Alfred-Henri-Amand Mame
Encyclopedia
Alfred-Henri-Amand Mame (b. at Tours
, 17 August 1811; d. at Tours, 12 April 1893) was a French printer and publisher.
Paul Mame (1833–1903), a son of Alfred, was the head of the firm until 1900.
, the Mame firm has been called the literary "Creusot".
Mame was also one of the principal owners of the paper-mills of La Haye-Descartes; and it could thus be said that a book, from the time when the rags are transformed into paper up to the moment when the final binding is put on, passed through a succession of workers, all of whom were connected with Mame. Daily, as early as 1865, this publishing house brought out from three to four thousand kilograms of books; it employed seven hundred workers within and from four hundred to five hundred outside.
Inspired by the social Catholic ideal, Alfred Mame established for his employees a pension fund for those over sixty, wholly maintained by the firm. He opened schools, which caused him to receive one of the ten thousand francs awards reserved for the "établissements modèles où régnaient au plus haut degré l'harmonie sociale et le bien-être des ouvriers". n 1874 Mame organized a system by which his working-men shared in the profits of the firm.
; Vétault's Charlemagne; Wallon's St. Louis; the Chefs d'oeuvres de la langue française. Quantin, the publisher, calculated that, in 1883, the Mame publishing-house issued yearly six million volumes, of which three million were bound.
Tours
Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...
, 17 August 1811; d. at Tours, 12 April 1893) was a French printer and publisher.
Mame, publishers
The founder of the Mame firm, Charles Mame, printed two newspapers at Angers in the last quarter of the eighteenth century; General Hoche had at one time hoped to marry his daughter. His eldest son, bookseller and publisher in Paris, under the First Empire, edited Chateaubriand's famous opuscule, "Buonaparte et les Bourbons", also Madame de Staël's works; and the persecutions directed against these books by the Napoleonic police caused the financial ruin of the editor. But the third son, Amand Mame, came to Tours and founded there a firm which, under the management of Alfred Mame, son of Amand, was destined to become very important.Paul Mame (1833–1903), a son of Alfred, was the head of the firm until 1900.
Business model
After having edited, together with his cousin Ernest Mame, from 1833 to 1845, some classics and a few devotional books, Alfred conceived and carried out, for the first time, the idea of uniting in the same publishing house, a certain number of workshops, grouping all the industries connected with the making of books: printing, binding, selling, and forwarding. By analogy with the great ironworks of Le CreusotLe Creusot
Le Creusot is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France.The inhabitants are known as Creusotins. Formerly a mining town, its economy is now dominated by metallurgical companies such as ArcelorMittal, Schneider Electric, and Alstom.Since the 1990s, the...
, the Mame firm has been called the literary "Creusot".
Mame was also one of the principal owners of the paper-mills of La Haye-Descartes; and it could thus be said that a book, from the time when the rags are transformed into paper up to the moment when the final binding is put on, passed through a succession of workers, all of whom were connected with Mame. Daily, as early as 1865, this publishing house brought out from three to four thousand kilograms of books; it employed seven hundred workers within and from four hundred to five hundred outside.
Inspired by the social Catholic ideal, Alfred Mame established for his employees a pension fund for those over sixty, wholly maintained by the firm. He opened schools, which caused him to receive one of the ten thousand francs awards reserved for the "établissements modèles où régnaient au plus haut degré l'harmonie sociale et le bien-être des ouvriers". n 1874 Mame organized a system by which his working-men shared in the profits of the firm.
Books
It put into circulation books of devotion, and published the Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne. La Touraine was exhibited at the Universal Exhibition of 1855, and was in its day one of the finest of illustrated books. There were the Bible with illustrations from Gustave DoréGustave Doré
Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...
; Vétault's Charlemagne; Wallon's St. Louis; the Chefs d'oeuvres de la langue française. Quantin, the publisher, calculated that, in 1883, the Mame publishing-house issued yearly six million volumes, of which three million were bound.