Maurice Pernette

The son of a turner and a launder, Maurice Pernette, after primary school, entered the École Estienne in 1926 and graduated in 1930 with the diploma of jack-galvanoplast. He joined the CGTU and worked as a Worker for the Daily. When he did his military service in Bitche (Moselle), he entered, thanks to a rescue diploma, the military hospital of this garrison. Released, he worked again in the Daily, attended the Evening Museum, met Henry Poulaille. He wrote his first article in 1936 for the Libertaire, following an investigation conducted by Sébastien Faure, collaborated in the Bulletin syndical du Livre and began to publish some poems in ephemeral journals, some of which were founded by him. At the disappearance of the Daily, Pernette worked in many small companies of work, then at Fuzat at the time of the creation of Ce Soir, in 1937.

Mobilized in 1939 as medical secretary at the 21st RTA, he found himself in Périgueux during the exodus of 1940. Returning to Paris, he was offered a job to postpone to France at work, but, forced to take the oath of Marshal Pétain, he refused. Sent to Saint-Nazaire to work at the Todt organization, he managed, after six months, to join Paris. Pernette then worked various trades: aide-baker, lumberjack, maneuver at Renault, then, as required, cliché in Berlin and then in Austria, in Vienna where he remained for six months. Returning to France, but unable to stay in Paris, he took refuge under a false identity, in Montchanin (Saône-et-Loire), his father’s country, and worked in a road company. After the Liberation, he did many trades and finally managed to obtain the authorization to settle as a book quian of the Tournelle, then quai de Montebello.

The attendance of libertarian circles, the knowledge of Émile Armand and especially the reading of Stirner made Pernette the follower of individualist-anarchist ideas. In 1951, he published at his own expense a small magazine, Impressions. This magazine merged in May 1952, with Our Friends the Books of Pierre Clairac, then, in 1953, with Faubourgs by Fernand Henry. But, for lack of financial means, it disappeared quickly. At the same time, Pernette had succeeded, by his own means, in publishing, under the title of "Plaisir du Bibliophile", a few platelets, including the studies of Louis Lanoizelée on Lucien Jean, Charles-Louis Philippe and Marguerite Audoux. But, like Impressions, this attempt at editing could not, for lack of money, have immediately.

Maurice Pernette was part of the jury of the Prix des Bouquinistes, with Ferdinand Teulé and Marcel Veber, of the Quai Malaquais, Robert Géraud, of the Quai Voltaire, Blain, of the Quai Conti, A.-L. Laquerrière and Louis Lanoizelée, of the quai des Grands-Augustins.

After the war, he collaborated among others in the journal Défense de l’Homme (1948-1976) by Louis Lecoin* and Louis Dorlet*, in the new series of the journal of Porletarian literature Le Musée du soir (Saint-Etienne, 1957-1968) published by Paul and René Berthelot and at L’Unique (Orléans, 1945-1956) by E. Armand.