La Maternelle
Paris, Librairie universelle, (September) 1904.
1 vol. (120 x 185 mm) of 305 p. and 1 f. Fawn basane, spine ribbed and decorated with rolls and fleurons, gilt title.
First edition.
Signed presentation inscription: “À mon cher Paul Louis Garnier de tout cœur, Léon Frapié.”
Signed presentation inscription: “À mon cher Paul Louis Garnier de tout cœur, Léon Frapié.”
The second laureate of the prize was awarded for a naturalist novel, in the tradition of Zola, devoted to the world of working-class schooling. With meticulous realism, Frapié depicts the social hardship and daily humiliations of an assistant teacher in a Parisian nursery school.
La Maternelle is a novel of observation, carried by a social vein that appealed to the Goncourt jury—no doubt eager to honor the realist tradition inherited from the nineteenth century, but also to give the prize a social orientation, at a time marked by the Dreyfus Affair and by debates over the republican school system.
Rare with an inscription.
From the library of Maurice Genevoix (bookplate).
#31727
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