Hector Talvart (1880-1959), a bibliographer from La Rochelle and collector, and Joseph Place, a bookseller, embarked in 1928, under the imprint of the Éditions de la Chronique des lettres françaises, on a Bibliographie des auteurs modernes de langue française (1801-1927) intended to do for the twentieth century what Vicaire had done for the nineteenth: to describe, author by author, every first edition together with its limitation statement, pre-original periodical appearances, offprints, translations and portraits. After the founders, Georges Place continued the publication, volume after volume, up to volume XXII in 1976; the series then came to a halt without having gone beyond the letter M, and remains unfinished.
Talvart et Place is cited by volume and page, sometimes with the edition number within the author's section: "Talvart, IV, 128". The entry for a first edition details the limitation statement — so many copies on Japon, on Holland paper, on pure-rag vellum, not-for-sale copies, review copies — the collation, the wrappers and the printer's colophons, which makes it the most precise reference for twentieth-century large-paper copies; it guarantees the structure of the edition and the stated detail of its print run, not the conformity of any given copy, which must be checked against the limitation statement.
Limitations: the series stops at M; the earliest volumes, published before 1940, do not cover the post-war careers of the authors treated, and the print runs recorded are those announced by the publishers, which actual printings did not always follow. Authors from N to Z are covered only by specialist bibliographies, publishers' catalogues and the limitation statements themselves. Talvart et Place should be read alongside Carteret for illustrated books, alongside Clouzot and Vicaire for nineteenth-century authors, and alongside author bibliographies where these exist.
