Groupe de La Cité
| Parent company | Editis |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1943 |
| Founder | Sven Nielsen |
| Country of origin | France |
| Headquarters location | Paris |
| Distribution | Interforum |
| Imprints |
Futurama Futurama Superlights |
| Official website | www |
Presses de la Cité is a French publishing company founded in 1943 by Sven Nielsen, the son and grandson of booksellers, who came to Paris in 1924. Before becoming a publisher, Nielsen specialised in exporting French books.
In 1988, with its merger with Larousse-Nathan, Groupe de La Cité became the second-largest publishing company in France and the tenth-largest in the world. It was acquired by Vivendi Universal Publishing and is now part of Editis.
Having first specialised in translating American novels, Presses de la Cité first published home-produced work in 1946 with Je me souviens... by Georges Simenon, which became the first part of his novel Pedigree. At a rate of three or four books a year, Presses de la Cité published 140 of Simenon's novels and collections. Following Simenon's example, other French-language authors signed with the company, including Henri Queffélec, Cécil Saint-Laurent, Maurice Genevoix, René Barjavel, and Konsalik.
Starting in 1958, the company started on a stream of acquisitions:
In 1962, Presses de la Cité started a paperback imprint called Presses-Pocket. The following year, this was merged with Fleuve Noir.
In April 1965, Nielsen bought a majority stake in Union Générale d'Éditions (UGE), founded in 1962, which included the imprints Plon, 10/18, Éditions du Rocher, Éditions Julliard and Jean-Jacques Pauvert, and the distributor Sequana. One of the publishers, Christian Bourgois, founded his own publishing house under the Presses de la Cité umbrella and, in 1968, was nominated director of 10/18. After these acquisitions, the Sven Nielsen group became the second-largest French publisher, after Hachette Livre. It diversified into publishing works on social sciences and for the youth market.
...
Wikipedia