Forêt voisine

This text extends the first version published in 1931 as an illustrated edition intended for bibliophiles, accompanied by etchings. This edition, issued by Flammarion two years later, represents the first publication of the text in its definitive form.

Forêt voisine inaugurates, together with La Dernière Harde (1938) and La Forêt perdue (1967), a group of works often described by critics as Maurice Genevoix’s “romans-poèmes,” built around the depiction of the natural world, and in particular of animal life, in a forest setting directly inspired by the Forêt d’Orléans: “The forest has always haunted the imagination of men; and men in turn have peopled it with their dreams, their terrors and their longings…”

Maurice Genevoix’s own copy, kept in his library at Les Vernelles, his house on the banks of the Loire.

Scattered foxing.