THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE 



MR. FREDERIC CHAPMAN, MR. ROBERT B. DOUGLAS 

 MR. A. W. EVANS, MKS. FARLEY, MR. LAFCADIO HEARN^ 

 MRS. W. S. JACKSON, MRS. JOHN LANE, MRS. NEWMARCh' 

 MR. C. E. ROCHE, MISS WINIFRED STEPHENS, and MISS 

 M. P. WILLCOCKS. ' 



f As Anatole Thibault, dil Anatole France, is to most 

 t^nghsh readers merely a name, it will be well to state that 

 he was born in 1844 in the picturesque and inspiring 

 surroundmgs of an old bookshop on the Quai Voltaire, 

 Fans, kept by h.s 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 



' r u u 7' °^ '^^. ^^'"''- "^ ^^ ^h^Je^ ^ith the lovers 

 o^ old books, missas and manuscript ; he matriculated on the 

 Quais with the old Jewish dealers of curios and objcls d'art- 

 he graduated ,n 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. 



f He has written about thirty volumes of fiction. His 

 fir^ novel was JOCASTA Sc 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 1806 

 ^1 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 

 '^\^^ i^''"'^' ^^^ ''■°"y "^^^"^ ^^^^- To quote from his own 

 ^^^^"^ OF EPICURUS : « Irony and Pity a" tth of 

 good counsel ; the first with her smiles makes life acrreeable 

 the other sanctifies it to us with her tears. The^Irony I 

 mvoke IS no cruel deity. She mocks neither love nor 

 heauty. 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 asceticism, 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 

 LlLV-saintly and Rabelaisian, yet without incongruity 



