Anatole France

At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque - (1893) Anatole France

This double volume contains two of the most representative novels of Anatole France. At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque, with its famous figure, the Abbe Jerome Coignard - priest, scholar, and vagabond - marked the full maturity of its author, and has always had the enthusiastic appreciation of British critics and readers. The Revolt of the Angels, written twenty years later, is France's last major work, a realistic fantasy, with ideas which are apposite to-day, and the book which the author regarded as his best. The two novels make an excellent pair, each in its own way typical of France's tradition-steeped yet sceptical philosophy, and of that 'alternating communion and conflict of learning and licentiousness, of reason and romanticism, of the mundane and the divine.' Anatole France's works live on, and indeed in his class he is at the top.