In 1916 André Gide had already remarked that France's work, while elegant and subtle, was "sans inquiétude" (without anxiety), meaning that he is too clear, too easily understood, never disturbing his readers--the contrary of the ideal that Gide set for himself and, implicitly, for others.
These judgments illustrate how, by the mid 1920s, Anatole France's position as a literary master was already slipping, although biographical studies began to appear in that decade, and his works had been translated into at least a dozen languages, including Esperanto, and were still widely popular. English-speaking readers could buy his works in a series published by John Lane, and several translations appeared in the Modern Library series, with introductions by such literary notables as James Branch Cabell and Lafcadio Hearn. Despite the pronouncements of Gide and the surrealists, few at that time must have divined that, some decades later, France's reputation would plummet, reaching its nadir after mid century. The reasons for this decline are now apparent. Although France lived nearly a quarter of the way through the new century, his aesthetic was that of the previous century, foreign to the modernism that marked the prose of the new age.
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