Eugénie Droz

Eugénie Droz (born Eugénie Zahn; 21 March 1893 – 19 September 1976) was a Swiss romance scholar, editor publisher and writer, originally from the Suisse Romande. She created the Librairie Droz, a publisher and seller of academic books, at Paris in 1924, moving the business to Geneva at the end of the war.

Biography This cartoon of Bigoudi, the dachshund of Eugénie Droz, featured on publicity for her business around 1955. Laure Eugénie Zahn was born at La Chaux-de-Fonds in the francophone northwest of Switzerland. Her father, Frédéric Zahn, was a well-known member of the business community in the town, where he worked as an editor. It is apparent that the second volume of Piaget's work "Jardin de Plaisance et Fleur de rhétorique, d'Antoine Vérard (vers 1501)", which was published only in 1925, subtitled "Introduction and notes" and signed off by E.Droz and Arthur Piaget, was largely the work of Piaget's erudite pupil. The compilation of 672 verses, ballads, sounds, rondeaux etc., many of them anonymous, was described in an obituary of Eugénie Droz as an "inestimable contribution to mid-century French literature" ("contribution inestimable aux lettres françaises du milieu du siècle").

She described the Paris premises proudly in her first catalogue: "Accommodated in the House of the Bronze Horse, given by Francis I to [the renaissance poet] Clément Marot in 1539, the 'Librairie Droz' [book business] has been established by Eugénie Droz, graduate of the École pratique des hautes études and docteur ès lettres. Her doctorate came from the Université de Neuchâtel. Her work for it consisted of 35 ancient texts accompanied by translations into contemporary French, a piece of work currently conserved in the rare books collection of the National Library of France.

Despite the having been established in Paris, the printed device appearing as a form of trade mark on publications acknowledged the Swiss provenance of the proprietor. She copied the design used by Jean de Stalle who operated a printing house in Geneva between 1487 and 1493. The only change involved removing the initials "IdeS", incorporated in the centre of the device, and replacing them with her own initials, "ED".

Shortly after opening the Librairie Droz, still aged only 32, she found time to take on a position as assistant treasurer of the Société des anciens textes français, a learned society founded in Paris in 1875 with the purpose of publishing all kinds of medieval documents written either in langue d'oïl or langue d'oc. (The society's treasurer was Baron Edmond de Rothschild.)

In 1934 she founded "Humanisme et Renaissance", 1964 Docteur honoris causa, University of Lausanne Docteur honoris causa, University of Cologne The reading room of the Public and University Library of Geneva, constructed in 1905, carries her name.