Editions Perrin, France’s leading history publisher, and the Fondation Napoléon have joined forces to create the “Bibliothèque Impériale”, the little sister of the collection the “Bibliothèque de Sainte-Hélène”, which was a great success between 2020 and 2022. Each year a volume will be published containing primary sources essential to the study of the two Empires. The evolution of books and reading habits makes this a difficult undertaking, even though the sources are the foundations of historical knowledge, as well as often fascinating documents.

The first volume in this collection, published on 13 February 2025, is the diary kept by Pierre-Louis Roederer throughout his Napoleonic career. He was one of the accomplices of the Brumaire Coup d’état, president of the Interior section of the Council of State during the Consulate, senator during the First French Empire, Minister of Finance of the Kingdom of Naples during the reign of Joseph Bonaparte and Secretary of State of the Grand Duchy of Berg during Napoleon’s reign. Luckily for us today: he had a habit of writing down, often in the evening, whatever the First Consul, later Emperor, had said to him during the day. His diary is therefore a wealth of information, which has provided historians with quotations that are constantly being reused to support their work.

Roederer also participated in the preparation of a large number of reforms, exchanging notes with his master with a remarkable breadth of vision. He was also a friend of Joseph Bonaparte and Talleyrand, with whom he shared both political and personal information. The first volume of the Bibliothèque Impériale offers a wide-ranging account of all this, a journey into the inner workings of Napoleon’s government.

The project for this new collection will extend over several years, with other must-have works in any napoleonic library: Napoleon’s correspondence with Talleyrand, the major political texts of Napoleon III, an anthology of Napoleonic poetry and many more volumes.

► See the presentation of the first book in the Bibliothèque Impériale collection: Avec Napoléon. Journal, Pierre-Louis Roederer, [With Napoléon. Journal, Pierre-Louis Roederer], presentation and notes by Thierry Lentz (in French).

Article published on 14 February 2025