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Robert Laffont, affectionately known as the grandfather of French publishing, died on 19th May aged 93.
The son of a naval officer, Laffont first embarked unenthusiastically on a legal career. But then came the second world war and a radical change of direction. Hesitating between cinema and books, his friend and sometime partner Guy Schoeller, who then worked for Hachette, warned him that both lead to certain ruin—but that the first was more rapid and the second more refined.
But Laffont was not destined for ruin. He created his own publishing house, Editions Robert Laffont, in 1941, and was responsible for more than 10,000 titles, including a number of bestsellers, such as Henri Charrière’s Papillon.
The thriving publishing house attracted authors such as Mickhail Bulgakov, Dino Buzzati, Gilbert Cesbron, Bernard Clavel, Graham Greene, Henry James, John Le Carré, Norman Mailer, Claude Michelet, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John Steinbeck, and Olivier Todd. The business was bought by Les Presses de la Cité, a subsidiary of the Havas group, in 1999 and by Wendel Investissement in 2004. At that point, Laffont retired.
A charmer, who was married four times, Laffont was not without enemies. He was generally scorned by intellectuals and was sidelined by the annual literary prizes, said the French daily Libération. In 1986, he took a full page in the newspaper to denounce the monopoly of Gallimard,
Grasset and Le Seuil, which "for more than a quarter of a century have controlled the juries of the major literary prizes".
Laffont understood "that it was not demeaning to wish to increase the circle of readers by making books more popular, cheaper, more accessible," commented French president Nicolas Sarkozy. "He was able to transmit his passion for books to his readers and (some of) his children, who have followed in his footsteps."
Isabelle and Laurent Laffont run Editions JC Lattès and Anne Carrière created her own eponymous publishing house.