Edmond Charlot

Edmond Charlot (February 15th 1915 - April 2004), bookseller and editor with Algiers then in Paris, published the first books of Albert Camus but also of Jules Roy, Max-pol. Fouchet, Emmanuel Roblès. “Editor of free France” during the Occupation, it was, since the end of the Années 1930 until the medium of the Années 1950, one of the characters - keys of the French literature.

Biography

Edmond Charlot is born in Algiers in a family established in Algérie since 1830. His/her maternal grandfather is of Maltese origin . With the college of Algiers, it becomes acquainted with the painter Sauveur Galliéro and, in class of first, Albert Camus, then in class of hypokhâgne. In 1934 their professor de Philosophie, Jean Grenier, which had encouraged Camus and Mouloud Mammeri to be written, advises the edition to him and promises to give him a text. Under its initial “E.C.” Edmond Charlot publishes in May 1936 Révolte in the Asturies , collective play written according to a scenario of Camus, prohibited by the municipality of Algiers, then under the sign of the “Editions of Maurétanie” two other works. In homage to Jean Giono and with his authorization, Edmond Charlot opens on November 3rd, 1936 in Algiers, 2 bis rue Charras, with two steps of faculties, a tiny bookstore “the True richnesses”, offering Rondeur of the days of Giono, which it publishes under the same sign, with its first customers. All at the same time, publisher lending library and art gallery (Bonnard is the first exposed painter there), it becomes one of the principal meeting places of the intellectuals of Algiers, writers, journalists and painters.

Edmond Charlot created simultaneously in 1936 its first collection, “Mediterranean” in which it publishes a collection of poems of Rene-Jean Clot, in May 1937 Back and the place of Camus, familiar of the “True richnesses”, Simples without virtue of Max-pol. Fouchet, in June Santa-Cruz and other landscapes African of Jean Grenier. Carrying out hitherto a book every two months, Charlot suspends then, for family and economic reasons, its activity of editor but publishes in 1938 a first book of Claude de Fréminville, two works of Gabriel Audisio, and in December 1938 and February 1939 the two numbers of the review “Shores”, whose proclamation is written by Camus, the third number, is devoted to Federico Garcia Lorca, being seized and being destroyed by the authorities of Vichy. In May 1939 Edmond Charlot publishes Noces of Camus then, mobilized in September with Blida, gives up for ten months the management of its bookstore. Demobilized in July 1940 it takes again its activities with which it associates Camus, installed with It Chambon-on-Lignon (Haute-Loire), as a reader and a literary adviser.

Charlot in May 1941 inaugurates the collection “Fountain”, directed by Max-pol. Fouchet, which publishes Rainer Maria Rilke, Gertrude Stein, in the following years Pierre Jean Jouve, Pierre Emmanuel, Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, Philippe Soupault and in August the collection “Poetry and theater”, directed by Camus, with in particular the “Romancero gipsy” of Lorca, of proses of Tristan Corbière. The works of Charlot, already suspecté by the mode of Vichy, are labelled in Paris like “not communicating” by the National library. Gertrude Stein, moreover, having expressed in February 1942 on a radio Frenchwoman her pride to be published by “a dynamic and resistant editor”, Edmond Charlot, “supposed gaullist sympathizing communist”, is one week later during a score of days put at the secrecy with the Barberousse prison then placed under house arrest in the village of Cartwright, close to Orléansville (Ech Chelef).

After the unloading of the Americans on November 8th, 1942 and the arrival in Algiers of many writers and artists, Charlot, remobilized, the service of the publications directs to the Ministry for the information of the provisional government, taking part in the creation of the “Editions France” which, among a dozen works, publish Jacques Rivière, Georges Duhamel, Charles Péguy, André Suarès. From now on installed street Michelet, Edmond Charlot becomes in fact the editor of free France whose Algiers is the capital. After Manosque of the plates of Giono in 1941, whereas the author is imprisoned for pacifism, Charlot publishes in 1942 All together at the end of the world , play which ridicules the mode of Vichy, of Philippe Soupault, with which it projects the creation of the collection “the Five continents” of which about thirty volumes, of Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Arthur Koestler, David Herbert Lawrence, Alberto Moravia, will appear only as from 1945 in Paris. Edmond Charlot also publishes Roger Clipping-Rock and, in 1943, a first book of André Gide, the Army of the shades of Joseph Kessel, Ciel and ground of Jules Roy, title of a collection which will be directed by the novelist as from 1946. He reprints the Silence of the sea of Vercors which is transmitted to him from London, and gathers several works in the collection “the Books of France in war”. In February 1944 it publishes the first number of the review “the Arch”, created on an initiative of Andre Gide and directed by Jean Amrouche and Jacques Lassaigne, which gathers in particular texts of Saint-Exupéry, Jacques Maritain, Pierre Mendès France.

After the Libération Edmond Charlot is affected in December 1944 with the Ministry for information in Paris and installs the seat of its editions close to Saint-Germain-of-Meadows, street of the Chair, in 1945 rue de Verneuil, 1947 in an old “house” of the street Gregoire-of-Turns which had counted Apollinaire among his customers, and publishes in particular works of Henri Bosco ( the Farmhouse Théotime , 1945, Prix Renaudot), Jean Amrouche ( Chants Berbères of Kabylie , 1946) and Marie-Louise Taos Amrouche ( black Jacinthe , 1947)), Jules Roy ( The happy Valley , 1946, Renaudot Price), Emmanuel Roblès ( Heights of the city, 1948, Price Fémina) and of the prose poems of Jean Lescure ( the Wound does not close , with a lithography of Estève, 1949). In 1947 Charlot begins the publication of the “10 best French novels chosen by André Gide”. Among the titles published by its care still appear of the works of Georges Bernanos (1944), Yvon Belaval (1946), Arthur Adamov (1950). However “the businesses of Charlot did not resist success. For lack of a solid holds financing, for lack of insurances, abused by its rivals, in hillock with ferocity and with the jealousy of the old houses, it sank”, written Jules Roy ( cruel Mémoires , Albin Michel, 1989; The Book of pocket n° 6899,1991, p. 395). In spite of the support of Editor association resistant, its financial problems accumulate as from 1948 and Charlot, not being able to find capital nor to secure loans, is condemned to be involved in debt to reprint and constrained to leave its Parisian editions, which continue a few months under the direction of Amrouche and Charles Autrand.

Edmond Charlot goes back thus in 1950 to Algiers where it carries out cultural chronicles in Radio-Algiers, holds a new bookstore-gallery, publishes in “the alive Mediterranean” (1949-1953) then “Shores” (1949-1961) about fifteen new titles, in particular the Son of poor the of Mouloud Feraoun, including/understanding whereas “a small access of jealousy” of Amrouche (“Le Monde”, August 13rd, 1994) prevents its editions from earlier publishing it, and an album of drawings of Charles Brouty introduced by Roblès. At the same time, “Charlot will expose (...) best work pictorial - or sculptural sometimes - of Algiers, and as it had naturally done by the work written in the Forties, in these years 54-62 it will take again the combat with the fabrics of the Algerian painters”, summarizes Jacqueline Moulin (in “Loess”). With the length of the decades it will have organized in its bookstores then for the Gallery Count-Tinchant of the exposures, in particular, of Nicole Algan (1925-1986), Louis Benisti (1903-1995), Jean-Pierre Blanche, Charles Brouty, Jacques Burel (1922-2000), Marius de Buzon, Henri Caillet, Henri Chouvet, J.A.R. Duran (1914-1997), Sauveur Galliéro (1914-1963), Maria Moresca, Pierre Rafi, Rene Sintès, Marcel Bouqueton in 1953 and 1956), Maria Manton (1910-2003) in 1953 and Louis Nallard, Jean de Maisonseul (1912-1999), Hacène Benaboura (1898-1970), Bouzid (1929), Zérarti (1938).

In September 1961 Edmond Charlot sudden, like “liberal” opposed to all the attacks, two plastic bomb attacks allotted to OAS which destroy the near total of its files, its correspondence and the notes of reading of Camus. In 1962 it returns to Paris and works during three years at the “Research service of the ORTF” with Pierre Schaeffer and Jean Lescure. In 1965 the responsibility for the free-Algerian cultural exchanges is entrusted to him to the Embassy from France to Algiers. It animates the “Pilot” gallery where it exposes into 1966 the young Algerian painters, among which Baya, Aksouh, Mohammed Khadda of which it publishes the Eléments for an art nouveau (texts of the painter and Anna Gréki).

From 1969 to 1973 Edmond Charlot directs then the French Arts center of Izmir in Turkey, finding the means of making reintroduce French at the University, still publishes there, under the sign “the Sultanas”, of the poems of Jean Lescure ( 13 proverbs smyrniotes with illustrations of Georges Dayez), then of 1973 to 1980 that of Tangier, publishing without name of editor an anthology of the Moroccan poetry of French expression. He is established then with Pézenas, close to Montpellier (Herault), animating with Marie-Cecile Vène the bookstore “the High District”, melting association and the collection “the alive Mediterranean” (with the Domens Editions) which publishes in particular texts of Jules Roy, Jean Sénac, Jean de Maisonseul. Become almost entirely blind, Edmond Charlot dies in Béziers in April 2004.

Its name is given the following year to the media library of Pézenas where an exposure of a score of his/her friends painters is presented, of which Aksouh, Nicole Algan, Baya, Benaboura, Benisti, Dayez, Galliéro, Khadda, of Maisonseul, Manton, Nallard. The few three hundred works published by Edmond Charlot, including one great number were republished by other houses, are sought today by the bibliophiles.

Sources

Algiers at the time of the “True richnesses”, a city, a bookseller , testimonys collected by F.J. Temple, in " Loess" , n°13, Saint-Martin-at Cormières (Aveyron), January 1984.
Michel Puche, Edmond Charlot, editor , Bibliography with accompanying notes and illustrated, Foreword of Jules Roy, Pézenas, Domens Editions, 1995,100 pages.

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