Angèle Georgette Ghislaine Manteau, born in Dinant on 24 January 1911 and died in Aalst on 20 April 2008, was a Belgian publisher. According to the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, which presented her with an award in 2003, she was "the main Flemish literary editor of the twentieth century" and her publishing house has "undoubtedly left its mark on the history of Flemish literature".
She was born in Dinant, her father was a textile manufacturer from Lille and her mother was Belgian. In the late 1920s, she studied chemistry at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) (Free University of Brussels in English) for a while. During these years she rented a room in a Dutch couple’s house, Jan Greshoff - journalist, critic and poet - and Aty Brunt, where she learned Dutch and discovered Dutch literature. She worked a few years for the publisher Alexander Stols, and then in 1932 founded the Algemene Importhandel A Manteau. Six years later, with the financial backing of the Dutch publisher Robbert Leopold, she launched her own publishing house: A. Manteau NV.
In the late 1970s, she left the publishing house, which, since 1965, had joined the Dutch group Van Goor, and worked for Elsevier in Amsterdam. The Manteau editions however continued their activities. In the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, Julien Weverbergh, who had previously been hired by Angèle Manteau as the head of the Vijfde Meridiaan series of paperback books, headed the company.
In 1986, Angèle Manteau became a member of the Order of Orange-Nassau. In the same year King Baudouin granted her the title of Baroness. In 1998, the former publisher transferred some of her personal literary archives to the National Library of the Netherlands, based in The Hague. Another part was then deposited at the Letterenhuis ("House of Literature") in Antwerp, where the archives of the Manteau editions are kept.
In collaboration with Roger H. Schoemans, Ja, maar mevrouw, deze schrijven Nederlands: Een uitgeefster aan het woord over het boekenvak, Standaard Uitgeverij, Antwerp, 2000 (ISBN90-02-20996-7)
"Décès de l'éditrice Angèle Manteau", Le Vif/L'Express, 21 April 2008.
Kevin Absillis (with the participation of Annelies van Uytsel), Een kleine uitgeverij van stand - Uitgeverij A. Manteau / Editions Lumière 1956-1970, LP Boon-documentatiecentrum - Demian, Antwerp, 2005 (ISBN90-804548-8-5)
Kevin Absillis, "Angèle Manteau: Unbound devotion to the 'good book'", 2004 (Absillis, Kevin (2004). "Angèle Manteau. Passion et indépendance au service de la littérature flamande. 'La Flandre', nr. 63(2004)". lpbooncentrum.be (in French). Archived from the original on 7 January 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2022. Le 13 décembre 2003, Angèle Manteau (née en 1911) a reçu le Penning d'or de l'Académie royale flamande des Sciences et des Arts.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
Greta Seghers, Het eigenzinnige leven van Angèle Manteau, Prometheus, Amsterdam, 1992 (ISBN9789053331040)
Ludo Simons,『The Baroness Angèle Manteau and her publishing house』Septentrion, No. 4, 1988, pp. 81–82
Julien Weverbergh, De als kameleons uitgedoste oude koeien van Angèle Manteau, Manteau, Antwerp, 1981 (ISBN9789022308363)
