Filles et garçons: scènes de la ville et des champs

by Anatole France

About the Author and Illustrator

This children's book, written by Anatole France, pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault (1844-1924), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, is an excellent example of early twentieth century French children's literature. The illustrator, painter Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel (1855-1913), was a highly successful children's portraitist and illustrated a number of children's books, including Vieilles chansons pour les petits enfants and Chansons de France pour les petits français both published in Paris, 1883. One of Boutet de Monvel's most successful books was La vie de Jeanne d’Arc published in Paris by Plon Nourrit & Cie in 1896. Nos enfants published in Paris by Hachette in 1887, mentioned below, represents another collaboration between France and Boutet de Monvel.

About the Book

Filles et garçons: scènes de la ville et des champs was originally published as the last 10 of the 19 "scenes" in France's Nos Enfants (Paris : Hachette, 1887); the first 9 scenes were also separately published, under the title "Nos enfants".
The page numbering of this issue of Filles et garçons is carried over from the 1887 full-length edition of Nos enfants, also printed by Lahure. The signatures do not, however, follow on precisely from those of the 9-scene Nos enfants. Other, presumably later, issues are apparently renumbered, and some were printed by different firms, e.g. Kapp (Pierpont Morgan Lib.); the Bibliothèque nationale lists reprints of 1904 and 1907.

The book was a gift of Sarah Crawford Fox in 2003.

Acknowledgements

The digitization of this book is made possible by a School of Library and Information internship held by Amy Allen and shared between the Rare Books and Special Collections Department and the Digital Activities Department of the University of South Carolina Libraries. Amy Allen created the metadata for the book in an excel spread sheet. The metadata records follow the Western States Best Practices Dublin Core format. Allen scanned the book on a Avision A3 Bookedge Scanner FB6080E, using Avision scanning software. She scanned the images as color TIFFs at 24-bit and 600 ppi. From the TIFFs she created high quality JPEGs and added preservation metadata to the TIFF and JPEG images. Allen uploaded the JPEGs to the CONTENTdm server. The TIFFs will be maintained as the archival masters on a SAN server, backed-up to DVD and tape. Allen also created a home page for the collection. The work could also not have been done without the help of Tony Branch, of the Systems Department, who is the systems administrator for the CONTENTdm database and helps to manage the computers and scanners in the Digital Activities Department. Amy Allen's work was supported by Santi Thompson, Sarah Fletcher, Bella Wenum (Digital Activities) and Elizabeth Sudduth (Rare Books and Special Collections).