[1] Joseph Gilbert, the founder of this firm, began his career as a "professeur des Lettres Classiques (English, "teacher of classical literature") at the Saint-Michel College in Saint-Étienne, a city in eastern central France, before moving to Paris in 1886.

[2] Just opposite the Notre Dame Cathedral he began selling books from four bouqiniste boxes at the Quai Saint-Michel on the banks of the Seine.

That bookstore specialised in the sale of secondhand school textbooks and thrived in part due to the French Prime Minister Jules Ferry having recently in 1882 made primary education in France free and compulsory.

[2] Over the years the Gilbert Joseph bookstore grew to a height of six floors and has also taken over 26, 30 and 34 boulevard St Michel,[3] attracting students from the nearby Sorbonne.

At the same time, the Gibert Joseph business developed a network of bookstores in the towns of the French provinces: in Lyon, Grenoble, Saint-Étienne, Clermont-Ferrand, Poitiers, Dijon, Toulouse, Montpellier and Marseille, as well as in various parts of the Paris away from the Latin Quarter.