening his circle of business contacts. It allowed him to establish links more easily with booksellers and customers in the North of Europe. As for the voyages which he made in his youth, they gave him a taste for travel, an ease with foreign languages and a facility for making contacts, and during his time in Lyons he continued to travel in France and abroad. His own accounts contain allusions to several professional trips to Amsterdam and London.

His links with Flanders should also be emphasized for he remained in touch throughout his lifetime with one of his cousins, a certain Miss Los-Rios,40 a teacher who kept a small boarding school and wrote children's books which were also published in German, Swedish and Dutch. She was a valuable contact for the bookseller Los-Rios who made a point of selling his cousin's works in Lyons.

At this point Los-Rios entered the most glorious period of his career during which his business talents came to full fruition. Until the Revolution he led a long career in Lyons as a ‘retail seller of both new and antiquarian books’, the mainstay of his business being ‘antiquarian bookselling’.41 If Los-Rios decided to intrigue and to manoeuvre in order to suc-

ceed, it was because statutory constraints and lack of adventurousness would appear to have given entrepreneurs little freedom in Lyons. Los-Rios however understood the place which he could make for himself. He took advantage of the dispersal of several libraries in the region, both religious and secular, some of which were important both in number and in quality. And it was as an antiquarian bookseller that Los-Rios played a significant role in the birth of the bibliophile market in Lyons. Book hunter, publisher of catalogues, expert, bibliographer, be put his talents to the service of this new market, making a name for himself from 1780 on as a specialist in the field of book auctions. He left Lyons shortly after 1810.

Using several French archival sources we have been able to cast some light on Los-Rios's own detailed description of his early years in the bookselling trade, and to extend it to the later period of his early life. We have thus been able to enlarge upon and provide a counterpoint to Los-Rios' account of the development his vocation by exploring three little-known aspects of his implantation in Lyons. The first point concerns what was clearly his first step towards entry into the Lyons bookselling community: his marriage to the daughter of a journeyman printer. The second concerns the shop that he set up in the Halles de Grenette, in which he steered an equivocal path between the licit and illicit. The third concerns the difficulty which Los-Rios had in getting himself recognized by the established book trade in 1767-1768, at the time when he was seeking to establish himself as a bookseller. We hope that these various points will have contributed to a better understanding of the gestation and progressive development of the vocation of this unusual bookseller.

Epilogue

On 24 November 1820, at nine o'clock in the evening, an almost blind old man aged 93 years and ten months died in the town of Mechlin. The following day his neighbours, the bootmaker Charles Selderslagh and the innkeeper François Gielis, made the following declaration to the officer in

charge of the registry office.42 The old man was: ‘a native of Antwerp who had taken up residence in the city, in section D rue de Brul no 629, widower of Marie Thérèse Misplet, son of the late Paul de Los-Rios and Marie Catherine Lodewijckx.’

 

École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques (Enssib) Lyon-Villeurbanne, France grandon@enssib.fr

Samenvatting

François Los-Rios (Antwerpen, 1727 - Mechelen, 1820) was ongeveer een halve eeuw lang gevestigd als boekhandelaar in Lyon. Hij liet ons een interessant getuigenis na van de eerste ervaringen met zijn beroep in Frankrijk en Italië. Onderzoek in de archieven van Lyon stelde ons in staat de gegevens die hij zelf verzamelde in zijn OEuvres de François de Los-Rios te verduidelijken en verder aan te vullen. Meer bepaald zijn wij in deze bijdrage ingegaan op drie weinig bekende aspecten van zijn vestiging als boekhandelaar die afwijken van Los-Rios' eigen verhaal hierover.

Ten eerste is er zijn huwelijk met de dochter van een vennoot-drukker in 1760, wat duidelijk de deuren van het Lyonese wereldje van het boek voor hem opende. Een tweede aspect is de opening van een zaak in de Halles de Grenette, waar hij gevaarlijk laveerde tussen legale en illegale praktijken. Ten slotte geven de langdurige discussies met collega's boekhandelaars naar aanleiding van zijn installatie in 1767-1768 een idee van de moeilijkheden waarmee het Antwerpenaartje af te rekenen had op zijn weg naar erkenning. We hopen op die manier de lezer inzicht te geven hoe deze verdienstelijke boekhandelaar erin slaagde langs wegen der geleidelijkheid zijn roeping waar te maken.


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