Jean de La Varende

Jean de La Varende

Jean Balthazar Marie Mallard de La Varende Agis de Saint-Denis (24 May 1887 – 8 June 1959), known simply as Jean de La Varende, was a French writer. He wrote novels, short stories, biographies and monographs, in particular on the subject of Normandy. He initially tried to become a naval officer like his father, but gave up because of his weak heart. La Varende was elected into the Académie Goncourt in 1942.

Biography

Early life and education

Jean de La Varende was born at the Château de Bonneville in Chamblac, Eure, the son of Gaston Mallard de La Varende (1849–1887), a naval officer, and his wife of Breton origin, Laure Fleuriot de Langle (1853–1940). Jean de La Varende did not know his father, who died the same year he was born, on July 27.

In 1890, his widowed mother returned to her father's home in Brittany, Rennes, to raise her children. His maternal grandfather, Rear Admiral Camille Fleuriot de Langle (1821–1914), although elderly, took an active part in his education. Jean de La Varende took from him a number of tales of sailors and voyages, many of which became short stories.

At the age of twelve, in 1899, the young Jean wrote his first text, La Fille du garde-chasse, the manuscript of which was lost. Then, from 1900 to 1906, he studied as a boarder at the Collège Saint-Vincent in Rennes. This period in Rennes is clearly evident in Geoffroy Hay de Nétumières (1908) and Le Roi d'Écosse (1941). During this same period, he wrote Nos amours perdues and Péché originel, whose manuscripts are also lost.

After his baccalauréat, he attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, at the expense of a career in the Navy. The Naval School required a health that he did not possessed, due to a heart defect. His work will be in part a tribute to the sailors of the past. Without regrets, he wrote, between 1944 and 1950, a beautiful homonymous work on the Naval School, published in 1951 with illustrations by Albert Brenet.

In January 1914, his grandfather died, and the following August, when the war broke out, Jean de La Varende was assigned as a nurse to the 18th infantry regiment in Vernon, then to the front as a stretcher bearer. He returned to Normandy in 1919, once demobilized. He lived there for four decades as a prolific writer and as a squire "with calloused hands".

Post-war period

The Château de Bonneville, residence of La Varende from 1919 until his death in 1959

On December 12, 1919, he married Jeanne Kullmann, widow of Raoul Latham. The couple moved to the Château de Bonneville. From this union was born a son, Eric de La Varende (1922–1979).

From 1920 to 1932, he was a lecturer at the École des Roches, in Verneuil-sur-Avre, in the Eure region. At home, he maintained his estate and gardens, and wrote his first book, published by him in 1927, L'Initiation artistique, the text of one of his lectures. He also wrote a few short stories and, in his spare time, made about a hundred models of ships from all periods.

The Bernheim gallery in Paris exhibited more than a hundred of his models in 1932. This exhibition moved shortly thereafter to the Geography Society. Later, a catalog was published: Les Cent Bateaux de La Varende.

Literary career

Jean de La Varende in 1937

The beginnings of La Varende in literature were difficult. He was rejected by many Parisian publishers, although a few of his stories appeared at the Mercure de France. It was the publisher Maugard, from Rouen, who ensured his fame by publishing a collection of tales, Pays d'Ouche (1934), with a preface by the Duke of Broglie.

In 1936, Maugard also published his historical novel Nez-de-Cuir, gentilhomme d'amour. The book was the fruit of a long research started in the family archives, when La Varende discovered the letters of his great-uncle Achille Perrier de La Genevraye, seriously wounded in 1814 at the Battle of Reims, who wore a mask that made him be nicknamed "Nez-de-cuir" (Leather-Nose). La Varende interviewed older relatives, and in 1930 he started writing the novel to have it published only six years later. The novel was adapted as a film, Leathernose, in 1952, by Jacques Sigurd and directed by Yves Allégret.

On August 17, 1936, he was made a member of the Société des gens de lettres (his patrons were Pierre Mille and René Fauchois). The following year, Plon re-issued his first novel and it was a success. That same year, he received three votes for the Goncourt Prize and began publishing stories in the highly regarded magazine Revue de Paris.

World War II and life in occupied France

On November 22, 1939, he lost his wife Jeanne. The following year, his mother passed away. During the blitzkrieg, France being on the verge of surrender, he went to the Netherlands, then returned and immersed himself more and more into writing.

Twenty years of frenetic literary work thus began for La Varende, and he published many short stories in the periodicals of the time. Most of these publications were in favor of the collaborationist theses. A fervent royalist, his writings are often literary short stories, with plots set outside his own time. But he also published chronicles (such as the obituary of Foisil) and more contemporary stories, such as "Maison Vierge" (the story of a family that shelters German soldiers during the occupation) in Je suis partout, where Henri Poulain rejoiced at his election to the Goncourt. He published the novel Les derniers Galériens in serial form in this newspaper, starting on February 14, 1941, as well as literary criticism analyses.

In 1941, a new literary prize was established in Paris to replace the Prix Goncourt, which had not been awarded in 1940. The new prize was called the Prix de la Nouvelle France, and La Varende was a member of the jury. In May 1944, he also honored in Je suis Partout the death on the Eastern Front of a former comrade from Rennes, Dr. Maurice Fleury, a commander in the LVF: "A thoughtful supporter of the pressing needs of Franco-German collaboration (...) Maurice Fleury, who lay down in the mud and snow of the Far East for a just cause, for the safeguard of our Western civilization".

On December 16, 1942, La Varende was elected to the Goncourt Academy, replacing Léon Daudet, and on the recommendation of his friends René Benjamin and Sacha Guitry. He resigned a little more than two years later, reacting to the reproaches made against him for his publications in germanophile papers and also to the differences between the Goncourt academicians concerning the candidacy of André Billy, a literary critic for L'Aurore, who had scorned Guitry and La Varende in various articles. In December 1943, a minority of academics (J.-H. Rosny jeune, Benjamin, Guitry, La Varende) refused to ratify the election of Billy (preferred to Paul Fort, who was later banned from the Official Journal for a year during the purge).

In 1944, the National Writers' Committee excluded four members of the academy: Guitry, Benjamin, Jean Ajalbert and La Varende. In December, a campaign in France-Soir vilified the Goncourt Academy and its members. Billy's election was only validated on December 23, 1944 by six votes against 3, Rosny jeune having decided to rally to his candidacy (the election was incidentally confirmed in a 1948 judgment). La Varende resigned in the aftermath, either a little before Billy's entry into the academy, or a little after. His resignation may have prevented his exclusion.

In 1944, his health faltered and he narrowly escaped death. He rested at the Saint-Martin Clinic in Caen, in the heart of the battered city, and his works on wounded Normandy date from this period. In a few days, on scraps of prescriptions and any paper he could find, he traveled in his mind the Normandy coastline, this frontier between his land and his sea, in a work entitled Les Côtes de Normandie, where the reader could walk with him, from Mont-Saint-Michel to Eu, from maritime towns to fishy bays.

Family plot of Jean de La Varende, in the Chamblac cemetery

Later years and death

In 1950, he joined the Association of Friends of Robert Brasillach. In 1953, Admiral Lucien Lacaze, permanent secretary of the Académie de Marine, to which La Varende also belonged, urged him to apply to the Académie française, of which the admiral was member since 1936. On May 6, 1954, La Varende applied unsuccessfully for Jérôme Tharaud's seat, which was not filled that day, obtaining only eleven votes. A second unsuccessful candidacy was made on May 31, 1956, during another blank election: he obtained 13 votes for the seat of Lacaze, who had died the previous year, against 12 for Jacques Chastenet and 6 for Paul Vialar.

The writer, whose talent unfolds in an unceasing succession of short stories and novels, continued his tireless work. Among his writings, several short stories remain unpublished.

Three months before his death, the photographer Pierre Jahan, meeting him for a one-day reportage, appreciated "his human warmth accompanied by a smiling irony". Jahan took a picture of him that was published in the Objectif.

This Catholic traditionalist with a tormented faith (he only agreed to attend services at the church of Notre-Dame de Chamblac, after an absence of 29 years, following the appointment of a traditionalist priest, Quintin Montgomery Wright) was a fervent monarchist and editor in the 1950s of the journal Aspects de France, a continuation of Action Française.

Jean de la Varende died in Paris in 1959. He was buried with his ancestors in the Chamblac cemetery, near the family castle.

Writings

Among the two hundred or so published short stories and novellas that make up his work, the Normandy region (especially the Pays d'Ouche) and the sea are the main settings for his plots. In addition, of course, there are novels, whose numbered editions are sought after today. The attraction of the sea, his passion for navigation, but also, for Brittany and Spain, the staging of country priests, peasants or even Norman hobereaux (a milieu to which he belongs), and the nostalgia of the Ancien Régime, form the essential framework of his work.

The Land of Ouche, the main setting of La Varende's novels. On this map (18th century) is mentioned, south of Bernay, the village of Chamblac, where the La Varende family Château is located

The collections of short stories and novellas, from Pays d'Ouche in 1934, to those published almost half a century after the author's death, make him one of the masters of the genre in the 20th century. Many of these short stories, which appeared in newspapers during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, were later published in the form of collections. Most of them are about 30 pages long, some are longer, like "Infantillage", published in the collection Dans le goût espagnol in 1946 (194 pages), or "Lise, fillette de France", published in 1952 (206 pages). One of his tales evokes a young Jean-Marie, whose father was a fisherman who disappears at sea. Orphan, Jean-Marie carries out in "Il était un petit navire" a model with the moving destiny. The fall is even more so. One can make a connection between the author and this young boy, skilful in the art of marine model making, and orphans of a sailor father.

His work, both sentimental and romantic, is very attached to the soil, in the sense of the land plowed, loved. It seeks to magnify the purity while knowing how to describe man with his anxieties, his failings and his mistakes. The stories are often based on a kind of ideal transmission of the rural traditions of the past, both in thatched cottages and in castles. For him, the two are linked. The lords and their descendants are "king's servants". The peasants, the men of the village are of the family of the squire. The castle is a useful dwelling, "an organism necessary to rurality, better still, to social life".

His work should be placed in the line of those of his masters in letters, in particular Barbey d'Aurevilly, "Connétable of Letters", and Flaubert, also Norman. He devoted essays to both of them (one for Barbey, two for Flaubert). In the taste of Barbey, he adds in L'Homme aux gants de toile, two short stories to the She-devils of Barbey d'Aurevilly.

The Château de Beaumesnil (Eure), which La Varende refers to as "Mesnilroyal" in Nez-de-Cuir

His novelistic work is not negligible either, although it is neglected. We owe him, in particular, trilogies of noble families in the turmoil of the post-1789 period, such as the "Anville trilogy" which includes Le Cavalier seul (1956), Cœur pensif (1957) and La Partisane (1960), or the novels of the "La Bare cycle" with Nez-de-Cuir, gentilhomme d'amour (1937), Le Centaure de Dieu (1938), which earn him the 10,000 franc Novel Grand Prize (awarded on June 16, 1938), Man' d'Arc (1939), Le Troisième Jour and La Dernière Fête. In Le Roi d'Écosse, he brings to life the old streets of Rennes through the torments of his hero. In Monsieur le Duc, it is the "apparitions" of Tilly-sur-Seulles that are found in the midst of the matrimonial turmoil of a ducal family of the 1890s.

La Varende also wrote numerous biographies (of princes: William the Conqueror, Anne of Austria; of kings' mistresses: Les belles esclaves; of sailors or servants of the crown: Marshal de Tourville, Surcouf, Jean Bart, Suffren, the Duke of Saint-Simon; holy priests: St. Vincent de Paul, the saint Curé d'Ars, Don Bosco; famous Normans: Flaubert, Charlotte Corday, the House of Broglie; and Chouans: Cadoudal, among others). These biographies leave a large part to sentiment.

In addition, he wrote numerous literary essays, compositions about people and animals, about nature and men. Stories whose finesse is equaled only by the emancipated turns of phrase that he uses with assurance to put the reader at the heart of the plot, of the feeling sought. It was while traveling through Normandy, failing to be able to travel the seas, that he devoted his taste for travel to visiting the monuments, the countryside, the corners of his Norman land. He gave several important monographs, such as: Les Châteaux de Normandie (Basse-Normandie), Le Mont Saint-Michel, Le Haras du Pin, L'Abbaye du Bec-Hellouin, or Le Versailles. Also, travelogues in the heart of Normandy: Par monts et merveilles de Normandie, La Normandie en fleurs, Les côtes de Normandie.

The search for the right word, including "normandisms", the adequate sentence, the sometimes pleasantly archaic turns of phrase, the useful image, everything, in the language of La Varende, is made, one would say, so that the reader takes as much pleasure in the narrative as in the style of the text. The work of this author belongs to a current that originated in the 19th century, where lovers of France and its ancient provinces come together. The interwar period, with its social and political crises, brought to the fore the regionalist currents awakened by Frédéric Mistral and Barbey d'Aurevilly. Writers like La Varende, Alphonse de Châteaubriant and Joseph de Pesquidoux felt the end of a rural world coming, which they hastened to describe. These writings then contain an element of romanticism mixed with a hobereau naturalism. La Varende emphasizes the drama lived by his characters, in prey with the honor that they inherited from their ancestors, the honor of the castle which it is necessary to maintain, the honor of the soil, which it is necessary to love.

Among the demons of La Varende was the French Revolution. Unsurprisingly, he almost never mentions it, even though it is present everywhere in the sense that, for him as in the history of France, there is a "before" and an "after" the Revolution. La Varende skips over this period that he abhors: "The 13th of July counts for me because it is the act of Charlotte [Corday], like the 15th because it is the birth of Rembrandt. I manage to swallow the 14th between these two days". Either he tells of great characters of the seventeenth century: Anne of Austria, Suffren, Saint Vincent de Paul, and several others, or he spills over into the following century, but sparingly, or above all he brings to life a nineteenth century in which his characters are noblemen in the service of the king, or of his cause. In Man' d'Arc the young Manon is a "Joan of Arc" of the Chouans serving the cause of the brave Duchess of Berry, she accompanies her two noble masters who are "real men" but it is she, the peasant, who has the most affinity with the princess.

La Varende's writing serves clear ideals which are: the king, the true nobility, the rural world, the Catholic faith. He makes his characters seek honor, courage, adventure, respect. His world is at the same time locked in its ancestral traditions, a certain hobereau etiquette, and yet certain figures are portrayed with a character that wants to break with the old habits, sinking into drama as well as humor.

La Varende is, for this reason, one of those French authors that the following era has let fall into oblivion. Although regularly republished, notably by Grasset and Flammarion, his work is absent from literary anthologies. La Varende's attachment to his ancestral province, Normandy, makes him rank among the regionalist writers. It is true that the Normans of the nineteenth century, from the archaeologist Arcisse de Caumont and his friend the scholar Auguste Le Prévost, to the novelist Barbey d'Aurevilly, made Normandy a regionalist land in terms of literature. In regionalism, which takes the old province as an entity that has survived the revolutionary upheavals, there is an undeniable attachment to regional history, but also to the monuments that have been preserved.

Unpublished works and bibliography

Two associations linked to La Varende have succeeded each other since 1961: from 1961 to 1989: Les Amis de La Varende; since 1992: Présence de La Varende which, like its predecessor, edited unpublished works every year, in addition to articles devoted to the man and his writing.

Likewise, Bibliographie de l'œuvre de La Varende, by Michel Herbert, a complete review of La Varende's work, with illustrations and unpublished documents, has appeared in 3 volumes (1964–1971).

Jean de La Varende, c. 1935

In 1971, noted historian Marie-Madeleine Martin and Christian Lagrave, contributed several articles on La Varende to the magazine Lecture et Tradition. In 1983, Lecture et Tradition published a series of letters of La Varende on the topic of Madame de Staël and the French Revolution. In 1987, Lecture et Tradition devoted their May/June issue solely to La Varende and his work. This issue contains pieces by Michel Herbert (1925–2009), the Duke of Harcourt, Pierre Chaumeil, Michel de Saint Pierre among others, and a piece by La Varende himself, entitled "Les deux auréoles." In 1993, Lecture et Tradition returned to La Varende once more, with an issue devoted mostly to him and two recent academic studies about his writings. Jean Tulard, Jean Sévillia and Gabriel de La Varende (1919–2007) were among the contributors.

In 1996, the magazine Art de Basse-Normandie, ran a special issue which contains the conferences pronounced during the 2nd colloquium La Varende of 1993, followed by an album with 40 pages of illustrations.

Model ships

Passionate about the sea, but never able to embark due to poor health, Jean de La Varende built an impressive collection of model boats and ships, consisting of more than 2,000 items. A part of this collection is still preserved at the Château de Chamblac.

He was a corresponding member of the Académie de Marine, to which he had applied after a request to his perpetual secretary, his friend Admiral Lacaze. His candidacy was strongly supported by the painter Gustave Alaux.

In December 1933, Jean de La Varende was named Knight of Maritime Merit as a painter and naval archaeologist. On June 9, 1934, his model of the Pourquoi Pas? was exhibited at the Museum of Geography at the same time as Charcot was being celebrated.

Works

Novels

• Nez-de-Cuir, gentilhomme d'amour (1936)
• Le Centaure de Dieu (1938)
• Le Sorcier vert (1938)
• Man' d'Arc (1939)
• Le Roi d'Écosse (1941)
• L'Homme aux gants de toile (1943)
• Le Troisième Jour (1947)
• Indulgence plénière (1951)
• La Dernière Fête (1953)
• Le Souverain Seigneur (1953)
• La Sorcière, Paris (1954)
• L'Amour de Monsieur de Bonneville (1955)
• Six Lettres à un jeune Prince (1955)
• Le Cavalier seul (1956)
• Cœur pensif (1957)
• Monsieur le Duc (1958)
• Un sot mariage (1959)
• L'Amour sacré et l'Amour profane (1959)
• La Partisane (1960)
• Le Non de monsieur Rudel (1962)

Short stories and novellas

• Pays d'Ouche : 1740-1933 (1934; 1946 edition illustrated by Guy Arnoux; 1956 edition illustrated by Georges Capon)
• Contes amers (1937; or Contes sauvages II; 1947 edition illustrated by Pierre Le Trividic)
• Les Manants du roi (1938)
• Contes sauvages (1938; illustrated by Pierre Le Trividic)
• La Comtesse de Barville, chouanne (1938)
• La Phœbé ou les derniers galériens (1939)
• Heureux les humbles (1942)
• Amours (1944; enlarged edition in 1949)
• Le Saint-Esprit de monsieur de Vaintimille, conte de Noël (1944)
• Le Petit Notaire (1944)
• Dans le goût espagnol (1946)
• Bateaux, contes inédits (1946)
• Le Roi des aulnes suivi de La fin du cèdre (1947)
• Le Bouffon blanc (1947; reprinted in Terre sauvage, 1970)
• Contes fervents (1948; illustrated by Pierre Le Trividic)
• La Tourmente (1948)
• Les Gentilshommes (1948)
• Esculape (1949)
• Le Miracle de janvier (1949)
• Rouge et or : nouvelles espagnoles (1951)
• Lise, fillette de France (1952)
• Bric-à-brac (1952)
• La Valse triste de Sibelius (1953)
• Eaux vives (1955)
• L'Empreinte (1959)
• Princes et manants (1960)
• Seigneur, tu m'as vaincu... (1961)
• Jean-Marie (1961)
• Le demi-solde (1962)
• L'Objet aimé (1967)
• Le Plat Pays (1967; preface by Bishop Henri Dupont)
• Terre sauvage (1969)
• Les Chevaliers de Malte (1970)
• Des marins, de l'honneur et des dames (1971)
• Ratapoil et compagnie (1975)
• Provinciales (1976)
• Rudes histoires (1980)
• De bric et de broc (1981)
• Nautoneries (1983)
• L'Objet rare, la femme unique (1985)
• Chantons tous son avènement (1985)
• Terroirs et traditions (1987)
• La Comtesse de Barville, chouanne (1988)
• Tendres confessions (1988)
• De tout un peu (1987)
• L'Admirable Inconnue (1990)
• La voile et la mer (1991)
• Ouche, terroir bien aimé (1997)
• L'Indifférente (1999)

Biographies

• Geoffroy Hay, comte des Nétumières (1908)
• Anne d'Autriche (1938)
• Grands Normands (1939)
• Mademoiselle de Corday (1939)
• Le Maréchal de Tourville et son temps (1943)
• Rodin (1944)
• Guillaume le Bâtard, conquérant (1946)
• Surcouf, corsaire (1946)
• Monsieur Vincent (1947)
• Suffren et ses ennemis (1948)
• Les Belles Esclaves (1949)
• Don Bosco (1951)
• Flaubert par lui-même (1951)
• Tourville (1951)
• Cadoudal (1952)
• Monsieur le duc de Saint-Simon et sa comédie humaine (1955)
• Jean Bart pour de vrai (1957)
• Le Curé d'Ars et sa passion (1958)

Monographs

• Les Châteaux de Normandie (Basse-Normandie) (1937; illustrated by Robert Antoine Pinchon)
• Le Mont Saint-Michel (1941)
• Les Côtes de Normandie (1948; illustrated by Pierre Le Trividic)
• Le Haras du Pin (1949)
• Les Broglie (1950)
• La Normandie en fleurs (1950)
• L'Abbaye du Bec-Hellouin (1951)
• L'École navale (1951)
• La Navigation sentimentale (1952)
• En parcourant la Normandie (1953; illustrated by Yvonne Jean-Haffen)
• Au seuil de la mer (1955)
• Images du Japon : au soleil levant (1956)
• Les Châteaux de Normandie: itinéraire sentimental (1958)
• Versailles (1958)
• Caen (1959)
• Les Augustin-Normand (1960)

Posthumous publications

• Le Jacobus Stainer (1962)
• Ô Pia! (1963)
• Vénerie (1965)
• Un Français peut-il vivre à la campagne? (1966)
• Par monts et merveilles (1966)
• La mélancolie (1971)
• Son altesse le Cheval (1972)
• Molière (1973)
• Suprêmes arguments (1974)
• Grandeur et misère de l'officier français (1977)
• À Dieu mon âme (1978)
• La Normandie des manoirs (1980)
• Barbey d'Aurevilly (1982)
• Lettres à Michel de Saint Pierre (1983)
• Esquisses littéraires (1984)
• Les apparitions de Tilly (1986)
• Racines de l'histoire (1992)
• Du Dandysme (1993)
• Monsieur de Saint-Simon à La Ferté-Vidame (1994)
• Les marines de La Varende (1995)
• Cinémagrées (1995)
• Cet extraordinaire M. Jules Verne (1996)
• Falaise, berceau de Guillaume le Conquérant (1996)
• Histoires cynégétiques (2002)
• Autoportrait (2003)
• Hollande 1940 (2004)
• Gentilhomme d'hier et d'aujourd'hui (2004)
• Prière d'insérer (2005)
• À Ciel ouvert. Images du terroir (2007)
• Mers, côtes et marins de Bretagne (2008)
• Brodeurs et broderies en Bretagne (2009; with Auguste Dupouy & Florian Le Roy)
• Le Cheval roi (2009)
• Mes plus beaux Noëls (2010)
• Mes plus beaux contes sacrés (2011)
• Promenades (2011)
• Mes petits contes marins (2012)

Miscellania

• Initiation Artistique (1927)
• Les Cent Bateaux (1932)
• La Marine bretonne (1938)
• L'Autre Île (1944)
• Broderies en Bretagne (1947)
• Le Cheval et l'Image (1947)
• Au clair de la lune (1948)
• Concha Espina, La Rose des vents (1949; translator)
• Mers bretonnes (1950; illustrated by Mathurin Méheut)
• L'Eau (1953)
• Le Mariage de Mademoiselle et ses suites (1956)
• Ah, monsieur (1957)
• Les Centaures et les jeux (1957)
• Chassez-vous ? (1957; woodcut by A. Jusserat)
• Bestiaire (1958)
• Tran Van Tung, La Colline des fantômes - Contes du Vietnam (1960; preface by Jean de La Varende; illustrated by Alexis Hinsberger)
• Hermann Quéru, La Varende, l'ami (1966; correspondence)

Translated into English

• Leather-Nose (1938)
• Centaur of God (1939)
• Cherish the Sea: A History of Sail (1956)
• The Curé of Ars and His Cross (1959)

References

Bailbé, Joseph-Marc, ed. (1992). Jean de la Varende, Écrivain de la Fidélité. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre.

Barjon, Louis (1960). Mondes d'Écrivains, Destinées d'Hommes. Paris: Casterman.

Bisson, Laurence (1943). A Short History of French Literature, from the Middle Ages to the Present Day. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Boullard, Bernard (2001). Littoral Normand et Écrivains. Condé-sur-Noireau: Corlet.

Brassié, Anne (1993). La Varende. Pour Dieu et le Roi. Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin.

Brunetière, Philippe (1959). La Varende le Visionnaire. Paris: Flammarion.

Caffier, Michel (1994). L'Académie Goncourt. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Coulomb, Pierre (1951). La Varende. Paris: Éditions Dominique Wapler.

Delon, Patrick (2009). La Varende. Grez-sur-Loing: Éditions Pardès.

Delon, Patrick (2020). Jean de La Varende: Écrivain de l'Honneur et de la Fidélité. Versailles: Via Romana.

Dolley, Pierre, ed. (1952). L'Oeuvre de La Varende devant l'Opinion. Rouen: Maugard.

Foisil, Madeleine (1984). "Le Témoignage Littéraire, Source pour l'Historien des Mentalités. Un Exemple: Jean de La Varende, 1887-1959," Histoire, Économie et Société, Vol. III, No. 1,‎ pp. 145–59.

Ganne, Gilbert (1972). Bernanos, Giraudoux, Barrès, Claudel, Matisse, Maurras, Fromentin, La Varende, Feydeau, Loti: tels que les voient leurs héritiers. Paris: Plon.

Guillotel, Gérard (2011). La Désinformation Autour de La Varende. La Chaussée-d'Ivry: Atelier Fol'fer.

Herbert, Michel (1980). Inclinations, Déboires et Rêveries de Jean de La Varende: Étude la Varendienne. Boulogne-sur-Seine: M. Herbert.

Herbert, Michel (1983). Transfiguration de La Varende: Étude la Varendienne. Boulogne-sur-Seine: M. Herbert.

Herbert, Michel (1985). Dans les Pas de La Varende, Esthète, Collectionneur et Maquettiste: Étude la Varendienne. Boulogne-sur-Seine: M. Herbert.

Labbé, Jean (1959). "La Varende: Écrivain de la Marine," Revue des Deux Mondes, (1er Juillet), pp. 105–20.

Langle, Fleuriot de (1965). "La Varende, Écrivain du Terroir Normand," Revue des Deux Mondes, (1er Avril), pp. 368–78.

Le Besnerais, Bernard (1979). Présence de Jean de La Varende: Essai. Paris: J. Millas-Martin.

Lelièvre, Raymond (1963). La Varende, Dernier Seigneur des Lettres. Coutances: Éditions Notre-Dame.

Mabire, Jean (1999). La Varende entre Nous. Tilly-sur-Seulles: Présence de La Varende.

Madec, Raymond (1973). La Varende, Chantre du Pays Normand. Condé-sur-Noireau: C. Corlet.

Martin, Marie-Madeleine (1996). La Varende et Moi. Tilly-sur-Seulles: Présence de La Varende.

Moniot Beaumont, René (2008). Histoire de la Littérature Maritime. Paris: La Découvrance Editions, pp. 306–10.

Morvan, Jean-Baptiste (1998). Le Chant Profond de La Varende. Tilly-sur-Seulles: Présence de La Varende.

Sarraz-Bournet, Ferdinand (1960). Jean de la Varende. Paris: Académie de Marine.

Thiébaut, Marcel (1955). "La Varende et Saint-Simon," La Revue de Paris, Vol. LXII, No. 10, pp. 143–48.

Villeroux, Nicole, ed. (1997). Un Auteur, un Critique: Jean de La Varende et Frédéric Lefèvre. Tilly-sur-Seules: Présence de La Varende.

External links

• Official website
• Works by Jean de La Varende at Hathi Trust
• Works by Jean de La Varende at Gallica
• Jean de la Varende at the Internet Movie Database