Les soubassements religieux d’une réussite éditoriale : le cas de la maison Mame à Tours

Abstract

The exceptional development of the Mame publishing house in Tours under the Second Empire has many a time been underlined by the historians of the book and associated with Alfred Mame, a visionary entrepreneur and an excellent organizer. However, by replacing the stages of this success story within the framework of the history of the Church, this study aims at showing that the Tours firm would probably not have known such a development if it had not found in the Church a powerful ally. Indeed, the Mame strategy, as early as the Restoration, was built in contact with the ultramontane and legitimist clergy. The latter was engaged in a politics of reconquest of souls through the book, involving more or less secret societies, with international ramifications. From its implication in the Good Books Society to the creation of series for the Christian Youth, the route of the Mame House, from the Restoration to the advent of the Second Empire testifies to the offensive then led.