Editis strengthens by recruiting Adrien Bosc to manage Julliard

French publishing is in turmoil after the recent takeover of the two major groups, Editis and Hachette. Almost every week, a nomination is announced. After that of Lise Boëll, leaving Editis for Hachette (Mazarine), Editis announces the upcoming arrival of Adrien Bosc as director of Julliard editions.

Director of publishing at Seuil since 2016, Adrien Bosc is also the founder, in 2011, of Éditions du Sous-sol. Editis claims to have reached an agreement with the Media-Participation group for a majority stake in the capital of Le Sous-sol. It seemed unthinkable to imagine for a moment Adrien Bosc leaving this formidable structure behind him. We remember that the 38-year-old publisher, launched at the same time as the Basement of Mooks of high quality like Feuilleton, devoted to literary journalism or “narrative non-fiction” or even Sports.

Bosc, without denying his love for literary journalism, has broadened the palette of his house by publishing authors such as the Argentinian Mariana Enriquez, the Spanish poet Manuel Vilas (foreign Femina prize), the English Deborah Levy (foreign Femina prize) or again the pen of the New Yorker, David Grann, whose latest work, Les Naufragés du Wager, enjoyed both critical and public success and whose rights were purchased by Martin Scorsese. It is therefore a great achievement that the Editis group and its president, Denis Olivennes, have achieved.

Catherine Lucet, Managing Director of Editis declared: “The arrival of an editor as talented as Adrien Bosc at the head of Julliard confirms our collective ambitions for renewal, and our desire, to Denis Olivennes, Marie-Christine Conchon and myself, to give Julliard great resources. And thus to continue the relaunch started by Stéphanie Chevrier. We are delighted and proud that Adrien has also chosen Editis to support the development of Éditions du sous-sol, an innovative and promising young house. »

Also read: Denis Olivennes: “To compete with Hachette, Editis will have to take more risks”

Same enthusiasm from Stéphanie Chevrier, president of Editions La Découverte and Julliard, who worked with Adrien Bosc at Seuil: “I am happy to welcome Adrien as director of Editions Julliard. In the space of ten years, he was able to establish very important authors. He brought numerous successes and literary prizes to Seuil. At Éditions du sous-sol, he has created a formidable catalog of literature and non-fiction, with great know-how and exemplary attention to texts and authors.”

The person commented on this new adventure in an already rich professional career with his words: “I am happy to join a house as emblematic as Julliard, literary and popular in the finest sense of the word, with a sparkling past and present. I would like to thank Catherine Lucet and Denis Olivennes for the trust they place in me, and for the opportunity they offer the basement to continue its history in this way. It is also a particular joy to find Stéphanie Chevrier again. Since our meeting at Seuil, I have always had the hope of one day working alongside him. What she has built with La Découverte and Julliard, in a particular context, is remarkable. I deeply believe in the need to align one's ideas and one's actions. Stéphanie is proof that one can stand firm on one's principles. Finally, I would like to thank Vincent Montagne and Julien Papelier, the Seuil and Media-Participations teams for these ten exciting years.”

The Julliard house, founded in 1942 by René Julliard and for a time managed by Christian Bourgois, enjoyed great success in the 1940s with three Goncourt prizes (Jean-Jacques Gautier, Jean-Louis Curtis and Maurice Druon). She then published the works of Jean d'Ormesson, Françoise Sagan and Georges Perec then, at the end of the 1980s, of Lydie Salvayre and Régine Detambel. From 1995, the tandem Betty Mialet and Bernard Barrault published a large number of successful authors such as Philippe Besson, Philippe Djian, Lionel Duroy, Philippe Jaenada, Yasmina Khadra, Jean Teulé, François Weyergans…

In 2020, the Mialet-Barrault duo left Julliard for Flammarion with a large part of their authors. The Julliard house, which had become a department of Éditions Robert Laffont, was no more than a shadow of what it had been. This is the challenge that awaits Adrien Bosc: restoring its luster to one of the most beautiful brands in the history of French publishing.