This paper takes a look at the 19th century from the point of view of the following century’s editions or reprints, in particular, from 1960 to 2000. After having noted the importance of collective tomes devoted to Victor Hugo’s greatness or to that of the Grand Dictionnaire universel du xixe siècle (Larousse’s Universal 19th century dictionary), which wanted to mirror it, the author takes a look at the publication of a great number of writers’ correspondences and then at the publishing of socialist thinkers during the 20th century. A main fact to stand out is the late development of a readership for Stendhal and Karl Marx but also for Fourier or Cabet, the nineteenth century having been a period when, before 1880, classicism and catholic religion were at the forefront of media interest. By invoking, briefly, the table of contents of the journal Romantisme, the author highlights the emergence of themes that have renewed our readings of the works. Women, decadence, the people, books and the literature of the people became important research topics before the press and the genetics of writing and publishing added their own particular changes in perspective. In the final analysis, for the first two decades of the 21st century, the main phenomenon in research seems to be its pivoting towards sites dedicated to the writers.