Bibliophiles et bibliomanes Collectionneurs et transmission de la littérature en français de la Renaissance

The study of ancient literatures is a tributary of the history of their ­conservation. The transmission of original works printed in the sixteenth century from one generation to the next has been rather arbitrary. As this article shows, it mainly took place by way of private collections, which explains their dispersion and rarity today, as well as the possible lacuna in the corpus.