1. Edmond Charlot is best known for his friendship with Albert Camus and for being his first publisher.
20 Facts About Edmond Charlot
1. 2.
Edmond Charlot was born on 15 February 1915 in Algiers and died on 10 April 2004 in Beziers, close to where he lived in Pezenas in the south of France in the department of Herault.
3.
Edmond Charlot was a publisher and ran specialist bookshops in Algiers and Pezenas as well as being an editor in Paris.
4.
Edmond Charlot published the first works of Albert Camus and many other important authors, including a translation of Gertrude Stein.
5.
Edmond Charlot exhibited artwork and was a leading cultural figure in French literature, especially of the Mediterranean region on both the European and African shores.
6.
Edmond Charlot explicitly acknowledged the debt to Audisio when he said he wanted to create a collection of classics of the Mediterranean, not simply Algeria.
7.
Edmond Charlot was not attached to a political grouping and, unlike Camus, he was never a Communist party member.
8.
Edmond Charlot was released from prison into house arrest and only after he had used one of his contacts was he released from that.
9.
Books were made with any scraps of paper Edmond Charlot could cobble together and the covers resembled butchers' wrapping paper, Edmond Charlot recalled, and he used staples to bind the pages and ink made from soot.
10.
Edmond Charlot's titles included work by Andre Gide and Jules Roy.
11.
Edmond Charlot moved it finally in 1947 to a former "maison close" at la rue Gregoire-de-Tours, which had counted Apollinaire among its clients.
12.
Edmond Charlot published about a dozen volumes each month, notably the works of Henri Bosco, Jean Amrouche, Marie-Louise-Taos Amrouche, Jules Roy, Emmanuel Robles and blank verse of Jean Lescure.
13.
In 1947 Edmond Charlot, who passed to his sister-in-law his first bookshop at Algiers Les Vraies Richesses, started the publication of "ten best French novels" chosen by Gide.
14.
On his return to Algiers, after the Second World War, in 1948, Edmond Charlot continued with his interest in art.
15.
Edmond Charlot had close links with many who went on to be influential in French Algerian radio such as Marcel Amrouche, Jose Pivin and El Boudali Safir.
16.
Towards the end of the Algerian war Edmond Charlot worked with three men who went on to take important posts.
17.
The day Edmond Charlot arrived in Paris he met with Jean Lescure of the "Research Arm" of ORTF who led him to Pierre Schaeffer, its boss.
18.
Edmond Charlot had many ideas, including many that never saw the light of day, such as a programme on Gandhi as a saint and another on less well known masterpieces.
19.
The only reason the material survived was that Camus had made his own recording of it and Edmond Charlot had kept it.
20.
Edmond Charlot defended the idea of "Mediterranean civilisation" as a force for peace and artistic excellence in a world rent asunder by politics and war.