Educated at the Ecole Alsacienne and by private tutors, Gide developed an early interest in literature. He published his first work, The Notebooks of Andre Walter, in 1891 and in 1892, his first poems, Walter's Poesies, appeared. During 1893 and 1894 Gide travelled to North Africa where, in Algeria, he met Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. It was at this time that Gide realized that he was a latent homosexual and this was expressed in some of his later works such as Fruits of the Earth (1897). In spite of this revelation, Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux in 1895. The marriage was purely platonic and was never consummated; nevertheless, his wife would be an inspiration for many of his works, including The Immoralist (1902), Strait is the Gate (1909) and The Pastoral Symphony (1919). In 1908, Gide and other French writers formed the La Nouvelle Revue Francaise. Gide became a much respected and influential literary critic and moralist. His works would subsequently inspire Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. During the 1930's, Gide flirted with communism, but a trip to the Soviet Union in 1936 soon changed his mind. He published Return From the USSR in 1936. Gide's other well-known works include The Vatican Cellars (1914), The Counterfeiters (1926), If It Die: An Autobiography (1926), and perhaps his best literary work, his Journals covering the periods 1889-1913, 1914-1927, 1928-1939 and 1939-1949. |
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