Hors-série Anatole France

Anatole France belongs to that group of famous authors whose names everyone knows, but whom few have actually read.

His body of work is neither the first nor the last in French literature to suffer this paradoxical fate, but it stands as an emblematic example of it — both for its scale and for the violence of the criticism leveled against it. This Nobel laureate in Literature (1921), member of the Académie française, and author of worldwide bestsellers, was hailed everywhere as the greatest French writer of his time, if not of all time — yet his name has become nearly hollow: Anatole France is almost impossible to find not only in school and university curricula, but also, and above all, with a few rare exceptions, in scholarly research across every field where he might reasonably belong — from the history of French and comparative literature to the history of ideas and the history of intellectuals. This is a striking paradox given the scope of his political engagement as a Voltairean figure: in the Dreyfus Affair, against the Armenian genocide, in support of the 1905 law on the Separation of Church and State (he even wrote the preface to Combes's speeches), and against colonization as well. The literary researchers at the École normale supérieure, now embarking on a vast study project devoted to this "illustrious unknown" (alongside a program to digitize his complete works), could not have framed this contrast more aptly.
On our own modest scale, Librairie Walden wanted — out of curiosity as much as heartfelt conviction that bibliophily remains a living pursuit precisely when it takes the occasional detour — to present a small Anatole France corpus, spanning from his youthful poems and novels to his final works.
These first editions, some handsomely bound, are accompanied by four manuscripts from France's childhood, addressed to one or the other of his parents. We have added to this the earliest studies and biographies published on the author of Thaïs between 1924, the year of his death, and 1960, when the Bibliothèque nationale devoted an exhibition to him.
A first foray in tribute to an author — one that will no doubt call for others to follow…