Jacques Schiffrin (March 28, 1892,

Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...

– November 17, 1950, New York City) was an editor and French translator, famous for the creation of Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1923 and was integrated with Gallimard in 1933.

Biography

Jacques Schiffrin came from a non-practicing Jewish family in

. Graduated in law from the Faculty of Geneva, he moved to Paris in 1922 after the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...

of 1917 which made him flee to Monte-Carlo.

Editor

Passionate about literature, he created in Paris the editions of the Pléiade / J. Schiffrin & Co. in 1923, located at 6 rue Tournefort.''L'histoire de la Pléiade « Mon ami Schriffrin »'' par André Gide
sur le site de Gallimard. In November 1925, he founded with Joseph Poutermann, his brother-in-law, and Alexandre Halpern, the Société des Amis de la Pléiade. In 1931, he launched a luxury edition of the great French and foreign authors, the “Linked Library of the Pléiade” in which appeared a dozen volumes including the works of

Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited fro ...

, Racine, Voltaire, Edgar Allan Poe, Laclos, Musset and Stendhal. He befriended many great writers of this period and especially with Andre Gide, with whom he made the translation of news of Pushkin, and where he became a close friend with whom he talks a very important match for 30 years. It was André Gide who pushed Gaston Gallimard, owner of the NRF editions, to integrate the Pléiade Library into the Gallimard editions, something that will be carried out on July 31, 1933. Schiffrin then becomes the first director of this collection. Naturalized French in 1937, Schiffrin was mobilized in 1939 into the French army. The November 5, 1940, following anti-Jewish laws, he was suddenly dismissed by Gaston Gallimard and went to take refuge in the United States with his family in 1941, via Marseille, Casablanca and Lisbon with the financial assistance of André Gide.« La fabrique Schiffrin »
dans ''

Libération ''Libération'' (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Initially positioned on the far-left of France's ...

'' du 12 avril 2007. He moved to New York to continue his publishing profession by founding the

Pantheon Books Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Random House, Inc. Datamonitor Company Profiles Authority: Retrieved 6/20/2007, from EBSCO Host Business Source ...

editions with the German publisher couple Helen and Kurt Wolff. He never returned to France and died in New York from a respiratory illness.''Correspondance André Gide-Jacques Schiffrin''
sur le site de Gallimard.

The translator

Jacques Schiffrin translated Russian authors ( Tourgueniev,

Pouchkine Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (; rus, links=no, Александр Сергеевич ПушкинIn pre-Revolutionary script, his name was written ., r=Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn, ...

, Gogol, Dostoïevski) into French, which were published in 1929 by his first publishing house, and, after the war, by the French Book Club.Voir notices bibliographiques
sur le catalogue général de la BnF.

Personal life

Jacques Schiffrin is the brother of film producer

Simon Schiffrin Simon may refer to: People * Simon (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name Simon * Simon (surname), including a list of people with the surname Simon * Eugène Simon, French naturalist and the genus ...

. He was married, from 1921 to 1927, to the French pianist Youra Guller, before her departure for Shanghai. He remarried Simone Heymann with whom he had two children, including André Schiffrin born in 1935..

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schiffrin, Jacques French book publishers (people) 1892 births 1950 deaths Azerbaijani Jews French people of Azerbaijani descent People from Baku Soviet emigrants to France