Edmond Charlot ( , ; 1915–2004) was a French-Algerian publisher and editor. He is best known for his friendship with Albert Camus and for being his first publisher.
Biography Edmond Charlot was born on 15 February 1915 in Algiers and died on 10 April 2004 in Béziers, close to where he lived in Pézenas in the south of France in the department of Hérault. He was a publisher and ran specialist bookshops in Algiers and Pézenas as well as being an editor in Paris. He published the first works of Albert Camus and many other important authors, including a translation of Gertrude Stein. He exhibited artwork and was a leading cultural figure in French literature, especially of the Mediterranean region on both the European and African shores. His contribution to literature, visual arts and French culture had been little recognised in his lifetime – even by close friends.DUGAS, G. 2016. Edmond Charlot en son siècle. In: DUGAS, G. (ed.) Edmond Charlot: passeur de culture: Actes du colloque Montpellier-Pézenas. Centenaire Edmond Charlot 2015. Pézenas: Domens. Since his death his work and influence on the arts and literature has been discussed in colloquia, articles and books.
Charlot as a publisher Charlot's first foray into publishing was in May 1936, with a print run of five hundred, a play co-written by Camus, Jeanne-Paule Sicard, Yves Bourgeois and Alfred Poignant called Révolte dans les Asturies. This concerned a revolt by Spanish miners brutally suppressed by the Spanish government. A group of friends, including Charlot, intended to put the play on. The play was censored by the Algerian authorities and the group lost money on the venture. Charlot published it to refinance his friends.VÈNE, M-C. Personal communication 20 April 2017
Charlot was influenced by , a writer who celebrated the Mediterranean. Charlot explicitly acknowledged the debt to Audisio when he said he wanted to create a collection of classics of the Mediterranean, not simply Algeria.MASSON, P. 2016. Tentative de portrait d'un jeune éditeur. p17. In: DUGAS, G. (ed.) Edmond Charlot: passeur de culture: Actes du colloque Montpellier-Pézenas. Centenaire Edmond Charlot 2015. Pézenas: Domens. However, Charlot was not a simple disciple of Audisio. Audisio had a clear vision of the Mediterranean that was influenced by the Greeks rather than the later Roman domination of the region. Charlot's 1936 Méditerranéennes book series was on the other hand eclectic with works by Camus, Audisio, Jean Grenier, and Federico García Lorca and poems by René-Jean Clot.
He published further works by Camus, for example in May 1937 his first book L’Envers et l’Endroit – dedicated to Grenier. There were also works by Grenier, Audisio, and . Then in December 1938 he published the first number of the revue Rivages (shores) which celebrated Mediterranean culture. In 1941 he published the revue Fontaine edited by Max-Pol Fouchet with whom he developed a close working partnership. Fouchet concentrated on the editing and Charlot the commercial side of the business. Fouchet also set up a publishing house also called Fontaine which Charlot accommodated.
Many editors acquiesced with the Nazi Occupation and the Vichy Government. For example, approved race laws and "shouted loud and clear his anti-semitism" and he and other editors removed authors on the (first published in 1940, that listed books considered anti-German or anti-Nazi) from their catalogues. However Charlot and some of his circle such as Max-Pol Fouchet, rather than kow-tow to the authorities risked financial hardship and even imprisonment. It has been surmisedELEFANTE, C. 2016. Edmond Charlot et l "épreuve de l'étranger". Traduction et traducteurs chez Edmond Charlot. p89. In: DUGAS, G. (ed.) Edmond Charlot: passeur de culture: Actes du colloque Montpellier-Pézenas. Centenaire Edmond Charlot 2015. Pézenas: Domens. that an environment of revolt in Algeria may explain the acceptance of risk. Loss of freedom was a reality for Charlot as he was imprisoned briefly after publishing a translation of Paris France by Gertrude Stein (who had described Charlot as a dynamic and resistant editor she was proud to work with – "resistant" was a word with a particular resonance for the Vichy and German authorities of occupied France) for what he later described as the "astonishing claim" that he was presumed to be a Gaullist and communist sympathiser. He was not attached to a political grouping and, unlike Camus, he was never a Communist party member.
As the war progressed things became increasingly difficult. He was released from prison into house arrest and only after he had used one of his contacts (Marcel Sauvage who was close to the Minister of the Interior, Pierre Pucheu) was he released from that. There were practical problems due to scarcity of supplies – made worse as publishers who did not publish those on the Otto list were given supplies and conversely those who refused to comply with the Vichy regime were penalised. Even basics such as paper and ink were difficult to come by. Books were made with any scraps of paper Charlot could cobble together and the covers resembled butchers' wrapping paper, Charlot recalled, and he used staples to bind the pages and ink made from soot. Despite these constraints he sold everything he could put out.
When the Anglo-American forces arrived in 1942, Algeria became the only part of France to be liberated, Algiers became the capital of Free France, Charlot, the "publisher of Free France", and a wave of writers and artists came to Algeria. Charlot's titles included work by André Gide and Jules Roy. In 1944, he published and edited L’Arche, a review created by the poet Jean Amrouche with the explicit blessing of Gide and Charles de Gaulle.JAFFEUX, V. 2016. L'Arche au milieu de la tempete. Naissance d'une revue algéroise dans la tourmente de la seconde guerre mondiale. In: DUGAS, G. (ed.) Edmond Charlot: passeur de culture: Actes du colloque Montpellier-Pézenas. Centenaire Edmond Charlot 2015. Pézenas: Domens. The benediction of Gide is illuminating as he was one of the three co-founders in 1909 of the Nouvelle Revue Française, which L’Arche could be said to have culturally replaced during the years of German occupation of France.
After French liberation (the German garrison surrendered Paris on 25 August 1944), Edmond Charlot in December 1944 joined the Ministry of Information in Paris. Living in the barracks, he searched for a place to install his publishing centre near to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, first at the hôtel de la Minerve, rue de la Chaise that Camus had advised him to take, then in the autumn 1945 at 18 rue de Verneuil. He moved it finally in 1947 to a former "maison close" (brothel) at la rue Grégoire-de-Tours, which had counted Apollinaire among its clients. The new law initiated by Marthe Richard ordered the closure of all brothels. Charlot published about a dozen volumes each month, notably the works of Henri Bosco (Le Mas Théotime, 1945, Prix Renaudot), Jean Amrouche (Chants berbères de Kabylie, 1946), Marie-Louise-Taos Amrouche (Jacinthe noire, 1947), Jules Roy (La Vallée heureuse, 1946, Prix Renaudot), Emmanuel Roblès (Les Hauteurs de la ville, 1948, Prix Fémina) and blank verse of Jean Lescure (La Plaie ne se ferme pas, with a lithograph of Estève, 1949).
In 1947 Charlot, who passed to his sister-in-law his first bookshop at Algiers Les Vraies Richesses (English, "Our True Wealth"),Our Riches, westernsydney.edu.au. Retrieved 7 April 2024. started the publication of "ten best French novels" chosen by Gide. Among the titles published under his care were those of Georges Bernanos (1944), (1946), Albert Cossery (Les Hommes oubliés de Dieu, 1946; La Maison de la mort certaine, 1947) and Arthur Adamov (1950). However "the finances of Charlot were not a success. Missing a solid cash reserve, lack of insurance and mistreated by his rivals and exposed to the ferocity and jealousy of the older publishing houses, he floundered" wrote Jules Roy. Despite the support of the Association des éditeurs résistants, his financial difficulties grew from 1948 and Charlot could not find the capital nor obtain loans, and was forced into debt to reprint and had to leave the Paris base which carried on some further months (1949-1950) under the direction of Amrouche and .
One of the most interesting publications was by Général Tubert.TUBERT, P. 1946. L'Algérie vivra française et heureuse, Algiers, Charlot. The anodyne title (L'Algérie vivra française et heureuse – Algeria will live to be French and happy) disguised a rather disturbing story. For the contents of this volume dated 1943 and by a fictional imprimatur was in fact the 1945 report of Tubert to the Assemblée consultative provisoire (following a massacre in the Constantinois – a region of north-eastern Algeria). The "typographical errors" of the cover are repeated on the title page and were a deliberate effort to disguise the real content and allow the report to be disseminated to avoid the notice of the authorities.BOGLIOLO, F. 2015. Tubert chez Charlot et Camus en écho. Edmond Charlot: Catalogue raisonné d’un éditeur méditerranéen. Pezenas: Domens. From 1936 until his death, but primarily in the 1940s-1950s he published widely, see the table below using information from the 2015 Catalogue raisonné.BOGLIOLO, F., DOMENS, J.-C. & VÈNE, M.-C. 2015. Edmond Charlot: Catalogue raisonné d’un éditeur méditerranéen, Pezenas, Domens.
1936 5 works including Révolte dans les Asturies by Camus et al. 1937 8 works including L’Envers et l’Endroit by Camus and Santa-Cruz et autres paysages africains by Genier 1938 9 works including two by Audisio and two issues of the review Rivages 1939 5 works including Noces by Camus 1940 3 works including Prologue by Lorca 1941 16 works including those by Lorca, Clot, Roblès and Paris, France by Stein 1942 21 works including the Sonnets of Shakespeare 1943 20 works including those by Gide and Roy and a further 15 works within Editions France 1944 32 works and issues 1-6 of L’Arche 1945 28 works (many translations including Persuasion by Jane Austen) and issues 7-11 of L’Arche 1946 68 works and issues 12-22 of L’Arche 1947 42 works and issues 23-27 of L’Arche 1948 4 works 1949 12 works 1950-56 14 works 1957-2003 10 works and director of the Méditerranée vivante (Domens) book series
In his career Charlot worked with three Nobel Laureates, Camus (whose first works he published), Aleixandre (who wrote in the first issue of Rivages) and Gide (who encouraged him to run L’Arche). Other writers in his publishing house won other prestigious prizes such as le prix Renaudot (for Bosco's Le Mas Théotime) and le prix Femina for work by Roblès.
Finally, one notes Charlot published books for children. One of these L’enfant et la rivièreBOSCO, H. 1945. L'enfant et la riviere, Algiers, Charlot. became one of the most successful French children's books. It sold 5,000 copies in 1945 but when republished by Gallimard in 1953 sold eventually 1,800,000 copies.
Charlot and the visual arts From the very onset of his career Charlot was interested in the visual arts. His first venture, Les Vraies Richesses, opened with a three-month exhibition of drawings and three canvases of Bonnard.