André Gide was one of the most important French writers of the twentieth century. He was born André Paul Guillaume Gide, 22 November 1869, in Paris, France, the only child of Paul Gide, a professor of Roman law, and Juliette Rondeaux Gide, a Norman heiress. When Gide was eleven, his father died of tuberculosis. Soon after, Gide developed a predilection for faking illness, and was often kept home from school, receiving an uneven education from private tutors. Upon passing his baccalaureate examination at the age of twenty, he determined to devote his life to writing. His first book, Les Cahiers d'André Walter (1891; The Notebooks of André Walter), is an autobiographical novel based on his youthful experiences.

In 1893, Gide made his first trip to North Africa, where he had his first homosexual experience. That year, he suffered from tuberculosis, though he soon recovered. Two years...