Special printing on vélin de cuve for the Société des “XX” (no. 1).
Mounted at front: an autograph letter signed to the publisher, Arthème Fayard, dated November 5, 1915; an autograph letter and a signed card dated February 2 and April 15, 1916, to Henri Lenseigne.
Newspaper clippings mounted at the end of the volume.
Winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1915, Gaspard is one of the earliest literary accounts of the Great War.
On 31 October 1914, the members of the Académie Goncourt met for the first time at the restaurant Drouant, place Gaillon. The outcome of the war remained highly uncertain, and under these circumstances the academicians decided not to award their prize that year, planning instead to award two the following year. The double award would not in fact take place until 1916, and in December 1915, “in order to allow young authors who had novels in press or under consideration at the outbreak of war to take part in the competition,” a single prize was awarded.
For the first time since the creation of the Goncourt in 1903, it was awarded unanimously, crowning René Benjamin’s Gaspard. Mobilized at the outbreak of the conflict, at the age of twenty-nine, Benjamin gives here a chronicle of barracks and front-line life through the character of Gaspard, a boastful, wisecracking and resourceful Parisian meant to embody the French poilu. Unlike other, darker publications, Gaspard stands out for its lively, satirical tone, exposing the absurdities of military hierarchy.
Among the dozens of books published from 1915 onward on the theme of the emerging conflict, Gaspard is above all the first and only true novel on the subject: the book was a great success on publication and, bolstered by the Prix Goncourt, very quickly reached its hundredth printing. According to Norton Cru, Gaspard was the favorite book “of a public kept ignorant of the military situation by the strict, uncompromising censorship of the war’s early period. Had it appeared a year later, its success would have been doubtful; two years later, it would have gone unnoticed. On one point Gaspard is more true than Le Feu: the Parisian hero alone speaks slang, a legitimate slang, taken from life […]. This praise I give the author proves his talent for observing people’s speech.”
This episode opened a particular period for the Goncourt: in 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918, all five prizes were awarded to combatants and their more or less fictionalized accounts of the front. This reflects both the aura surrounding war narratives and the willingness of publishers — even when driven by commercial motives — to document these years of conflict through literature.
In 1938, René Benjamin became the first Goncourt laureate to join the jury.
Jean Norton Cru, Témoins, 567; Talvart, I, 355.
From the libraries of Henri Lenseigne (sale, April 1930, no. 76) and Jules Exbrayat (sale, March 1962, no. 93; with bookplate).