Literature: 1921

France, Anatole, pronounced frans or frahns, a na TAWL (1844-1924), was the pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault, a French novelist and critic. He won the 1921 Nobel Prize for literature.

France was born in Paris, the son of a well-to-do bookseller. His childhood was filled with the magic of literature. In his autobiography, My Friend's Book (1885), France recalled the pleasures of those years and the mental stimulation he received from Paris, especially its libraries and bookshops.

France's first successful novel was The Crime of Sylvester Bonnard (1881). Beginning in 1886, he wrote a literary column for the newspaper Le Temps. His clear and elegant style, the subtlety of his observation, and his disinterested rejection of extreme causes gained him the reputation of being a friendly, easy-going man. France's novel Thais (1890) seemed to symbolize his ideals of pleasure and wisdom.

The famous Dreyfus affair, which shook the nation, led France to write about political and social issues. His novels of the 1900's reflect his part in the struggle for social justice that took place in the country. He began to ridicule society and its institutions in Penguin Island (1908), his most famous novel, and in The Gods are Athirst (1912) and The Revolt of the Angels (1914). The irony of these novels has been compared to that of the works of Voltaire.

Contributor: Thomas H. Goetz, Ph.D., Professor of French, State University of New York College, Fredonia.