Lending for 104 years: 1920–2024
The American Library in Paris was established in 1920 under the auspices of the American Library Association with a core collection of books and periodicals donated by American libraries to United States armed forces personnel serving their allies in World War I. The Library has grown since then into the largest English-language lending library on the European continent. It operates as a non-profit cultural association in France incorporated under the laws of Delaware.
In commemoration of our 100th anniversary in 2020, the Library created a comprehensive timeline of our remarkable history. The content of this timeline draws heavily from our archival collection and features photographs and correspondences that have never been shown to the public until now. The Library would like to acknowledge the interns who helped to make the timeline possible: Jean-Michel Lapointe, Lucy Lavabre, Julia Greider, and Caterina Stamou. We also thank the valuable contributions of the Médiathèque Françoise Sagan, the American University in Paris Library, the English-language Library in Angers, and the H.W. Wilson Foundation.
Timeline of the Library
As the United States joins the war raging in Europe, U.S. libraries ship more than two million books to U.S. service personnel through the Library War Service, founded by the American Library Association. A core collection of those books seeds the newly established American Library in Paris.
The American Library Association installs its central library in Paris at 10, rue de l’Élysée. The collection numbers 25,000 volumes and 115 periodicals under the supervision of ALA European representative Burton Stevenson and Elizabeth G. Potter, librarian-in-charge.
The American Committee for Devastated France (known as CARD- Comité Américain pour les Régions Dévastées de France) was a group of American women who volunteered to help France recover from World War I. CARD sets up many camp libraries throughout France. Anne Morgan, founder of CARD, will go on to…
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The establishment of the American Library in Paris on 20 May 1920 also means the introduction of new ways of conceiving librarianship in France. French readers are delighted by open stacks, an American innovation.
“After the darkness of war, the light of books.” The American Library’s motto figures to this day on bookplates in every book in the Library’s collection.
By December 1920, the Library has 5,000 subscribers. Each member is asked to pay 100 francs initial fee and 100 francs annually. Lifetime membership is available for 2,000 francs. The Library proves to be much in demand, circulating an average of 10,000 books a month. During its first year of…
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The periodical room is free for use by patrons and non-patrons alike, comprising a rich collection of over 100 American magazines and periodicals. A French journalist visiting on behalf of Le Figaro is especially amazed, noting, “Twelve consecutive hours of opening […] reading rooms open on Sunday afternoons […]. These…
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Robert W. Neeser, a naval historian and Library subscriber, especially appreciates the open shelves system, very uncommon in France at the time: “encyclopedias, books of reference, books such as an American Library keeps on its reference shelves in the reading room — but books which the French libraries keep under…
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Story Hour, a distinctively American import in French libraries, becomes a popular activity among young patrons. Claire Huchet, a French librarian trained in San Francisco and London, inaugurates Story Hour in November 1923, recounting three tales for the occasion: “The Three Wishes,” by Mme de Beaumont; a Provençal fairy tale;…
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In a fit of pique, Gertrude Stein tranfers her library subscription from Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Co. to the American Library. The reason behind this shift is that she feels betrayed by Beach, who decided to publish Ulysses, the masterpiece of James Joyce, her longtime modernist rival on the Parisian…
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The Library launches a monthly review named Ex Libris. The director of the Library, erudite librarian William Dawson Johnston, is the editor. Ex Libris champions new American books and a European center for American studies.
During its six years of existence, the École des bibliothécaires is housed in the American Library in Paris, providing innovative American styles of cataloging, classification, and library administration to French and international students. These new methods also have their detractors, who call it the “Library School of the Far West.”
Ernest Hemingway moves to Paris in 1921. In 1925, as he is experiencing his first literary fame, he contributes to the Library’s literary journal, Ex Libris, by writing a book review of Sherwood Anderson’s autobiography, A Story-Teller’s Story. His review is followed by Gertrude Stein’s own thoughts on the same book.
The Delegates of the Association France Grande-Bretagne, mostly teachers of English, meet in Paris and pay a visit to the Library and the École des bibliothécaires.
Faithful to its mission to be, as Burton Stevenson would phrase it, “a place to interpret the New World to the Old,” the American Library arranges free loans from its collection to all university and municipal libraries across the continent. A postage-free distribution service is secured with the governments of…
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Due to the economic depression, the Paris Library School is forced to close its doors. However, its influence will spread in many ways. Many of its 103 graduates will later hold major positions in the French library system. One of its graduates, Caroline Griffiths, opens an American-style children’s library, l’Heure…
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The Writer’s Program is a forerunner of Evenings with Authors. It features writers such as André Gide, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, and Colette. Henry Miller is a noted habitué of the American Library in the early 1930s. His 1934 novel Tropic of Cancer was banned in the United States, but…
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In need of a new location when the lease comes to an end on rue de l’Elysée, the Library moves to 9, rue de Téhéran, near the Parc Monceau, just in time for a Thanksgiving inauguration.
The American Library’s 60,000 volumes are moved in 2,000 wooden cases during November 1936.
Raised in Washington, Dorothy Reeder worked at the Library of Congress before being sent to Seville in 1929. Later that year, she becomes head of the periodical department at the American Library in Paris. She is appointed director in 1937.
Thanks to a gift from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Library becomes, with the exception of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the only institution owning a microfilm reader in France. At the time the Library has only one film: Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
In June 1940, German troops march on Paris. On September 28, the Nazi regime publishes the Otto list, an inventory of over 1,000 books considered illegal by the occupying force. Dr. Hermann Fuchs, the Berlin librarian in charge of the enforcement of the banned list, pays a visit to the…
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Dorothy Reeder recalls: “From the beginning requests came to us from all parts of France, Algeria, Syria, and even from the British headquarters in London to take care of their men in France until they could […] ship reading material to them. […] When the soldier finished reading his books…
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Eighteen months after Paris falls to the Nazis, Dorothy Reeder leaves France for America and is replaced by the Countess de Chambrun. In her memoir, Chambrun recalls the power transfer: “Miss Reeder […] left on the desk which was to become mine, a card solemnly delegating me to fill her…
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The Comtesse de Chambrun’s son, René, marries Pierre Laval’s daughter Josée in 1935. Laval is a prominent figure under Pétain’s government under occupied France. Chambrun’s connection with Laval helps the American Library remain open during the Nazi turmoil. However, this connection also implies collaboration with the Germans. René de Chambrun…
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Boris Netchaeff, then senior librarian of the American Library, is shot in the lung for not raising his hands quickly enough when being arrested. He is imprisoned and later released.
Milton E. Lord, director of the Boston Public Library, is asked to take over the direction of the American Library, fearing Chambrun’s connection with the Vichy regime might imperil the Library. No charge is brought against Chambrun and her son, and she denies the allegations of being a collaborationist. She…
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As French ambassador Henri Bonnet expressed, the American Library provides “an open window on the free world” during this dark period of European history. During the Occupation, the Library staff mount their own resistance campaign by delivering books to Jewish members who have been forbidden by the Nazis to use…
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The Left Bank branch is housed in a building donated by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, situated within a few blocks from the Sorbonne, at 173, boulevard Saint-Germain. The branch offers a rich collection of literature at the disposal of professors and students. The branch closed in 1955 ―…
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In 1950, the United States Information Service (USIS) asks the Library to create branches throughout France. Roubaix will be the first – providing the first public reading room the city has ever had – followed by Rennes, Nantes, Toulouse, Montpellier, Grenoble, Saint-Etienne, and Nancy.
The Library celebrates its 30th anniversary in the Mazarine Gallery of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Four hundred guests attend.
Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare & Company in 1919 at 8, rue Dupuytren as both a lending library and a bookstore. The bookstore closed in 1940 and never re-opened. Beach gives 5,000 books by English and American authors to the Library in 1951.
On 2 November 1952, the American Library moves to 129, avenue des Champs-Élysées, only a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe.
Roy Cohn and David Schine, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigators searching for anti-American works and Communist-inspired literature, are turned away at the door by director Ian Forbes Fraser, who tells them the Library is private and has no connection with the U.S. government. Later in 1953, the American Library Association adopts…
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Thanks to gifts from the Cleveland Public Library and the National Library in London, the American Library hosts the first Braille book collection on the European continent. In the years to come, this collection will be supplemented by talking books, numbering 2,000 long-playing records in 1958, some of them recorded…
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After nine years of operation, the Roubaix branch of the American Library in Paris closes because the city’s administration decides to create its own municipal library. According to the report made by Ian Forbes Fraser, then director of the American Library, “the new library copies our methods and approach to…
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The Library moves to 10, rue du Général Camou, 75007. Purchase and transformation costs amount to about $700,000. These are the first premises the Library actually owns.
The previous occupant of the Général Camou location was a department store, Les Grands Magasins du Louvre, which used the building and others nearby as a depot.
An agreement is signed in October 1966 between both institutions in order to provide a lending library adapted to the curriculum activities of the American College in Paris, founded in 1962.
While massive civil unrest led by students and workers paralyzes parts of France, and especially Paris, the American Library is perhaps the only library open in the city. Public transportation is shut down and protests come close to the Champ de Mars nearby.
The Paris Observer is published by American Library, with Alice-Leone Moats as editor. The goal of this English-language magazine is to give American residents and tourists insight into Paris’s cultural heritage. However, the magazine is short-lived and ceases publication after six issues (June to December 1972).
Famous French composer and music teacher Nadia Boulanger passes away in 1979. Some books of her collection are given to the Library in 1981, mostly classics and poetry, many of them annotated in her own handwriting.
French correspondent of The New Yorker from 1925 to 1975, where she wrote her Letter from Parisunder the pen name Genêt, Flanner was a symbol of the American literary expatriate life in Paris. Many of the books in her collection are filled with hand-written notes which she later used to write her book…
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After the donation of a computer by IBM in 1984, the Library acquires in the subsequent years many new devices to automate library work. In 1989, on the verge of a new era, the Library starts using computers for cataloguing and circulation of the collection.
Simon Gallo, then head of the collections department, recalls the event: “When she died, her grandson, Peter Riva, called the Library, saying that he had 1700 books that belonged to Marlene Dietrich. The next day, a moving truck arrived with the whole set of books.” Dietrich had the habit of…
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On 1 December 1993, the Bibliothèque anglophone d’Angers is officially inaugurated. Their collection is drawn from the Nantes branch of the American Library which closed in the early 1990s.
In honor of his grandfather, Charles Seeger, one of the founders and first presidents of the Library, folksinger Pete Seeger donates a copy of his grandfather’s memoirs. As a gift to the Library, he also records the poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” written by his uncle Alan Seeger,…
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A grant from the United States Information Service provides Internet access to the American Library members. Public access terminals are named Gertrude and Ernest, honoring the famous contributors to our original Ex Libris literary magazine.
The Annenberg Foundation sponsors the Evening With Authors program, free and open to the public, and sustains the position for the children’s librarian.
Book groups on different themes begin twice a year and meet once a month at the Library to discuss books and exchange perspectives about characters and plot in an informal and friendly environment.
The Visiting Fellowship offers writers and researchers an opportunity to pursue a creative project in Paris for a month or longer while participating actively in the life of the American Library. The Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of The de Groot Foundation.
The Library’s Book Award is given annually to a distinguished book written in English about France or the French. The Award is made possible by a generous grant from the Florence Gould Foundation.
Library members and book-lovers gather at the nearby Eiffel Tower to show support for reading and libraries.
The Library is transformed by a renovation project in the summer creating a new façade, new study spaces on the mezzanine and lower levels, a soundproofed reading room, and a members’ lounge. E-books and e-magazines are made available to members.
The Library establishes the Writer-in-Residence program with Viet Thanh Nguyen as the first resident writer. Also launched is the Sponsored Membership Program, which offers no-cost annual membership to people with official refugee status and other populations in need. English and French conversation groups start.
Detailed History
During the closing years of World War I, when the United States entered the conflict, hundreds of American libraries launched the Library War Service, a massive project to send books to the doughboys fighting in the trenches – by the Armistice, nearly a million and a half books.
The American Library in Paris was founded in 1920 by the American Library Association and the Library of Congress with a core collection of those wartime books and a motto about the spirit of its creation: Atrum post bellum, ex libris lux: After the darkness of war, the light of books. Its charter promised to bring the best of American literature, culture, and library science, to readers in France. It soon found an imposing home at 10, rue de l’Elysée, the palatial former residence of the Papal Nuncio.
The leadership of the early Library was composed of a small group of American expatriates, notably Charles Seeger, father of the young American poet Alan Seeger (“I Have a Rendezvous with Death”), who had died in action in 1916 (and who would have become the uncle of the folk singer Pete Seeger). Among the first trustees of the Library was the expatriate American novelist Edith Wharton. Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, early patrons of the Library, contributed articles to the Library’s periodical, Ex Libris, which is still published today as a quarterly newsletter. Thornton Wilder and Archibald MacLeish borrowed our books. Stephen Vincent Benét wrote “John Brown’s Body” (1928) at the Library. Sylvia Beach donated books from her lending library when she shuttered Shakespeare & Co. in 1941.
The Library’s continuing role as a bridge between the United States and France was apparent at the beginning. The French president, Raymond Poincaré, along with French military leaders such as Joffre, Foch, and Lyautey, were present when the Library was formally inaugurated. An early member of the board was Clara Longworth de Chambrun, member of a prominent Cincinnati political family and sister of the U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nicholas Longworth.
A succession of talented American librarians directed the Library through the difficult years of the Depression, when the first evening author programs drew such French literary luminaries as André Gide, André Maurois, Princess Bonaparte, and Colette for readings. Financial difficulties ultimately drove the Library to new premises on the rue de Téhéran in 1936.
With the coming of World War II, the occupation of France by the Nazi regime, and the deepening threats to French Jews, Library director Dorothy Reeder and her staff and volunteers provided heroic service by operating an underground, and potentially dangerous, book-lending service to Jewish members barred from libraries. One staff member, Boris Netchaeff, was shot by the Gestapo when he failed to raise his hands quickly enough during a surprise inspection.
When Reeder was sent home for her safety at the end of 1941, Countess de Chambrun rose to the occasion to lead the Library. In a classic Occupation paradox, the happenstance of her son’s marriage to the daughter of the Vichy prime minister, Pierre Laval, and her family’s other social and business connections ensured the Library a friend in high places. That, along with the pre-war esteem of German “Library Protector” Dr. Hermann Fuchs for Dorothy Reeder and the Library, granted the institution a near-exclusive right to keep its doors open and its collections largely uncensored throughout the war. A French diplomat later said the Library had been to occupied Paris “an open window on the free world.”
The Library prospered again in the postwar era as the United States took on a new role in the world, the expatriate community in Paris experienced regeneration, and a new wave of American writers came to Paris – and to the Library. Irwin Shaw, James Jones, Mary McCarthy, Art Buchwald, Richard Wright, and Samuel Beckett were active members during a heady period of growth and expansion. During these early Cold War years, American government funds made possible the establishment of a dozen provincial branches of the American Library in Paris, even one in the Latin Quarter. The Library moved to the Champs-Elysées in 1952. It was at that address that Director Ian Forbes Fraser barred the door to a high-profile visit from Roy Cohn and David Schine, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s notorious anti-Communist investigators, who were touring Europe in search of “Red” books in American libraries.
The Library purchased its current premises, two blocks from the Seine and two blocks from the Eiffel Tower, in 1964 – making way on the Champs-Elysées for the Publicis monument, Le Drugstore. On the rue du Général Camou, the Library helped to nurture the growth of the American College of Paris’s fledgling library. Today, as part of the American University in Paris, that library is our neighbor. The branch libraries ended their connections to the American Library in Paris in the 1990s; three survive under new local partnerships.
Since the turn of the century, the Library has dramatically expanded its digital collections, its programming, and its reach into the English-speaking communities of Paris. In 2016, the Library underwent its first significant renovation in a half-century, creating new spaces for programming, study, and interaction. The Library celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020, looking to build on the remarkable heritage of its first century.
