It has long been a reproach to England that only one volume by ANATOLE
FRANCE has been adequately rendered into English; yet outside this
country he shares with TOLSTOI the distinction of being the greatest and
most daring student of humanity now living.
¶ There have been many difficulties to encounter in completing
arrangements for a uniform edition, though perhaps the chief barrier to
publication here has been the fact that his writings are not for
babes—but for men and the mothers of men. Indeed, some of his Eastern
romances are written with biblical candour. “I have sought truth
strenuously,” he tells us, “I have met her boldly. I have never turned
from her even when she wore an unexpected aspect.” Still, it is believed
that the day has come for giving English versions of all his imaginative
works, and of his monumental study JOAN OF ARC, which is undoubtedly the
most discussed book in the world of letters to-day.
¶ MR. JOHN LANE has pleasure in announcing that he will commence
publication of the works of M. ANATOLE FRANCE in English, under the
general editorship of MR. FREDERIC CHAPMAN, with the following volumes:
THE RED LILY
MOTHER OF PEARL
THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS
THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD
THE WELL OF ST. CLARE
THE OPINIONS OF JEROME COIGNARD
JOCASTA AND THE FAMISHED CAT
BALTHASAR
THE ASPIRATIONS OF JEAN SERVIEN
THE ELM TREE ON THE MALL
MY FRIEND’S BOOK
THE WICKER-WORK WOMAN
THAÏS
AT THE SIGN OF THE QUEEN PÉDAUQUE
JOAN OF ARC (2 vols.)
¶ All the books will be published at 6/- each with the exception of JOAN
OF ARC, which will be 25/- net the two volumes, with eight Illustrations.
¶ The format of the volumes leaves little to be desired. The size is Demy
8vo (9 × 5¾ in.), that of this Prospectus, and they will be printed from
Caslon type upon a paper light in weight and strong in texture, with a
cover design in crimson and gold, a gilt top, end-papers from designs by
Aubrey Beardsley and initials by Henry Ospovat. In short, these are
volumes for the bibliophile as well as the lover of fiction, and form
perhaps the cheapest library edition of copyright novels ever published,
for the price is only that of an ordinary novel.
¶ The translation of these books has been entrusted to such competent
French scholars as MR. ALFRED ALLINSON, HON. MAURICE BARING, MR. FREDERIC
CHAPMAN, MR. ROBERT B. DOUGLAS, MR. A. W. EVANS, MRS. FARLEY, MRS. JOHN
LANE, MRS. NEWMARCH, MR. C. E. ROCHE, MISS WINIFRED STEPHENS, and MISS M.
P. WILLCOCKS.
¶ As Anatole Thibault, _dit_ Anatole France, is to most English readers
merely a name, it will be well to state that he was born in 1844 in the
picturesque and inspiring surroundings of an old bookshop on the Quai
Voltaire, Paris, kept by his father, Monsieur Thibault, an authority on
eighteenth-century history, from whom the boy caught the passion for the
principles of the Revolution, while from his mother he was learning to
love the ascetic ideals chronicled in the Lives of the Saints. He was
schooled with the lovers of old books, missals and manuscripts; he
matriculated on the Quais with the old Jewish dealers of curios and
_objets d’art_; he graduated in the great university of life and
experience. It will be recognised that all his work is permeated by his
youthful impressions; he is, in fact, a virtuoso at large.
¶ He has written about thirty volumes of fiction. His first novel was
JOCASTA & THE FAMISHED CAT (1879). THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD
appeared in 1881, and had the distinction of being crowned by the French
Academy, into which he was received in 1896.
¶ His work is illuminated with style, scholarship, and psychology; but
its outstanding features are the lambent wit, the gay mockery, the genial
irony with which he touches every subject he treats. But the wit is never
malicious, the mockery never derisive, the irony never barbed. To quote
from his own GARDEN OF EPICURUS: “Irony and Pity are both of good
counsel; the first with her smiles makes life agreeable, the other
sanctifies it to us with her tears. The Irony I invoke is no cruel deity.
She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed. Her
mirth disarms anger and it is she teaches us to laugh at rogues and fools
whom but for her we might be so weak as to hate.”
¶ Often he shows how divine humanity triumphs over mere ascetism, and
with entire reverence; indeed, he might be described as an ascetic
overflowing with humanity, just as he has been termed a “pagan, but a
pagan constantly haunted by the pre-occupation of Christ.” He is in
turn—like his own Choulette in THE RED LILY—saintly and Rabelaisian, yet
without incongruity. At all times he is the unrelenting foe of
superstition and hypocrisy. Of himself he once modestly said: “You will
find in my writings perfect sincerity (lying demands a talent I do not
possess), much indulgence, and some natural affection for the beautiful
and good.”
¶ The mere extent of an author’s popularity is perhaps a poor argument,
yet it is significant that two books by this author are in their HUNDRED
AND TENTH THOUSAND, and numbers of them well into their SEVENTIETH
THOUSAND, whilst the one which a Frenchman recently described as
“Monsieur France’s most arid book” is in its FIFTY-EIGHTH THOUSAND.
¶ Inasmuch as M. FRANCE’S ONLY contribution to an English periodical
appeared in THE YELLOW BOOK, vol. v., April 1895, together with the first
important English appreciation of his work from the pen of the Hon.
Maurice Baring, it is peculiarly appropriate that the English edition of
his works should be issued from the Bodley Head.