The place occupied by Paul Léautaud in the history of the French novel is undoubtedly a marginal one; indeed, this writer's celebrity is mainly due to his work in genres other than the novel, namely dramatic criticism, memoirs, essays, and reflections, which appeared in periodicals and which were collected in various compilations of his work, and his imposing Journal littéraire (1954-1966; translated in part as Journal of a Man of Letters, 1960). Nevertheless, his venture into novel-writing was an important stage in the trajectory this student of the self followed in search of his own identity, and the texts that belong to this vein, although they are not numerous, show a quality which justifies the interest that has been given to them.

Paul Léautaud, who was born in Paris on 18 January 1872, was the illegitimate child of a precarious couple. He was abandoned a...