French Literature Reviews - 2026

Subscription to Merlette
Novel and Narrative Prose

The Cercle des Amateurs de Remy de Gourmont is pleased to announce the upcoming reissue of Merlette, the debut novel by Remy de Gourmont, published by Philippe Le Lanchon in the "Hommes de remarque" series. The subscription form is available on the website of the Amateurs de Remy de Gourmont. Subscriptions will close at the end of June.

A major figure in the literary life of his time, Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) has mysteriously fallen into oblivion. Reading his first novel Merlette will provide an opportunity for those unfamiliar with Gourmont to discover one of the rare novels of its era to offer a relatively faithful depiction of provincial morals: following Flaubert's Normandy without Normandy, Barbey's hallucinated Normandy, Maupassant's "bestial" Normandy, and preceding La Varende's phantasmagorical Normandy, there is the genuinely Norman Normandy (not to mention the Manche department) of Remy de Gourmont, whose language—too rarely, yet delightfully—makes itself heard. Merlette also serves, in advance, as a response to Zola's "gloomy filth", La Terre.

Those familiar with the author of Sixtine will discover the author of Merlette—seemingly unexpected, yet whose heroine is, at her core, quintessentially Gourmontian, belonging to the lineage of female lovers brought to life by the yearning of their adorers.

Remy de Gourmont occupies a singular place in French literary history, known as a prominent figure of his era whose work has subsequently been largely forgotten by modern readers. As a novelist and critic associated with the turn of the twentieth century, his earlier contributions like Sixtine established his literary profile. The forthcoming reissue of Merlette through the Cercle des Amateurs de Remy de Gourmont brings renewed attention to this aspect of his output, offering a chance to examine his narrative approach alongside other nineteenth-century treatments of regional identity and provincial life in French literature.

Readers interested in nineteenth-century French fiction and the lesser-known works of Symbolist-era writers may find this reissue a relevant point of study.