7/25/2023 0 Comments Book collector library software![]() ![]() It is a collection as much for the history of the book as for the history of the period. The purpose of the collection is to help understand how the French used the medium of the book to express their immediate response to the tragic events which had affected the lives of every French man and woman. The starting date is the liberation of Paris, and the end of 1946 is the cut-off date, which happens to coincide with the end of the Third Republic. While the exhibition celebrates the 70 th anniversary of the liberation of Paris its scope, like that of the collection, extends well beyond it, to include all books published in French, primarily in France, on the subjects of the Second World War, the Occupation and the Liberation. An exhibition held at Cambridge University Library from May to October 2014 of a collection of books that I have donated to the Library, entitled ‘Literature of the Liberation, the French Experience in Print 1944-1946’ contains a broad selection of illustrated books and magazines about the liberation of Paris and has a catalogue with the same title published by the Library (4). An important exhibition of photographs and films of the liberation of Paris at the musée Carnavalet in Paris in 2014 ‘Paris liberé, photographié, exposé’ with an authoritative large-format catalogue (3) only contains a few books and magazines. 1890 bis heute (2) contains descriptions of some of the books of contemporary photographs. The substantial catalogue of an exhibition held in Paris in 2011 ‘Archives de la vie littéraire sous l’Occupation’ (1), includes some books and manuscripts from and immediately after the liberation of Paris and the bibliography Eyes on Paris. The books, pamphlets and magazines that were published in the weeks and months that followed have not been well documented but this is beginning to change. The German administration of France was based in Paris and when this administration broke down censorship ended – until it was re-imposed, with more benign conditions, by the new government of France. The liberation of Paris had effectively brought to an end the restrictions imposed by the German occupation of France even though the German army was not driven out of France until February 1945. The triumphant arrival of the F.F.I., (Forces françaises de l’intérieur) and the Americans, together with General de Gaulle walking through the crowds to the Arc de Triomphe with ‘the light of inspiration in his face’ 2, created a feel-good factor that, after the years of occupation, newspaper, magazine and book publishers were quick to appreciate. When the uprising started on 19 August French writers, photographers and artists were out on the streets recording the guerrilla warfare, the barricades, the columns of German prisoners and the French and German bodies lying in the streets. But French journalists and photographers were equally quick to appreciate the significance of the liberation of the world’s most important occupied city. ![]() Ernest Hemingway made sure that he reached Paris ahead of his war correspondent wife Martha Gellhorn, and he was followed by his friend the photographer Robert Capa who had been one of the first photographers on the beaches in June 1. ![]() ![]() The Literature of the Liberation 1944-1946Īfter the Normandy landings in June 1944 the world’s press prepared for the liberation of Paris. This article by Charles Chadwyck-Healey was originally published in The Book Collector in March 2015. ![]()
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