Edmond Charlot


Edmond Charlot 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. 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.
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. 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 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 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 surmised 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 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 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. 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, 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" 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, Jean Amrouche, Marie-Louise-Taos Amrouche, Jules Roy, Emmanuel Roblès and blank verse of Jean Lescure.
In 1947 Charlot, who passed to his sister-in-law his first bookshop at Algiers Les Vraies Richesses, started the publication of "ten best French novels" chosen by Gide. Among the titles published under his care were those of Georges Bernanos, , Albert Cossery and Arthur Adamov. 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 under the direction of Amrouche and.
One of the most interesting publications was by Général Tubert. The anodyne title 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. 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.
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.
  • 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 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 book series
In his career Charlot worked with three Nobel Laureates, Camus, Aleixandre and Gide. Other writers in his publishing house won other prestigious prizes such as le prix Renaudot and le prix Femina for work by Roblès.
Finally, one notes Charlot published books for children. One of these L’enfant et la rivière 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.
Algeria had been between the world wars somewhat pictorially conservative with an emphasis on representative art. Camus, though a writer himself, was deeply interested in the visual arts and counted among his friends many artists who he introduced to Charlot. One such was René-Jean Clot who was also a writer, though he focussed in later life on art. As the Algerian art establishment turned their backs on abstract art, it was places such as Les Vraies Richesses that provided a space to exhibit but also where writers and artists could meet and exchange ideas. Propagandastaffel considered abstract art "degenerate" but could not extinguish the new art in Algeria. Even under German occupation the new art was shown. For example, on 10 May 1941 gallery Brun exhibited "traditional" art side by side with the "modern" works which attracted no comment from Propagandastaffel but after the war was quoted as an act of resistance. After the war there was a "porosity" between Paris and Algeria and many Algerian artists exhibited in Paris
On his return to Algiers, after the Second World War, in 1948, Charlot continued with his interest in art. "Charlot went to show the best Algerian visual art or sculptures and, just as he had naturally made it by written works in the 1940s, in the years 1954-1962 he took up the challenge with canvases by Algerian painters", recounted Jacqueline Moulin. Over decades he would organise in his bookshops, then for the gallery Comte-Tinchant, exhibitions, notably of Nicole Algan,,, Charles Brouty,,, Henri Caillet, Henri Chouvet, J.A.R Durand,, Maria Moresca, Pierre Rafi,,, Maria Manton,,, Hacène Benaboura and others.
After his spell in Paris in ORTF he opened the gallery Pilote in Algiers where he again set up exhibitions of young Algerian painters such as Baya, Aksouh and Mohammed Khadda.