Outline of the biography of the editor I.S. Lapin based on the materials of French printed media of the first third of the 20th century

In the article the author makes an attempt to compile a very comprehensive overview of Lapin's life and activities in Paris on the basis of information from the database "Gallica" of the National Library of France, equipped with full-text search capabilities on the archive of the French periodical press. Despite the popularity among collectors, deltiologists and museum workers, the Russian-French publisher I.S. Lapin (Ilya Lapina) has not been the object of a sufficiently large-scale biographical study, with the exception of a few general sketches of his activities in Russia. The author collected a total of 468 clippings from electronic copies of French newspapers and magazines of the first third of the 20th century, from which the publications containing certain biographical information were selected and described. Articles and reviews containing data on Lapin's book publishing activities are considered in the article insofar as their content is correlated with the events of the publisher's life, so the description of his books and other printed products is mostly outside the scope of the study. The author traces key events of Lapin's personal and business life in Paris, starting from the last years of the 19th century and ending with the death of the publisher in 1931. The data from the periodical press allows the author to assert that initially Lapin was known in France as a lithographic artist, and later changed his occupation and opened his publishing practice. The article specifies the members of Lapin's French family, their personal data are also established or verified; the connections of Lapin with Russian and French diplomatic and aristocratic circles are specified, and some personalities from these sections of society who had direct or indirect relation to his biography are noted; the circle of writers, artists and publishers with whom Lapin maintained business relations is outlined; some significant exhibitions and events, at which the products of his publishing house were presented, are named; also, the data on state awards of the publisher, which are available in other biographical research works, are checked and corrected: in particular, it was discovered that Lapin was not only a cavalier, but also an officer of the French Order of the Legion of Honor. In addition, the author establishes the main organizational forms of existence of the aforementioned publishing house and the chronological framework for their creation and dissolution; it seems that this will assist certain specialists in more accurate dating of some samples of Lapin's printed materials. The total set of the data contained in the French periodicals of the first third of the 20th century allows the author to conclude that Lapin's personality played a significant role in the social and cultural life of Russia and France, and also that subsequent biographical and bibliographical research on this person is appropriate and relevant.

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