Life
Son of a village clogmaker, Charles-Louis Philippe rose from his modest background first to secondary education via a grant, then to the world of letters. However, he remained attached to the class of his birth. He wrote to the bourgeois writer and politician Maurice Barrès... Philippe passed the Baccalaureat in science in 1891, but failed in his attempts to enter the specialist colleges in Paris (École polytechnique, École centrale). He eventually obtained a modest office job in the administration of Paris, which allowed him to settle in the capital and pursue his vocation as a writer. Among his literary friends and admirers would beWorks
After a short period writing poetry, he turned to fiction, publishing a collection of overheated tales of “poor love” (''Quatre histoires de pauvre amour'', 1897), then two sentimental portraits of village girls (''La bonne Madeleine et la pauvre Marie'', 1898), and a lyrical evocation of his own childhood and youth (''La Mère et l’enfant'', 1900). A brief liaison with a prostitute inspired his best-known novel, ''Bubu de Montparnasse'' (1901), which earned him critical as well as popular attention. A provincial novel followed: ''Le Père Perdrix'' (1902) recounts the painful old age of a blacksmith, and explores the small-town class system. ''Marie Donadieu'' (1904) returns to Paris to tell a passionate love story tinged with individualism inspired by Nietzsche. ''Croquignole'' (1906) evokes the stifling office atmosphere Philippe knew well, and which his hero escapes, but briefly, through an inheritance. Despite some strong support (notably fromOf Philippe in English
Most of Philippe’s works listed above are still readily available in French. Although three novels, ''Bubu de Montparnasse'', ''Le Père Perdrix'' and ''Marie Donadieu'', have been published in English translations, all are long out of print. Though T.S. Eliot prefaced the first English translation of ''Bubu de Montparnasse'', little has been published on Philippe in English, and nothing in book form. * ''Bubu of Montparnasse'', Charles-Louis Philippe translated by Laurence Vail, with a preface by T.S. Eliot, Crosby Continental Editions, Paris (1932). New Edition, Shakespeare House, New York (1951).On Philippe in English (or translated in English)
* Georg Lukács, translated by Anna Bostock, ''Soul and Form'', The Merlin Press Ltd, The UK (January 1, 1991), 978-0850362510. « An influential collection, first published in 1911, established Lukács as a critic. Here he considers the role of the critical essay and its relation to great aesthetics and reviewing philosophers and writers, Plato, Novalis, Kierkegaard, Olsen, Storm, Stefan George, Charles-Louis Philippe, Beer-Hofman, Lawrence Sterne, Paul Ernst. » * Georg Lukács, translated by Anna Bostock, ''Soul and Form''; New Edition with an Introduction by Judith Butler, John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis (Editors), Columbia University Press, New York (January 19, 2010) 978-0231149815. * Georg Lukács, translated by Anna Bostock, ''The Theory of the Novel'', The Forms of Great Epic Literature examined in Relation to Whether the General Civilisation of the Time is an Integrated or a Problematic One; The Merlin Press Ltd, The UK (reprint 2000-1962), . A Historical-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, first published in 1914; in The Chapter II, ''The Problems of a Philosophy of the History of Forms'', the Philosopher quotes briefly his ''Soul and Form'' on Philippe's Works by these words : « once, speaking of Charles-Louis Philippe, I called such a form ''‘chantefable’'' »; (Free SourceReferences
{{DEFAULTSORT:Philippe, Charles-Louis 1874 births 1909 deaths People from Allier 19th-century French novelists 20th-century French novelists French male novelists 19th-century French male writers 20th-century French male writers