The only literary agency collection held at the Imec is divided into two groups: the Hoffman literary agency and the Bradley literary agency. The former, founded in Paris in 1934 by Michel Hoffman, initially represented Anglo-Saxon agents, authors and publishers. Subsequently, Jenny Bradley carried on with the company, mixing pre-war Anglo-Saxon authors with prestigious names of contemporary French literature (Gide, Malraux, Camus, Sartre).

Throughout the twentieth century, bookstores were important places of literary friendship, where works in the making were read and where great works of world literature were translated. Foremost among these bookshops was Adrienne Monnier’s Maison des amis des livres, "the favorite meeting place of the literary Tout-Paris, from Aragon to Walter Benjamin, from André Gide to Nathalie Sarraute" (Laure Murat), whose archives are held at the Imec.

Early documents of the first booksellers’ unions are also to be found in this collection, especially in the large corpus of documents resulting from the activities of the Cercle de la librairie, founded in 1847 and still active today. In addition to its archives, the Imec also holds the Bibliothèque technique du Cercle de la librairie, which is open for research.

File plan, « Edition et métiers du livre » section, « Agents littéraires », « Interprofession », « Libraires » and « Bibliothèque » subsection