The pair revived the failing business; by 1931, despite Bader's involvement having ended years before, five million bottles of perfume were being sold annually.

[9] Jacques and Jean's father Israel (1853-1927) was also an art collector and industrialist who ran an international chain of shoe shops called Chaussures Raoul.

[1] Other notable acquisitions he made included the original manuscripts for Le Diable au corps and Le Bal du comte d'Orgel by Raymond Radiguet, purchased from Jean Cocteau;[12] a number of the notebooks containing the handwritten drafts for Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu; letters to Proust from his widowed sister-in-law Marthe Amiot; the first set of corrected proofs for Du côté de chez Swann;[1] and the original manuscript for Arthur Rimbaud's Une saison en enfer.

[6] Guérin also owned a large number of papers belonging to Marcel Proust, including manuscripts, letters, and photographs, which he discovered in a bookshop run by Henri Lefebvre.

[19][6][15][7] In September 1947, Guérin was introduced to novelist Violette Leduc through Jean Genet, who he had met earlier that year when purchasing the manuscript for Querelle of Brest.

[1][23] Thérèse et Isabelle faced difficulties getting published due to its sexual candour, but Guérin eventually arranged for the novel's private publication in 1955/56, albeit still heavily censored, and with only 28 copies printed.

At that point Jacques Guérin's library contained more than 2,000 items, ranging from Montaigne to Genet, and included the original eight-volume edition of Molière.

Ten of Rinaud's signed poems were auctioned, as were two original letters by Isidore Ducasse which, according to press reports at the time, had been believed lost until they appeared in the listing for the sale.

[5] Following his retirement from D'Orsay, Guérin divided his time between his Paris apartment along the Rue Murillo, the factory complex at Puteaux-sur-Seine and his country estate at Luzarches.

[28] Guérin's social circle included many leading literary and art figures, with Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso,[1] Maurice Rostand, and Madeleine and Marcelin Castaing among his friends.

Maurice Sachs, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Glenway Wescott, René Béhaine, Djuna Barnes, Mireille Havet, Chaïm Soutine, Abel Bonnard, and Édouard Vuillard were also in his orbit.