Marcel Arland was a literary and intellectual leader in France from the 1920s to the late 1970s. Although an established novelist, he is best known for his short stories, which demonstrate his affinity with the American short story at the turn of the twentieth century. His criticism ranged from art to literature and covered artists and writers of several centuries. He was also respected for the encouragement he gave new writers in his position as editor of the prestigious Nouvelle Revue Française from 1953 to 1977 and for his interest in preserving the artistic values that literary review represented.

Arland was born 5 July 1899 in Varennes-sur-Amance in Haute-Marne, roughly halfway between Paris and the eastern French border. It is a sylvan setting of hills and sloping valleys that often appears, in Arland's fictional world, most specifically in his 1938 narrative, Terre natale (Native Land). His father, Victor Arland, died when...