Abstract
The posterity of Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysanthème (1888) extends well beyond the 19thcentury. Foujita's 1926 illustrations gave it a new lease of life. A year later, the famous Japanese artist from Montparnasse illustrated L'Honorable Partie de campagne by Thomas Raucat (alias Roger Emmanuel Alfred Poidatz), a satirical account of 1920s Tokyo which, in the vein of Maurice Bedel's novels, was one of Gallimard's greatest publishing successes. This popular title inspired numerous illustrators and layout artists well into the 1950s, and remains a must-read: a survivor of the interwar period, it is still part of the publisher's "L'Imaginaire" collection. What did it mean for post-war readers? A reading backwards, from the 1970s to the 1920s, reveals the reasons for its astonishing longevity.
