In the collection here presented to American readers will be found those works especially which reveal the intimate side of French social life-works in which are discussed the moral problems that affect most potently the life of the world at large.  If inquiring spirits seek to learn the customs and manners of the France of any age, they must look for it among her crowned romances.  They need go back no farther than Ludovic Halevy, who may be said to open the modern epoch.  In the romantic school, on its historic side, Alfred de Vigny must be looked upon as supreme.  De Musset and Anatole France may be taken as revealing authoritatively the moral philosophy of nineteenth-century thought.  I must not omit to mention the Jacqueline of Th.  Bentzon, and the “Attic” Philosopher of Emile Souvestre, nor the, great names of Loti, Claretie, Coppe, Bazin, Bourget, Malot, Droz, De Massa, and last, but not least, our French Dickens, Alphonse Daudet.  I need not add more; the very names of these “Immortals” suffice to commend the series to readers in all countries.

One word in conclusion:  America may rest assured that her students of international literature will find in this series of ‘ouvrages couronnes’ all that they may wish to know of France at her own fireside—­a knowledge that too often escapes them, knowledge that embraces not only a faithful picture of contemporary life in the French provinces, but a living and exact description of French society in modern times.  They may feel certain that when they have read these romances, they will have sounded the depths and penetrated into the hidden intimacies of France, not only as she is, but as she would be known.

Gaston BOISSIER
Secretaire Perpetuel de l’academie francaise

GEORGES OHNET

The only French novelist whose books have a circulation approaching the works of Daudet and of Zola is Georges Ohnet, a writer whose popularity is as interesting as his stories, because it explains, though it does not excuse, the contempt the Goncourts had for the favor of the great French public, and also because it shows how the highest form of Romanticism still ferments beneath the varnish of Naturalism in what is called genius among the great masses of readers.

Georges Ohnet was born in Paris, April 3, 1848, the son of an architect.  He was destined for the Bar, but was early attracted by journalism and literature.  Being a lawyer it was not difficult for him to join the editorial staff of Le Pays, and later Le Constitutionnel.  This was soon after the Franco-German War.  His romances, since collected under the title ‘Batailles de la Vie’, appeared first in ’Le Figaro, L’Illustration, and Revue des Deux Mondes’, and have been exceedingly well received by the public.  This relates also to his dramas, some of his works meeting with a popular success rarely extended to any author.  For some time Georges Ohnet did not find the same favor with the critics, who often attacked him with a passionate violence and unusual severity.  True, a high philosophical flow of thoughts cannot be detected in his writings, but nevertheless it is certain that the characters and the subjects of which he treats are brilliantly sketched and clearly developed.  They are likewise of perfect morality and honesty.