France, Anatole
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Working name of Jacques Anatole-François Thibault (1844-1924), French author active from the early 1860s until his death; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921. His essayistic "pagan" Satires seem perhaps less relevant now than formerly, their amused rationality failing to bite with sufficient savagery into targets like official religion and sexual prudery. Of sf interest are Sur la pierre blanche (1904 l'Humanité; coll of linked stories 1905; trans Charles E Roche as The White Stone 1910), in which a group of intellectuals prognosticates a White Peril (the Yellow races being at risk) and the rise of a socialist Utopia; and L'île des pingouins (1907; trans A W Evans as Penguin Island 1909), in which the Evolution of humanity is allegorized satirically through the transformation into humans – after they have been baptised in error – of a race of penguins, who repeat human history. Brian Stableford has suggested that both these texts clearly invoke Félix Bodin's contention that accurate prediction must necessarily seem subversive of contemporary reality. In La révolte des anges (1914; trans Mrs Wilfrid Jackson as The Revolt of the Angels 1914), a fantasy and France's finest novel, an angel – corrupted by the world of books – realizes that his fallen brethren were in the right. [JC]
Jacques Anatole-François Thibault
born Paris: 16 April 1844
died Sain-Cyr-sur-Loire, France: 12 October 1924
works
- Balthasar et la Reine Balkis (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1889) [coll: hb/]
- Thaïs (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1890) [hb/]
- Thaïs (Chicago, Illinois: Nile C Smith, 1891) [trans by A D Hall of the above: in the publisher's Lakeside Series: pb/]
- Thaïs (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1901) [trans almost certainly by Charles Carrington of the above: hb/]
- Thaïs (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1909) [new trans by R B Douglas of the above: hb/]
- L'Etui de Nacre (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1892) [coll: hb/]
- Tales from a Mother-of-Pearl Casket (New York: George H Richmond, 1896) [coll: trans by Henry Pene du Bois of the above: hb/]
- Mother of Pearl (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1908) [coll: new trans by Frederick Chapman: hb/]
- Le Puits de Sainte Clare (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1895) [hb/]
- The Well of Santa Clara (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1903) [trans by Alfred R Allinson of the above: hb/]
- The Well of St Clare (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1909) [vt of the above: hb/]
- The Well of St Clare (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1909) [new trans by Alfred R Allison of the above: hb/]
- Sur la pierre blanche (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1905) [coll of linked stories: first appeared 1904 l'Humanité: hb/]
- The White Stone (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1910) [coll of linked stories: trans by Charles E Roche of the above: hb/]
- L'île des pingouins (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1907) [hb/]
- Penguin Island (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1909) [trans by A W Evans of the above: hb/]
- Les Sept Femmes de la Barbe-Bleu, et autres contes merveilleux (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1909) [coll: hb/]
- The Seven Wives of Bluebeard, and Other Marvellous Tales (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1920) [coll: trans by Mrs D B Stewart of the above: hb/]
- La révolte des anges (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1914) [hb/]
- The Revolt of the Angels (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1914) [trans by Mrs Wilfrid Jackson of the above: hb/]
- Golden Tales of Anatole France (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co, 1926) [coll: trans of various stories: hb/Lawrence A Patterson]
- The Six Greatest Novels of Anatole France (Garden City, New York: Garden City Books, 1936) [omni: reprinting various trans of novels including Thaïs and Penguin Island above: hb/]
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