French Literature Reviews - 2026
South of Eden: Americans in the South of France, 1910–1940
History, Politics and Society
South of Eden: Americans in the South of France (1910–1940), by Jocelyne Rotily
"A book of the highest interest" (Edmonde Charles-Roux, President of the Académie Goncourt)
This book was supported by: the CNL, the Smithsonian, and the General Council 13
1910–1940: Which great American writer or artist never once crossed the Atlantic to spend time in Provence and on the French Riviera? The entire "Lost Generation" crew gathered there: Dos Passos, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald, who made Antibes their playground. Every summer, they would meet at "Villa America," owned by the painter and dandy Gerald Murphy—the darling of Picasso and Fernand Léger, whom Fitzgerald immortalized as the hero of Tender Is the Night. The South became a magnet for the great outcasts and rebels of 20th-century America. Consider the African American writer Claude McKay who, championed by Jean Ballard’s Cahiers du Sud, wrote one of his defining novels in Marseille: Banjo. Or John Reed, who discovered in Marseille a "romantic," "splendid," and "virile" city. The entire region drew artists for whom nature remained a fabulous creative engine: William Glackens, the American Renoir, could be seen there, alongside the synchromist Stanton Macdonald-Wright; Marsden Hartley, haunted by Cézanne’s Sainte-Victoire; and Man Ray, who traveled down to Marseille for its bustling, colorful, and oriental-hued Canebière, and its Transporter Bridge, a symbol of modernity. For these creators, the South rhymed with Eden. They found there a sense of freedom denied to them by puritanical America, abundant sunshine, striking and deafening color contrasts, a nearly untouched nature, and an "ancient-style" Mediterranean way of life—until the landscape suddenly turned dark.
1914–1918: The South served as a refuge. In Le Cannet, Morgan Russell, a friend of Blaise Cendrars, temporarily set aside his synchromist explorations to study the masters of the Italian Renaissance; in Nice, Alexander Archipenko sculpted young women bathing, employing an unprecedented modernist idiom.
The Year 1940: The South, having become the "free zone," transformed into a transit territory where hope and despair collided. Enter heroic figures who risked their lives to save artists and intellectuals hunted by the Nazis. These heroes were Varian Fry and his extraordinary Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) team, as well as Hiram Bingham. Their theater of operations was Marseille.
And it all ends, or begins anew, with Jim Harrison, who seemed to reopen the road to the South. Since the tragedy of September 11, he found even more reasons to come back: "What better idea," he wrote, "than to take a trip to France and fight terrorism with garlic and red wine?" Should we, therefore, expect a new artistic migration?
South of Eden draws upon often unpublished documentation from American archives (Archives of American Art, US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., National Archives, MOMA) and French archives (Bibliothèque de l'Alcazar and Departmental Archives in Marseille...). It reveals a different image of Provence and the French Riviera, demonstrating how this region, its culture, its artists, and its landscapes left a profound imprint on the work of the American artists and writers of that generation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jocelyne Rotily (born in Marseille) is a historian of American art. She has taught at the University of Provence, Harvard University, New York University, and Columbia University (Paris). She is the author of American Artists in Paris, 1914–1940, published by L'Harmattan, and numerous articles appearing in L'Infini, Critique, La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Le Bulletin célinien, and Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. She has received support from several major foreign institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution (Archives of American Art), the Roberto Longhi Foundation, the French School of Rome, and the Singer-Polignac Foundation. Her primary research interests are Franco-American cultural relations and 20th-century American (and African American) arts.
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PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
ISBN: 2-9524259-0-6
Price: 25 €
244 pages
24 illustrations
Format 16 x 24
EDITIONS ACFA:
23, avenue Guy de Maupassant
13008 Marseille
Tel/Fax: 33 (0)4 91 77 98 08
Email: acfa1@aliceadsl.fr
This book is also available on www.amazon.fr
The period between 1910 and 1940 marked a vibrant chapter in cultural exchange, as generations of American writers, painters, and sculptors crossed the Atlantic to live and work along the Mediterranean coast. Drawn by the landscapes, the light, and a perceived absence of puritanical constraints, figures associated with the Lost Generation and subsequent artistic movements established creative outposts in Provence and आंब the French Riviera. This geographic shift coincided with broader historical disruptions, transforming the region into both a sanctuary during times of global conflict and a crucial transit point for intellectuals fleeing persecution in the twentieth century.
Jocelyne Rotily examines Franco-American connections by utilizing documentation sourced from various American and French archives. The page notes that the work draws upon unpublished documentation from American archives and French archives, and reveals how the region left a profound imprint on the work of American artists and writers of that generation. Readers interested in cultural history, transatlantic artistic networks, and the expatriate experience in twentieth-century France may find this volume relevant.