France, Anatole

Anatole France, born in Paris as Anatole François Thibault, was a French novelist and poet. He grew up among books above his father’s bookshop at Quai Malaquais. Anatole France read copiously throughout his life, but was less serious about his formal education. He was an average student at a private Jesuit school – where he cultivated a strong aversion to the Catholic faith – and later at university where he read literature and philosophy. Instead of obeying his father and becoming a civil servant, France worked as a bookshop assistant, teacher and librarian, and in 1876 he was appointed librarian for the French Senate (where he allegedly read more than he worked).