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Back to article: JOSEPH MARIE QUERARD (1797-1865)

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QUERARD, JOSEPH MARIE (1797-1865), French bibliographer, was born at Rennes on the 25th of December 1797. He was apprenticed to a bookseller in his native town, and was sent abroad on business. He remained in Vienna from 1819 to 1824, and there drew up the first volumes of his great work, La France lilteraire, ou Dictionnaire bibliographique des savants, historiens, et gens de lettres de la France, &c. (10 vols., 1826-1842), dealing especially with the 18th and early 19th centuries, which he was enabled to complete by a government subsidy granted by Guizot in 183o, and by the help of the Russian bibliophile Serge Poltoratzky. The firm of Didot, who were his publishers, took out of his hands the Litterature francaise contemporaine with which he had intended to complete his work, and placed it with Ch. Louandre and F. Bourquelot. Querard avenged himself by pointing out the errors of his successors. In spite of his claims Querard was unable to secure a position in any of the public libraries. He died in Paris on the 3rd of December 1865.
Among his other works are: Les supercheries titteraires devoilees (5 vols., 1845–56); Bibliographie La Menaisienne (1849); Dictionnaire des ouvrages-polyonymes et anonymes de la litterature francaise, 1700–1850 (1846–47); an additional volume to La France littiraire entitled Ecrivains pseudonymes, &c. (1854–56). See Mar. Jozon d'Erquar, Querard, in La France litteraire (1854), vol. xi.