Anatole France (1844 - 1924) was a French novelist, poet, critic and journalist, regarded in his lifetime as the leading figure of French letters. [1] Writing in a clear, ironic and sceptical style, he produced novels including Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, Thaïs, L'Île des Pingouins and Les Dieux ont soif, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921. [2]
Early life
Born Jacques Anatole François Thibault in Paris on 16 April 1844, he grew up on the Quai Malaquais in his father's bookshop, which specialised in works on the French Revolution and drew a scholarly clientele. [1] The pen name he later adopted derived from his father's trade name. He was educated at the Collège Stanislas de Paris, where he was an indifferent pupil, and afterwards worked as a cataloguer, publisher's reader and, for many years, as an assistant at the Senate library.
Writer and critic
France began as a poet associated with the Parnassian movement and as a literary journalist. His first widely noticed book was Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard in 1881, the story of an elderly scholar, which was crowned by the Académie française and established his reputation. [3]
He became one of the most influential critics in France through his column in Le Temps, later collected as La Vie littéraire, in which he argued that criticism is necessarily the record of a reader's own encounter with a book. Novels and tales followed steadily, among them Thaïs, set in Roman Egypt, La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque, and the four-volume Histoire contemporaine, which follows the mild scholar Monsieur Bergeret through the provincial and political life of the Third Republic. [1] He was elected to the Académie française in 1896.
Politics
The Dreyfus affair moved France from detached irony into public engagement. He signed the petitions supporting the wrongly convicted officer, defended Émile Zola, and returned his own decoration in protest at the treatment of Zola's supporters. [4] From that point he identified openly with the socialist left, supporting Jean Jaurès, contributing to left-wing papers, and later expressing sympathy for the Russian Revolution.
His later fiction carried the same commitments. L'Île des Pingouins, published in 1908, satirises the whole course of French history through the invented chronicle of a nation of penguins converted to Christianity by mistake. Les Dieux ont soif, of 1912, follows a sincere young revolutionary who becomes a judge of the Terror, and is widely regarded as his finest novel. [3]
Later years and legacy
France spent his last years at the manoir de la Béchellerie near Tours, where he died on 12 October 1924. He was given a state funeral. [1]
The Nobel Prize of 1921 cited his brilliant literary achievements, characterised by nobility of style, profound human sympathy, grace and a true Gallic temperament. [2] His reputation fell sharply after his death, attacked by the surrealists and by a later generation that found his classicism dated, though Les Dieux ont soif and L'Île des Pingouins continue to be read and his critical writing remains a source for the intellectual history of the period. [4]
