Tra politica, editoria e letteratura: Maurice Nadeau critico-editore

A literary critic and publisher, Maurice Nadeau maintained relations with many of the century’s leading intellectuals from the 1930s onwards. After the publication of Histoire du Surréalisme (1945) and the end of his collaboration with the journal “Combat” in the 1950s, he embarked on a complex path through numerous publishing ventures, directing literary journals and book series until the foundation of his own publishing house in 1976. He, thus, interacted with figures such as Sartre, Pia and Barthes, took an active part in political actions such as the Manifeste des 121, managed to have authors such as Gombrowicz and Sciascia translated in France, directed collections for publishers such as Julliard, Gallimard and Denoël, as well as participating in co-editions with Robert Laffont. Hence, during his career, he has made a decisive contribution to French publishing, and cultural and political debate. Also with the support of archive material, the article aims to reconstruct Nadeau’s trajectory from the 1950s, when he founded the journal “Lettres Nouvelles”, until 1990 when he wrote his mémoires littéraires. The objective is to define the posture of the Parisian intellectual in the second part of his activity as a literary critic and publisher, relating it to the development of the French cultural and publishing field in the second half of the 20th century.