Jean-Jacques Cellier

From International Center for Research on Anarchism (CIRA) & Éditions la Digitale
Info Sheet No. 260, November-December 2024

Jean-Jacques Cellier passed away on August 30, 2024 at the age of 78. For 40 years, he was a publisher, printer, typographer and bookbinder. In 1978, he founded Editions La Digitale in his Quimper workshop. Some fifty titles were published. All are printed the old-fashioned way: lead typography, on an old press. The catalog includes books on social struggles (Plogoff), anarchist texts (Erich Mühsam, Claire Auzias, Alexander Berkman, René Lochu, Claude Guillon, Abel Paz), poetry (Alain Jégou), literature (Jacques Josse).

Statement from his Éditions la Digitale:

We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Jean-Jacques Cellier on the morning of Friday, August 30, 2024, suddenly taken from a pulmonary embolism at the age of 78.

Jean-Jacques Cellier founded Éditions la Digitale in 1978 in his workshop on rue de la Fontaine in Quimper, and worked alone for over 40 years as a publisher, printer, typographer and bookbinder.
He paid particular attention to the quality of the papers, inks and bindings of the works he published. He composed his texts in lead typography on a Linotype or a Ludlow and made the prints with a Nebiolo Saturnia press. He was one of the last to use this technique and these machines.

In 1979 he published the first reissue of the book Solutions sociales by Jean-Baptiste André Godin, a remarkable work of more than 500 pages that he composed on Linotype and whose notebooks he assembled with a simple sewing machine.

Jean-Jacques Cellier has chosen to publish testimonies, historical texts and political essays in line with his convictions. His fight over the years has been to maintain this demanding editorial line and share these ideas.

He will publish numerous works on the history of social struggles both in France and in the world, the anarchist movement told by those who lived it, works with evocative titles such as Combats pour la liberté , Une vie de révolte or Souvenirs d'anarchie , will republish texts by Auguste Brizeux, Anatole le Braz, Jean Epstein and Bernard Kellerman, including one soberly entitled La Mer , an extraordinary text that he loved very much.

In 1981, Femmes de Plogoff was published, which recounts the victorious struggle against the construction of a nuclear power plant at the Pointe du Raz. He actively participated in this fight. He then published works of literature and poetry by contemporary authors, including Alain Jégou, poet and fisherman, Jacques Josse, Yves Le Manach and Claude Pélieu.

In 2014, a final work was published, Sartre et le colonialisme by Hervé Oulc'hen, then Jean-Jacques Cellier retired from his job as a printer but continued to run Éditions la Digitale.
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You can find all the publications from La Digitale editions here: https://cgecaf.ficedl.info/spip.php?mot463

Read a presentation of La Digitale editions on the Quilombo bookstore website: https://librairie-quilombo.org/La-Digitale,3134

And see him back at work thanks to this video produced by the Quimperlé Media Library: http://mediathequequimperle.blogspot.com/2011/04/linterieur-des-edition…

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