Mercure galant, Le. Periodical founded by
Immediately upon the appearance of its inaugural issue in March 1672 it was evident that there was an eager readership for the new public paper. It featured readers' responses to the issues raised by its articles; debate was intense and often prolonged. A veritable flood of gazettes and news-sheets had been launched in the course of the preceding decade, and in the process a new breed of writer, the first true precursor of the modern journalist, came into existence. The first papers contained only political news, on the model of Renaudot's government-sponsored Gazette, which provided the official version of contemporary events. The next papers reported on the world of high society, even its scandals.
Donneau de Visé put journalism at the service of special-interest groups. Well-connected in aristocratic milieux, he produced a public paper whose contents are structured like a salon discussion. He even reproduces the view of public life painted in the historical fiction of his contemporaries, Lafayette and Villedieu. In Le Mercure galant's inaugural issue he explains that it will feature the circumstances—in particular, marriages and lawsuits—always omitted from official accounts, that really explain the balance of French power. Le Mercure galant also helped launch new works, notably in 1678, when Donneau de Visé directed the first true publicity campaign, for the appearance of La Princesse de Clèves. In this way and in many others, he promoted the values of literary ‘moderns’.
In collaboration with a team of associates led by Thomas Corneille, Donneau de Visé ran the paper until his death in 1710. A series of editors, notably Raynal and Marmontel, continued Le Mercure galant throughout the 18th c.—under such names as Le Mercure and Mercure de France . Subsequent editors never re-created Donneau de Visé's formula, the blend of light fiction, occasional verse, and long, gossipy letters that makes the original Le Mercure galant an invaluable source of information on the tastes and the fascinations of the intellectuals who had come of age in salon society.
[Joan Dejean]
