Collection: André Gide

André Gide was born on November 22, 1869, in Paris, into a prominent Protestant bourgeois family. His father, a law professor, died when André was eleven years old; he then grew up surrounded by women, in a puritanical atmosphere that he would spend a part of his life questioning.

In 1891, he self-published Les Cahiers d'André Walter with Perrin, a confessional debut that drew the attention of the Symbolist movement and brought him closer to Mallarmé. In 1893, Le Voyage d'Urien was released, the first book illustrated by Maurice Denis, adorned with thirty original lithographs. The same year, a trip to North Africa with the painter Paul-Albert Laurens marked a turning point: Gide embraced his homosexuality there and distanced himself from the rigorous Protestantism of his childhood.

In 1895, after his mother's death, he married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux, whom he had loved since his youth; the couple settled between Paris and the Norman estate of Cuverville. After Les Nourritures terrestres (1897), whose lyricism divided critics, he produced a series of narratives that would establish his reputation: L'Immoraliste (1902), La Porte étroite (1909), Les Caves du Vatican (1914). In 1908-1909, he co-founded la Nouvelle Revue françaisewith Jean Schlumberger and Jacques Copeau, which for decades became a hub of French literary life. Scandal accompanied some of his books: Corydon, which openly defended homosexuality, caused a shock upon its publication.

Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1925) reinvented the novel form. After a trip to Congo, he published a scathing indictment against colonial abuses in 1927; after a stay in the USSR, he broke with communism in 1936 in Retour de l'U.R.S.S. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947, he died in Paris on February 19, 1951. The following year, his entire body of work was placed on the Index by the Vatican.

With Gide, the same pen defends both classical order and transgression, faith and its rejection, commitment and reserve. Our catalog brings together several original editions of this pivotal contemporary. Free appraisal upon request. Consult our literary collection.

Also discover: original editions ofPaul Morand, a contemporary of Gide during the interwar period, and Émile Zola, another monument of French prose. Browse all our 20th-century original editionsor our entire literaturecollection.