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| Founded | 1941 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Jean Bruller and Pierre de Lescure |
| Country of origin | France |
| Headquarters location | Paris |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | www |
Les Éditions de Minuit (French: [lez‿edisjɔ̃dəminɥi] , Midnight Press) is a French publishing house. It was founded in 1941, during the French Resistance of World War II, and is still publishing books today.[ as of? ]
Les Éditions de Minuit was founded by writer and illustrator Jean Bruller and writer Pierre de Lescure (1891–1963) in 1941 in Paris, during the German occupation of northern France (by November 1942, German forces occupied all of France). At the time, the media and all forms of publishing were controlled and censored by the Nazi occupiers. Les Éditions de Minuit was started to circumvent the censorship. It was an underground publisher until the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944.
Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea) (1942) by co-founder Bruller (who wrote under the pseudonym Vercors) was the first book published. Distribution, as with other Resistance texts, was based on being passed from person to person.
Le Silence de la mer was followed in 1943 by Chroniques interdites (banned newspaper columns, various authors), L'Honneur des poètes (The Honour of poets) poetry collected by Paul Éluard, Le cahier noir (The Black Notebook) by François Mauriac, and Le musée Grévin(The Grévin Museum) by Louis Aragon.
A small group of printers joined Bruller and de Lescure, and together they risked imprisonment and death to publish works by some of France's greatest authors (who wrote under pseudonyms). The authors included Paul Éluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques Maritain, François Mauriac, Jean Paulhan, André Chamson, André Gide, and the first unabridged French translation of John Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down (Nuits noires).
After the war, when Les Éditions de Minuit was able to operate openly, it continued to publish books but struggled in the early postwar years to become financially stable. The publishing house was directed by Jérôme Lindon from 1947 until his death in 2001. His daughter, Irène Lindon, succeeded him.
In the 1950s, the company began to be more successful. Lindon was the first to publish several novels by Samuel Beckett, who wrote in French as well as English, and was resident in France at the time. Other authors published include Monique Wittig, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Marguerite Duras and Robert Pinget, who constituted the backbone of the Nouveau roman literary movement. It also published Henri Alleg's La Question (1958) on the use of torture by the French Army during the Algerian War (1954–62). The book was censored.
From the late 1970s to the mid-80s, Lindon and the Éditions de Minuit promoted several young French authors such as Jean Echenoz, soon joined by Jean-Philippe Toussaint (from Belgium), Jean Rouaud, Marie NDiaye, Patrick Deville, Éric Chevillard, and lately by Laurent Mauvignier and Julia Deck. These have been classified under the tag of "Style Minuit", characterized by a certain writing renewal (partially influenced by the Nouveau Roman), based on minimalist formalism mixed to an elaborated style. [1] [2] [3]
From its foundation to 2015, the Éditions de Minuit have, through their authors, won two Nobel Prize in Literature (Samuel Beckett and Claude Simon), three Prix Goncourt ( The Lover by Marguerite Duras, I'm Off by Jean Echenoz and Fields of Glory by Jean Rouaud), seven Prix Médicis, one Prix Renaudot and three Prix Femina. [3]
The style of the front covers of Les Éditions de Minuit books is nearly as spare as the wartime edition of Le Silence de la mer. The only decoration is a blue border and the symbol of Les Éditions de Minuit: a star and the letter "m".
Louis Aragon was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review Littérature. He was also a novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt. After 1959, he was a frequent nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu, known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
François Charles Mauriac was a French novelist, dramatist, critic, poet, and journalist, a member of the Académie française, and laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1952). He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur in 1958. He was a life-long Catholic.
French literature generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature.
The Nouveau Roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the term in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new style each time. Most of the founding authors were published by Les Éditions de Minuit with the strong support of Jérôme Lindon.
Jean Marcel Adolphe Bruller was a French writer and illustrator who co-founded the publishing company Les Éditions de Minuit with Pierre de Lescure. Born to a Hungarian-Jewish father, he joined the Resistance during the World War II occupation of northern France and his texts were published using the pseudonym Vercors.
Le Silence de la mer (French:[ləsilɑ̃sdəlamɛʁ], English titles Silence of the Sea and Put Out the Light, is a French novella written in 1941 by Jean Bruller under the pseudonym "Vercors". Published secretly in German-occupied Paris in 1942, the book quickly became a symbol of mental resistance against German occupiers.
20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts. For more on this, see French art of the 20th century.
Jean Echenoz is a French writer.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a Belgian novelist, photographer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir, second volume of the « Cycle of Marie », a four-tome chronicle published over ten years and displaying the separation of Marie and her lover. His 2009 novel La Vérité sur Marie, third volume of the cycle, won the Prix Décembre.
Jean Lescure was a French poet.
Pierre Seghers was a French poet and editor. During the Second World War he took part in the French Resistance movement.
The 100 Books of the Century is a list of the hundred most memorable books of the 20th century, regardless of language, according to a poll performed during the spring of 1999 by the French retailer Fnac and the Paris newspaper Le Monde.
Tony Duvert was a French writer and philosopher. In the 1970s he achieved some renown, winning the Prix Médicis in 1973 for his novel Paysage de Fantaisie. Duvert's writings are notable both for their style and core themes: the celebration and defence of pedophilia, and criticism of modern child-rearing. In the 1970s attitudes to sexual liberation and child sexuality allowed Duvert to express himself publicly. However, when attitudes altered markedly in the 1980s, he was left feeling frustrated and oppressed.
Mathieu Lindon is a French journalist and writer. He is the youngest son of the publisher Jérôme Lindon, and the first cousin of actor Vincent Lindon. He won the Médicis Prize in 2011.
Laurent Mauvignier is a French writer. He is the brother of the director Thierry Mauvignier.
Christian Gailly was a French writer.
Philippe Vilain is a French man of letters, writer, essayist, doctor of modern literature of the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle.
Lucien Scheler was a French writer, poet, publisher, and bookseller who participated in the literary resistance against Nazism.
François Paul Lachenal was a Swiss publisher and diplomat, who beginning in 1940 played a significant role in publishing the writings of the French authors during the occupation of France by Germany. He was member of the Swiss delegation in Vichy till 1944 and later till 1945 at the Swiss embassy in Berlin. Publisher of the magazine Traits he was son of Genevan politician Paul Lachenal, nephew of The president of the Swiss Confederation Adrien Lachenal and married to Johanna Bertha Caroline Otken. He is buried at the Cimetière des Rois in Geneva.
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