Publishing Fear: The Making of a War Book “Success” in 1930

In October 1930, the publishing house Stock published La Peur [Fear] by Gabriel Chevallier. A year earlier Stock had successfully published the French translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Using as yet unexploited archival documentation, this article examines the entire editorial process, from writing to publication, of Gabriel Chevallier’s book. It shows how the roles of author and publisher are articulated, and how the former takes on the role of the latter. It also confirms the importance, for the revival of war literature at the turn of the thirties, of the international success of Remarque’s book, but also, in France, of the debate surrounding Jean Norton Cru’s books Témoins (1929) and Du témoignage (1930). As these books propose an aesthetic of war books, they prompt Gabriel Chevallier to position himself in relation to this aesthetic, and even to modify his own project. This article provides a micro-historical approach to understanding the making of a book, as well as the cultural context in which a literary memory of the Great War is constructed through books. Lastly, this case study provides a better understanding of how and why the wave of war literature in the1930s was based on a fictionalization of the war experience, in contrast to the normative desiderata of Jean Norton Cru, on a largely, and sometimes radically, pacifist understanding of the conflict, and on a now transnational circulation of works and the literary models they carry with them.