Thomas Wolfe and Anatole France: A Study of Some Unpublished Experiments

Abstract

IT WOTULD be hard to imagine two twentieth-century authors cast in more different molds than Thomas Wolfe and Anatole France; yet it is a fact that Wolfe admired Anatole France and, early in his career, even adopted his manner in two unpublished satires.1 Moreover, in Wolfe's mature works there are faint echoes of the French novelist. The style of France is so different from that of Wolfe that the connection might never be suspected save for conclusive manuscript proof in the Wolfe Collection in the Houghton Library, upon which I have drawn for a substantial portion of this article.2 On October 24, 1924 Wolfe left America for the first time. In the four years before this trip he had obtained his master's degree from Harvard, had his plays rejected by the Theater Guild, and taught for two semesters as an English instructor at New York University. He went to Europe because he hoped to be able to live more cheaply while he gave himself a chance to do nothing but write. After he had considered and rejected England and Germany, France seemed the place where inspiration awaited him ;3 something of what the French capital