Mercure de France - The Original Mercure Galant and Mercure de France

The Original Mercure Galant and Mercure De France

The Mercure galant was founded by the writer Jean Donneau de Visé in 1672. The name refers to the god Mercury, the messenger of the gods; the title also echos the Mercure françoys which was France's first literary gazette, founded in 1611 by the Paris bookseller J. Richer.

The magazine's goal was to inform elegant society about life in the court and intellectual/artistic debates; the gazette (which appeared irregularly) featured poems, anecdotes, news (marriages, gossip), theatre and art reviews, songs, and fashion reviews, and it became fashionable (and sometimes scandalous) to be mentioned in its pages. Publication stopped in 1674, but began again as a monthly with the name Nouveau Mercure galant in 1677.

The Mercure galant was a significant development in the history of journalism (it was the first gazette to report on the fashion world (DeJean, 47)) and played a pivotal role in the dissemination of news about fashion, luxury goods, etiquette and court life under Louis XIV to the provinces and abroad. In the 1670s, articles on the new season's fashions were also accompanied with engravings (DeJean, 63; see this work for an extensive analysis of the Mercure galant's mediatization of styles and fashion).

The gazette was frequently denigrated by authors of the period. The name Mercure galant was used by the playwright Edmé Boursault for one of his plays critical of social pretensions; when Donneau de Visé complained, Boursault retitled his play Comédie sans titre (Play without a title).

The gazette played an important role in the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns", a debate on whether the arts and literature of the 17th century had achieved more than the illustrious writers and artists of antiquity, which would last until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and the Mercure galant joined the "Moderns". Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was pushed into the role of champion of the "Anciens", and Jean Racine, Jean de La Fontaine and Jean de La Bruyère (who is famous for a jibe against the gazette: "le Mercure... est immédiatement au dessous de rien" ) took his defense.

The periodical eventually became a financial success and it brought Donneau de Visé comfortable revenues. The Mercure de France became the uncontested arbiter of French arts and humanities, and it has been called the most important literary journal in prerevolutionary France.

Thomas Corneille was a frequent contributor to the gazette. The Mercure continued to be published after Donneau de Visé's death in 1710. In 1724 its title was changed to Mercure de France and it developed a semi-official character with a governmentally-appointed editor (profits were invested into pensions for writers). Jean-François de la Harpe was the editor in chief for 20 years; he also collaborated with Jacques Mallet du Pan. Other significant editors and contributors include: Marmontel, Raynal, Chamfort and Voltaire.

It is on the pages of the May 1734 issue of the Mercure de France that the term "Baroque" makes its first attested appearance - used (in pejorative way) in an anonymous, satirical review of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie.

Right before the revolution, management was handed over to Charles-Joseph Panckoucke. During the revolutionary era, the title was changed briefly to Le Mercure français. Napoleon stopped its publication in 1811, but the review was resurrected in 1815. The review was last published in 1825.