The Bandy Center

History of the Center

The W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire Studies was founded in 1968 by the College of Arts and Sciences of Vanderbilt University as a joint project between the Department of French and Italian and the Jean and Alexander Heard Library. Its core was the personal collection of the eminent Baudelaire scholar, William Thomas Bandy, who continued to work with the collection until his death in 1989. Claude Pichois, the distinguished French editor and biographer of Charles Baudelaire, served as director of the center from 1982 until his retirement in 1998. The W.T. Bandy Center’s name was changed in 1998 to The W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies, reflecting the enhanced scope of the collections.