PIERRE BOAISTUAU - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

For instance, there is a seven-volume publication spanning the years 1568 to 1616. It
contains tomes published in Lyon (t. I, II), Paris (t. III, IV, V) and Rouen (t. VI, VII).
Another consisted of tomes published between 1579 and 1604 in Rouen (t. I, V, VII),
Lyon (t. II, III, VI), and Paris (t. IV). The 1603-1604 Rouen edition (the work’s most
complete version) had a total of 125 stories divided into seven volumes. 224 Such
examples reveal contemporary publishing strategies, where printers would collaborate
in order to maximise their profits. They also show the continuing success of Histoires
tragiques into the seventeenth century and further testify to the popularity of
anthologies at the time in France.
However, the run of editions of Histoires tragiques used for the purposes of this study
does not include the expanded versions but deals only with the publishing history of
the first tome by Boaistuau. Published exclusively in French, it had twenty editions
from 1559 until 1616. 225 Ten of them were printed in Paris (1559 – two editions,
1560, 1561, 1563, 1564, 1567, 1568, 1571, and 1580); these represent 50% of the
total number of editions, and as will be shown later, are representative of the
centralised character of Boaistuau’s work. In addition to the Parisian editions, seven
more were printed in France: five in Lyon (1564, 1575, 1578, 1596, and 1616) and
two in Rouen (1601 and 1603). There were also two editions published in Turin
(1570, 1582) and one in Antwerp (1567), which prove that the book, similarly to Le
Théâtre du monde and Histoires prodigieuses, had an international character and a
vogue outside France.
224 Boaistuau, P., Histoires tragiques (Rouen, 1603-04). Volumes 1 to 6 were printed by Adrian de
Launay, and volume 7 by Pierre l’Oyselet.
225 For a table of editions see Appendix A.
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