Guy Marchant

Who is Guy Marchant?

Guy Marchant was a printer of books, active in Paris from 1483 to 1505/1506. He had received a university education as a Master of Arts and is recorded as being a priest. He was succeeded by his nephew Jean Marchant.

He worked at first at an address in the Champ gaillart behind the Collège de Navarre. In 1493 he was at the sign of the Lily in the rue Saint Jacques. From 1499 he worked at an address called Beauregard behind the Collège de Boncourt where his nephew Jean continued to work. Marchant used six different printer's devices, several showing a shoemaker's workshop. Most of these devices have the motto Sola fides sufficit.

The ISTC Database records about 190 editions printed by the press of Guy Marchant up to the year 1500. A further 10 or 12 were printed in the sixteenth century before the business was taken over by Jean Marchant. Marchant's typographical material is enumerated in BMC volume 8.

Marchant's output was mainly of moderate-sized devotional texts but he is particularly famous for a series of works with 'magnificent woodcuts, including some of the finest illustrative work of the period'. These include five editions of the Danse macabre and seven editions of the Compost et kalendrier des bergers and an edition of the Calendrier des bergères. The Calendrier was translated into Scots English by Alexander Barclay; an English version was produced in 1506.