Penguin Island by Anatole France, Illustrated by Frank C. Pape, 1927, High quality vintage order edition of a classic novel

High quality vintage edition of a classic novel, Penguin Island by Anatole France, Illustrated by Frank C. Pape, 1927
Dodd, Mead and Company

No dust jacket. Blue blue/black cloth cover with gold gilt lettering and images, some rubbing on spine. Rough cut edges on pages. Gorgeous illustrations on high quality paper. Book seller's mark, Binding tight. See picture for more evidence of condition.


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Penguin Island is a satirical novel by Anatole France first published in 1908. The book details the history of the penguins and is written as a critique of human nature, and is also a satire on France's political history, including the Dreyfus affair. Morals, customs and laws are satirised within the context of the fictional land of Penguinia, where the animals were baptised erroneously by the myopic Abbot Maël. The book is ultimately concerned with the perfectibility of mankind. As soon as the Penguins are transformed into humans, they begin robbing and murdering each other. By the end of the book, a thriving civilization is destroyed by terrorist bombs.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/346024.Penguin_Island


The Nobel Prize in Literature 1921 was awarded to Anatole France "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament".This was published in 1908 and he got the Nobel in 1921Penguin Island is written in the style of a sprawling 18th- and 19th-century history book, concerned with grand metanarratives, mythologizing heroes, hagiography and romantic nationalism. It is about a fictitious island, inhabited by great auks, that existed off the northern coast of Europe. The history begins when a wayward Christian missionary monk lands on the island and perceives the order upright, unafraid auks as a sort of pre-Christian society of noble pagans. Mostly blind and somewhat deaf, having mistaken the animals for humans, he baptizes them. This causes a problem for The Lord, who normally only allows humans to be baptized. After consulting with saints and theologians in Heaven, He resolves the dilemma by converting the baptized birds to humans with only a few physical traces of their ornithological origin, and giving them each a soul.Thus begins the history of Penguinia, and from there forward the history mirrors that of France (and more generally of Western Europe, including German-speaking areas and the British Isles). The narrative spans from the Migration Period ("Dark Ages"), when the Germanic tribes fought incessantly among themselves for territory; to the heroic Early Middle Ages with the rise of Charlemagne ("Draco the Great") and conflicts with Viking raiders ("porpoises"); through the Renaissance (Erasmus); and up to the modern era with motor cars; and even into a future time in which a thriving high-tech civilization is destroyed by a campaign of terrorist bombings, and everything begins again in an endless cycle.The longest-running plot thread, and probably the best known, satirizes the Dreyfus affair -- though both brief and complex satires of European history, politics, philosophy and theology are present throughout the novel. At various points, real historical figures such as Columba and Saint Augustine are part of the story, as well as fictionalized characters who represent historical people. Penguin Island is a satire on society and human nature in which morals, customs, and the origin of religion and laws are lampooned. For example, the origin of private property is presented as starting with the brutal and shameless murder of a farmer, and the seizure of his land, by a physically larger and stronger neighbor.

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More info on the gorgeous illustrations in this book https://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/of-interest-anatole-frances-the-revolt-of-the-angels-and-penguin-island-as-published-by-dodd-mead-co/