Riche de ses editeurs scolaires et de ses collections enfantines, le dix-neuvieme siecle a-t-il invente le marche du livre pour enfants? Dans la France du dix-huitieme siecle, de nombreux acteurs s'efforcent deja de separer, au sein de la librairie, les lectures adaptees aux enfants et aux jeunes gens. Les rituels pedagogiques des colleges et des petites ecoles, les strategies commerciales des libraires, les preoccupations des Eglises, les projets et les politiques de reforme scolaire, tous pousses par la fievre educative de la noblesse et de la bourgeoisie, produisent alors d'innombrables bibliotheques enfantines, plurielles et plastiques, avec ou sans murs. Cet ouvrage montre comment, a un ordre des livres domine par les logiques des institutions scolaires et des metiers du livre, se surimpose a partir des annees 1760 une nouvelle categorie, celle du " livre d'education ", qui ne s'identifie plus a un lieu, mais a un projet de lecture, et s'accompagne de l'emergence de nouvelles figures d'auteurs. Alors que les etudes sur la litterature de jeunesse poursuivent partout leur developpement et leur structuration, ce livre dialogue avec les dernieres recherches europeennes sur la question. A l'inverse des travaux litteraires, il part, non des auteurs et des textes, mais des objets et de leurs manipulations. Son originalite est d'apporter un regard historien sur ces questions, en articulant histoire du livre et de la librairie, histoire de l'education, histoire des milieux litteraires et de la condition d'auteur. --- With its wealth of educational publishers and children's collections, did the nineteenth century invent the children's book market? In eighteenth-century France, many people were already trying to separate the literature suitable for children and young people within the bookstore. The pedagogical rituals of colleges and small schools, the commercial strategies of booksellers, the concerns of the churches, the projects and policies of school reform, all driven by the educational fever of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, produced countless children's libraries, plural and plastic, with or without walls. At the beginning of the century, the ordering of books was dominated by the rationale of educational institutions and the book trade: this book shows how a new category emerged from the 1760s onwards, that of the "educational book", which was no longer identified with a place, but with a literacy project, and which was accompanied by the emergence of new authors. As studies on children's literature continue to be developed and shaped in many areas, this book is in dialogue with the latest European research on the subject. In contrast to literary studies, this research does not start from authors and texts, but from objects and their uses. Its originality lies in the fact that it provides a historical perspective on these issues, articulating the history of books and bookshops, the history of education, the history of literary circles and the status of the author.