Anatole France’s Merrie Tales…

Anatole France’s The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche (1908)

An introduction to the work of the great Nobel Prize winning poet and novelist, Anatole France (1844-1924).

For The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche, France cast back into historical mists at once factual and imagined, for a collection of what might loosely be called ‘moral tales’. Gems of wisdom, the tales are steeped in a skepticism that, powered with acute insight, subtle wit, and wicked humour, gnaws at the root of the human self-conception. “Man,” wrote Giambattista Vico, “makes himself the measure  of all things.” We gain a similar sense from The Merrie Tales, that the lights to which we human beings turn for guidance are already richly tinted with our own sins and foibles. Naturally, for we have created them ourselves.

France’s laughter is tempered with compassion and affection for human beings in their somehow noble frailty. Moreover, his stories seem to be aware of a certain mysterious power inherent in the story itself, in re-enacting this perpetual human comedy: an essence of humanity?

Exhilarating writer Oliver Raven will introduce each of Jacques Tournebroche’s tales with his own inimitable take. Glorious illustrations by Marcia Lane Foster.

An absolute must-read for the soul.

Translation of The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche is by Alfred Allinson (London: John Lane, Bodley Head, 1909). Woodcuts by British artist Marcia Lane Foster (1897–1983) have been confirmed as Public Domain Mark 1.0 (free of known restrictions under copyright law). Acknowledgement to David Widger for his digital edition.