L Orme Du Mail

NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 1921

Anatole France, pseudonym of François-Anatole Thibault (1844–1924), was born in Paris. The son of a bookseller, he worked at the Senate Library, while writing critical articles and publishing poetry in newspapers and magazines. In 1896, he was elected a member of the French Academy.
He experimented with various literary genres – his short stories, Jocaste et Le Chat Maigre, from 1879, were praised by Flaubert – but it was in the novel that his vocation as a writer was most evident. His first success came with Thaïs (1890), a decadent revival of the classical period, adapted to the libretto of the opera of the same name, composed by Massenet and nowadays an integral part of the traditional repertoire. This was followed by other famous novels, such as Le Lys Rouge (1894), and four volumes collected under the title Histoire Contemporaine (1897–1901), which definitively marked the writer's expressive maturity and his interest in social and political themes.
Among the works of his last period of life, Vie de Jeanne d'Arc (1908), the allegorical-satirical novel L'Île des Pingouins (1908) and the historical novel, which takes place during the French Revolution with The Gods Thirst (1912) and during the Third Republic in The Revolt of the Angels (1914), both in Cavalo de Ferro.
A writer of refined culture and elegance of style, Anatole France hides under the guise of ironic skepticism an indulgent disenchantment with modern society. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work.