A SHORT HISTORY
  “Tel” is the outcome of a discussion between Claude and Antoine Gallimard in the early 1970s about how to make the most of the social science backlist and best cater for the fast growing university demand. The imprints created between the wars, and from the 1960s onwards, those led by R. Queneau, P. Nora, J.-B. Pontalis, G. Lambrichs or Fr. Erval made up such a large body of works that another printing was now a priority… Moreover, in 1974, the cost price of books had increased forcing publishers to raise the selling price of reprints. This made reprinting some titles difficult. Hence the idea of an intermediate imprint with initial print runs of 10 000 copies.
  The authors themselves of course enthusiastically supported the initiative. François Jacob wrote to Claude Gallimard in August 1975: “I really hope that the project for an intermediate imprint is still alive as I am keen, and have been so for some years now, for La Logique du vivant (1970) to be published in an edition that students can afford.”
  At first “Tel” did not have its own director. Until 1986, at an average rate of 10 volumes a year, “Tel” built virtually its entire catalogue out of Gallimard’s backlist, hence its profile: German and existential philosophy, historical anthropology… Philosophy (Alain, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty; Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Jaspers, Koyré, Habermas…) together with linguistics and literary criticism (Auerbach, Bakhtine, Benveniste, Goldmann, Poulet, Robert, Sartre, Spitzer, Starobinski) were favoured at the time, ahead of psychoanalysis (Groddeck, Winnicott…), sociology (Baudrillard) and history (Duby, Foucault, Le Roy Ladurie). After 1985, despite the simultaneous creation of “Folio Essais”, “Folio Histoire” and “Arcades” there was a marked increase in the number of titles published despite the drop in the average print run. Titles outside the Gallimard list began to appear. The philosophy section was enhanced by classical texts drawn from the Belles Lettres list, but also by authors from various disciplines (Feuerbach, Lukacz, Maitron, Marcuse…). The history section, including history of science and art and contemporary history, is strengthened. The imprint also publishes a number of original texts, such as Le Traité de la ponctuation française by Jacques Drillon, as well as new editions, the latter becoming a trend once Georges Liébert is at the helm of “Tel” as well as “NRF Biographies”. Since then, new titles have been mainly new texts, collected works or reprints expanded by books from other publishers. Political science and economics are well represented (La Démocratie contre elle-même by Marcel Gauchet, La Pauvreté dans l’abondance by Keynes…) as well as philosophy and history.