Alain Riffaud's Molière Catalogue Wins 2026 ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography

Literary historian Alain Riffaud has won First Prize in the 19th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography for his Catalogue Molière: 1660–1673 published last year by the Le Mans cultureal association Matière à Dire.

Riffaud wins $10,000 for the The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers' prize which is only awarded every four years. His work represents a major bibliographical revision of editions of Molière published during the playwright’s lifetime and immediately following his death, adding 15 previously unknown editions.

Second prize and $5,000 went to Manuel Suárez Rivera for La alhaja más preciosa: Historia de la Biblioteca de la Real Universidad de México (1761–1815) (Ciudad de México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas, 2022), and third prize ($3,000) to Heidrun Lange-Krach for Das Neue Gebetbuch Kaiser Maximilians I. in seiner Entstehung (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 2026).

There were 117 entrants in this year's competition following ILAB's campaign to encourage entries from outside Europe and North America, including the introduction of special prizes from previously under-represented regions. These included:

• Special Prize for an Asian Submission to Japanese scholar Koichi Yukishima for The Birth of Bibliography: Study of Conrad Gesner’s Bibliotheca universalis (Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2022), published in Japanese
• Special Prize for a Central & South American Submission to Agnes Gehbald for A Colonial Book Market: Peruvian Print Culture in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)
• Special Prize for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage to Oleksandr Okhrimenko and Fr Methodius (Stanislav) Voloshchenko for Apostolus Christinopolitanus (Kyiv: Horobets Publishing House, 2023)

Each prizewinner was awarded US$1,000, thanks to donations from booksellers Asia Bookroom, Peter Harrington, and Scott DeWolfe and Charles Kutcher.

An Honorable Mention was awarded to Canadian scholar Mark E. Andrews for series of four publications focusing on the history of science, engineering and photography, The Science and Engineering of Water: An Illustrated Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts on Italian Hydraulics, 1500–1800 (2022), The Science and Engineering of Materials: A Theatre of Machine Books, 1472–1800 (2023), The Science and Engineering of Water: An Illustrated Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts on Hydraulics North of the Alps and around the Globe, 1400–1800 (2024), and The Photographer at Work: Documenting Civil Engineering 1853–1913 (2025).