A life among books and public arguments
France grew up in the world of his father’s Paris bookshop. He worked in publishing before joining the Senate library in 1876, where he helped prepare its catalogue. Alongside that employment he developed a career in poetry, criticism and fiction. He left the library in 1890.
His novels and stories made him one of the leading literary figures of his time. He also intervened in public affairs, supporting the campaign to revise Alfred Dreyfus’s conviction and drawing closer to socialist causes. Elected to the Académie française in 1896, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921. He died in 1924.
A library unsettled by reading
The Revolt of the Angels appeared in French in 1914. Its opening introduces Monsieur Sariette, a librarian whose elaborate classification has made him indispensable and whose suspicion of borrowers obstructs the use of the books. When volumes begin appearing out of place, he searches for an explanation within the household. France lets the consequences of reading expand from that comedy into the angels’ revolt. Lumitheca holds a 1929 English edition translated by Mrs Wilfrid Jackson, decorated with ornamental initials.
