Alain-Fournier was born Henri Alban Fournier in October of 1886. He wrote a novel under this pen name, Le Grand Meaulnes, also known as The Wanderer, that was published in 1913 and slowly built up a steady following over the years to follow. Alain-Fournier never wrote another because of World War I. On September 22, 1914, he went missing in action, presumed killed with body never found, when the scouting party to which he was assigned came under machine gun fire.
I know very little about the book, but it is a story of a boy who met a girl once and set out to find her again. In 1999, Le Monde did a survey of French readers to create a list of the 100 most memorable works of the twentieth century, and Le Grand Meaulnes came in at number nine. I don't give much credit to such lists, but it at least shows that the work still has a fair number of serious readers.
I will be reading the work in a Heritage Press (New York) edition, translated by Francoise Delisle with an introduction by Henri Peyre and pen-and-pencil-with-wash illustrations by André Dignimont. It is typeset in 12-point Garamond and has nice satiny-blue covers. While I'll be reading it in translation, I notice that Project Gutenberg has the original French text, so I might occasionally look at that.
