After an abortive and unprofitable experience in 1825 as a publisher, in 1826 French writer Honoré de Balzac set up shop as a printer in Paris. To do so he had acquired from the Laurens printing office in Perignac seven Stanhope iron hand presses, and about 3000 pounds of lead type. He also hired a young typographer, André Barbier, to supervise the 36 workers on the staff of the Imprimerie de H. Balzac. According to Vicaire, Bibliographie de France, during the two years of operation of this printing business Balzac printed 168 books, newspapers, and pamphlets. Also, in 1827 Balzac went into business as a type founder. However, both the printing and type founding businesses were unprofitable, and Balzac turned them over to others by the end of 1828.
The labor intensive aspects of book production during this period should not be underestimated. B. R. Tolley, "Balzac the Printer", French Studies, XIII (1959) 214-225 states that Berlioz's printing office printed as many as 40,000 copies of a prospectus for Collection des memoires relatifs de la revolution française, 20,000 copies of another prospectus, etc. The edition sizes mentioned for books run from 3,000 copies to 1,000 or 500 copies. At 250 impressions per hour, which was the maximum output that one could expect from an iron hand press, printing even 10,000 copies of a prospectus would take two men at least 40 hours.
Hanotaux, Gabriel & Vicaire, Georges. La Jeunesse de Balzac. Balzac imprimeur. Balzac et Madame de Berny. Nouvelle édition augmentée de la correspondance. Paris: Ferroud, 1921.
La fonderie typographique de Laurent, Balzac et Barbier créée en 1827 par Honoré Balzac. Paris: Aux Éditions des Cendres, 1992.
Balzac, Imprimeur et Défenseur du livre. Paris: Musées, Éditions des musées de la Vile de Paris - Éditions des Cendres, 1995.
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