Collecting, preserving and promoting the press kits of publishing houses has been one of the Imec’s major missions since its creation. Launched in 2018 on Irène Lindon’s initiative, the project of digitizing the Éditions de Minuit historical press kits open up a new field of research in the history of publishing and ideas.

The press kits cover the years 1950 to 1990. It includes important documents on French language literature and especially on the Nouveau Roman and its authors (Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet); on the Resistance and the decolonization (Henri Alleg, Pierre Vidal-Naquet); and on contemporary thinkers (Kostas Axelos, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida...).

The database is the result of a collective effort by the collections team and offers cross-searching options on the entire digitized corpus, both thematically and chronologically. In addition to the traditional "title" and "date" fields, the data are indexed to the name of the author being reviewed and to the reviewer’s name.

This project was carried out with the participation of Éditions de Minuit and with the support of DRAC Normandie - Programme national de numérisation et de valorisation des contenus culturels.

Imec would like to thank Irène Lindon and Anne Simonin.