Laurent Durand

Laurent Durand (1712, Paris – 1763) was an 18th-century French publisher active in the Age of Enlightenment. His shop was established rue Saint-Jacques under the sign Saint Landry & du griffon.[1]

Durand was the son of a merchant born near Auxerre. From 1730, he worked for the Parisian bookseller and printer Jacques Chardon (1688-1766). On 31 January 1739, he married Elizabeth Carbonnier, a niece of a certain François Jouenne.

He was one of the four publishers of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, along with Michel-Antoine David, André le Breton, and Antoine-Claude Briasson. He also was Denis Diderot's main publisher as well as that of several clandestine books.

  1. ^ He must not be mistaken for the bookseller-publisher Pierre-Etienne-Germain Durand (1728–179?). See Robert Niklaus, Denis Diderot, Pensées philosophiques, Geneva, Droz, 1965, (p. 50) (footnote).