| Further information on refused prints The Record of Prints and Photographs which were Refused Authorization for Publication in France. Prepared for the Image of France -- at ARTFL. |
| Censorship
occurs commonly in publishing history. The following documentation concerns
an episode in French history when legislators sought to control the dissemination
of prints and photographs by the intrusion of a requirement of apriori
authorization.
The requirement that every newly produced print and photograph be officially examined and approved before it could be distributed or displayed to the public was instituted by legislation of 1820, renewed in 1822, 1835 and 1852 . Suspended following the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, this apriori censorship was not definitively abolished until the Loi sur la liberté de la presse of 29 July 1881(see this link for a calendar of relevant laws). The procedure was administered by the Bureau de l’Imprimerie et de la Librairie alongside the requirement of legal deposit, according to which copies of all new publications in France must be filed with the government (since 1810). Prior approval concerned all kinds of prints and photographs, textual illustrations as well as single sheets. Infractions were policed, prosecuted and severly punished -- and an important documentation of the prints and photographs which were refused authorization resulted from this activity. Rarely consulted and, evidently, incomplete, it survives today among the bureau’s papers at the Archives nationales de France in Paris. The links from this page are for transcriptions of these listings which were made for the Image of France project by Gervaise Brouwers and Mehdi Korchane during 2005-2006. Performed directly from the surviving registers for refused prints (ANF F* 18 VI 48 and F* 18 VI 133, see this link for further information), they are intended to serve in the place of access to the registers themselves, which are in poor condition and ordinarily available only in the form of a scarcely legible microfilm. The transcriptions were made possible by the special assistance of conservateurs of the Section du dix-neuvième Siècle of the Archives nationales and, in particular, with the encouragement of Patrick Laharie -- this presentation is dedicated to the memory of his kindness. The work was funded by a grant of the Andrew Mellon Foundation to Binghamton University for development of the Image of France project. . George McKee |
F*18 VI 48 1834
|