Joseph Marie Quérard

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 littéraire, ou Dictionnaire bibliographique des savants, historiens, et gens de lettres de la France, &c. (14 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 1830, and by the help of the Russian bibliophile Serge Poltoratzky. The firm of Didot, who were his publishers, took out of his hands the Littérature française contemporaine with which he had intended to complete his work, and placed it with Ch. Louandre and F. Bourquelot. Quérard avenged himself by pointing out the errors of his successors. In spite of his claims Quérard was unable to secure a position in any of the public libraries. He died in Paris.

Among his other works are: Les superchéries littéraires dévoilées (5 vols., 1845-56); Bibliographie La Menaisienne (1849); Dictionnaire des ouvrages-polyonymes et anonymes de la littérature française, 1700-1850 (1846-47); an additional volume to La France littéraire entitled Ecrivains pseudonymes, etc. (1854-56). See Mar. Jozon d'Erquar, Querard, in La France litléraire (1854), vol. xi.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.