Early years Joseph Gibert, the founder of this firm, began his career as a "professeur des Lettres Classiques (English, "teacher of classical literature") at the Saint-Michel College in
Saint-Étienne, a city in eastern central France, before moving to
Paris in 1886. Just opposite the
Notre Dame Cathedral he began selling books from four
bouqiniste boxes at the Quai Saint-Michel on the banks of the
Seine. In 1888 he opened his first bookstore at 23 Boulevard Saint-Michel in the
Latin Quarter of Paris. That bookstore specialised in the sale of secondhand school textbooks and thrived in part due to the French Prime Minister
Jules Ferry having recently in 1882 made
primary education in France
free and compulsory. attracting students from the nearby
Sorbonne. At the same time, the Gibert Joseph business developed a network of bookstores in the towns of the French provinces: in
Lyon,
Grenoble,
Saint-Étienne,
Clermont-Ferrand,
Poitiers,
Dijon,
Toulouse,
Montpellier and
Marseille, as well as in various parts of the Paris away from the Latin Quarter.
Reunification (2017) In April 2017 the Gibert Joseph and Gibert Jeune firms entered into discussions for the takeover of Gibert Jeune, which was in financial difficulty, by Gibert Joseph. On 17 May 2017, the
Paris Commercial Court recorded the takeover of Gibert Jeune by Gibert Joseph, thus ending 88 years of separation. Bruno Gibert, the chairman of the board of management of Gibert Jeune, announced that the
merger would not lead to any loss of employment or sales outlet. The
CGT union denounced the lack of transparency with which the merger discussions were held, deplored the lack of information provided to the employees of Gibert Jeune and Gibert Joseph, and voiced its concerns about the possible social consequences of this merger.
Impact of the 2020 health crisis In 2020 during the
COVID-19 pandemic a number of Gibert Joseph stores in the French provinces were forced to close. In Paris the premises of the Gibert Jeune bookstore located at 5 place Saint-Michel in Paris were sold by the Jeune family and a job protection plan was formalised on 4 December 2020. The historic bookstore located at 27 quai Saint-Michel was saved thanks to the intervention of the
Paris City Hall, which bought the premises. The company's
esoteric bookstore located opposite the
Cathedral of the Notre Dame was also saved. ==Le Prix des libraires Gibert Joseph==