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Friday, January 23, 2009

A 19thC map of Paris for English tourists

Here is a lovely map of Paris which has come into special collections from the stacks (this happens quite often, since the PPL was founded in 1875).

Giovanni Antonio Galignani (1757–1821) was an Italian-born publisher and journalist who lived in London for some time before moving to Paris around 1800, when he began publishing an English-language newspaper entitled Galignani’s Messenger. In 1810 he opened a bookstore where he sold many of his own publications, including, most likely, this map, his only known cartographic endeavor. Galignani would have prepared this map for sale to English tourists. Following his death in 1821, both the bookstore and publishing firm were taken over by his sons, John Anthony and William Galignani. Galignani’s is still one of the finest English-language bookshops in Paris (http://www.galignani.com/).

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