Edouard Dujardin

20th century French novelist, playwright and editor

Edouard Dujardin

Edouard Dujardin

Édouard Dujardin (1861-1949), French novelist and playwright, wrote extensively and edited the journal Revue Indépendente. When his parents passed away in 1882, they left him their fortune, which he used to finance productions of his plays. Over the years he also worked as a journalist, which frequently got him in trouble with the authorities. He passed away in 1949.

cover image of the book We’ll to the Woods No More

We’ll to the Woods No More

by Edouard Dujardin

Translated by Stuart Gilbert

A delightful period piece of Paris in the late 1880’s, We’ll to the Woods No More (Les lauriers sont coupés) retains its importance as the first use of the monologue intérieur and the inspiration for the stream-of-consciousness technique perfected by James Joyce. Dujardin’s charming tale, told with insight and irony, recounts what goes on in the mind of a young man-about-town in love with a Parisian actress. Mallarmé described the poetry of the telling as “the instant seized by the throat.” Originally published in France in 1887, the first English translation (by Joyce scholar Stuart Gilbert) was published by New Directions in 1938. In 1957 Leon Edel’s perceptive historical essay reintroduced the book as “the rare and beautiful case of a minor work which launched a major movement.”

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