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| Founded | 1941 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Jean Bruller and Pierre de Lescure |
| Country of origin | France |
| Headquarters location | Paris |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | www |
Les Éditions de Minuit (French:[lez‿edisjɔ̃dəminɥi],Midnight Press) is a Frenchpublishing house. It was founded in 1941, during theFrench Resistance ofWorld War II, and is still publishing books today.[as of?]
Les Éditions de Minuit was founded by writer and illustratorJean Bruller and writerPierre de Lescure (1891–1963) in 1941 inParis, during theGerman occupation of northern France (by November 1942, German forces occupied all of France). At the time, the media and all forms of publishing were controlled andcensored by the Nazi occupiers.Les Éditions de Minuit was started to circumvent the censorship. It was anunderground publisher until the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944.
Le Silence de la mer(The Silence of the Sea) (1942) by co-founder Bruller (who wrote under the pseudonymVercors) was the first book published. Distribution, as with other Resistance texts, was based on being passed from person to person.
Le Silence de la mer was followed in 1943 byChroniques interdites (banned newspaper columns, various authors),L'Honneur des poètes(The Honour of poets) poetry collected byPaul Éluard,Le cahier noir(The Black Notebook) byFrançois Mauriac, andLe musée Grévin(The Grévin Museum) byLouis Aragon.
A small group ofprinters joined Bruller and de Lescure, and together they risked imprisonment and death to publish works by some of France's greatest authors (who wrote under pseudonyms). The authors includedPaul Éluard,Louis Aragon,Jacques Maritain,François Mauriac,Jean Paulhan,André Chamson,André Gide, and the first unabridged French translation ofJohn Steinbeck'sThe Moon Is Down (Nuits noires).
After the war, whenLes Éditions de Minuit was able to operate openly, it continued to publish books but struggled in the early postwar years to become financially stable. The publishing house was directed byJérôme Lindon from 1947 until his death in 2001. His daughter, Irène Lindon, succeeded him.
In the 1950s, the company began to be more successful. Lindon was the first to publish several novels bySamuel Beckett, who wrote in French as well as English, and was resident in France at the time. Other authors published includeMonique Wittig,Alain Robbe-Grillet,Claude Simon,Marguerite Duras andRobert Pinget, who constituted the backbone of theNouveau roman literary movement. It also publishedHenri Alleg'sLa Question (1958) on the use oftorture by the French Army during theAlgerian War (1954–62). The book wascensored.
From the late 1970s to the mid-80s, Lindon and the Éditions de Minuit promoted several young French authors such asJean Echenoz, soon joined byJean-Philippe Toussaint (from Belgium),Jean Rouaud,Marie NDiaye,Patrick Deville,Éric Chevillard, and lately byLaurent Mauvignier andJulia Deck. These have been classified under the tag of "Style Minuit", characterized by a certain writing renewal (partially influenced by the Nouveau Roman), based on minimalist formalism mixed with an elaborated style.[1][2][3]
From its foundation to 2015, the Éditions de Minuit have, through their authors, won twoNobel Prize in Literature (Samuel Beckett andClaude Simon), threePrix Goncourt (The Lover byMarguerite Duras,I'm Off byJean Echenoz andFields of Glory byJean Rouaud), sevenPrix Médicis, onePrix Renaudot and threePrix Femina.[3]
The style of the front covers of Les Éditions de Minuit books is nearly as spare as the wartime edition ofLe Silence de la mer. The only decoration is a blue border and the symbol of Les Éditions de Minuit:a star and the letter "m".
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