Fun Facts Friday: Anatole France

Anatole France (16 April, 1844 – 12 October, 1924) was a poet, journalist and a Nobel Prize winning novelist from France.

Books by Anatole France*

Fun Facts about Anatole France:

1. Mr. France, a bibliophile, was the son of a bookseller, owner of the bookstore Librairie France.
2. Librairie France was known for books on the French Revolution and was visited by many famous writers and scholars.
3. Mr. France is believed to be the model of Marcel Proust‘s In Search of Lost Time.
4. The first poem Mr. France got published was during the year 1869 in Le Parnasse Contemporain.
5. In 1881 Mr. France gained his literary fame after his novel Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881) was published.
6. Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard won a prize from Académie française for its elegant prose.
7. During the Dreyfus Affair Mr. France signed Émile Zola’s J’Accuse…! (a passionate letter published in a Paris newspaper) supporting Dreyfus. Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish army artillery officer falsely convicted of espionage and remains to this day a prime example of antisemitism combined with a complicated miscarriage of justice.
8. Mr. France’s first wife, Valérie Guérin de Sauville, was the daughter of the famous miniaturist Jean-Urbain Guérin.
9. In 1921 Mr. France won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
10. After Mr. France passed away, his legacy was subject to attacks by Nazi collaborators due to his popular appeal. George Orwell, the famous English author, defended Mr. France.

Books by Anatole France*

Zohar – Man of la Book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account