Maurice Genevoix's copy, with his manuscript ownership inscription.
White Fang, published in 1923, took an obvious place in Genevoix’s library: The Call of the Wild had marked him at the age of sixteen, when he entered the lycée at Orléans as a boarder: “For the first time, I saw myself given a number: no. 4. One might think of military life, if one had not also known, in the early years of this century, the life of a boarder in a French provincial lycée. Everything the word ‘barracks’ evokes, I knew there, at age ten, at the Lycée Pothier, rue Jeanne d’Arc: a lawyer’s street, noble and cold, straight and stiff as justice, drawn along a rigorous line between the rue Royale and Sainte-Croix cathedral. Jules Verne bored him; he was enthralled by Sans famille by Hector Malot, before immersing himself in London or Kipling.” (in Maurice Genevoix, Chemins de mémoire). The following year he left for the preparatory class at Lakanal (Sceaux), where he prepared for the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d’Ulm.
From the library of Maurice Genevoix (bookplate).