Anatole France

Anatole France, whose real name was Jacques-Anatole-François Thibault, was born in Paris on April 16, 1844. The only son of a bookseller, he received a good education and was hired immediately after completing his studies by the publishing house of Alphonse Lemerre, the publisher of the poets of the so-called "Parnassus," where he provided proofreading, bibliographic, and classification work or wrote prefaces for editions of classical works. In 1876, he became an assistant librarian in the Senate and remained in the position until 1890, ensuring he had ample free time for his personal intellectual development. During this period, he regularly contributed to the magazines "Sphère" and "Illustrated Universe" and published the novella "Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard" (1881), which was awarded by the French Academy. From 1886, he took on the role of literary director for the daily newspaper "Le Temps." In September 1886, he met Madame Arman de Caillavet, whose "salon" was the center of Parisian literary life, and a few years later, he divorced his then-wife, who felt that France "neglected" her and spent excessive amounts on books. In 1895, he published a book of aphorisms titled "Le Jardin d'Épicure," in which he expressed with great intensity the bourgeois skepticism and hedonism that permeated French culture of the time and generally his entire body of work. From the spring of 1893, he began writing social critique articles in "L'Écho de Paris" titled "The Opinions of Mr. Jérôme Coignard," through which he harshly criticized institutions and expressed sympathy for the common everyday person. His attacks in these articles against the Church, the military, the Justice system, and the callous educated elite soon gave him a significant political dimension. In 1896, he was admitted to the French Academy and shortly thereafter joined the Socialist Party. He wrote many more books, with the most notable being "The Gods Are Athirst" ("Les Dieux ont soif," 1912), "The Revolt of the Angels" ("La Révolte des anges," 1914), and a biography of Joan of Arc (1908). Due to the anti-theocratic spirit of his works, France's books were placed on the Catholic Church's "Index" of prohibited books. In 1920, he married Emma Laprévote, 27 years his junior and a former maid of Madame Arman de Caillavet. In 1921, he traveled to Stockholm where he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the following year he published "Greetings to the Soviets" in "L'Humanité," only to lose all his illusions shortly thereafter when French intellectuals were denounced as "undesirable amateurs" by the 4th Congress of the Communist International in Moscow. He died in Paris on October 12, 1924. His complete works were published between 1925 and 1935 in 25 volumes.