Tour de la France par deux enfants, Le. The ‘best-loved schoolbook’ of turn-of-century France. First published in 1877, shortly before compulsory primary schooling was introduced, it had sold 6 million copies by 1900 and was familiar to several generations of children until 1914 and after. The author, behind the pseudonym ‘G. Bruno’, was Madame Alfred Fouillée (born Augustine Tuillerie). The famous opening sentence: ‘Par un épais brouillard du mois de septembre, deux enfants, deux frères, sortaient de la ville de Phalsbourg en Lorraine’, introduces André and Julien, whose adventurous journey from their conquered province all over France takes a whole school year, and gives the young reader an illustrated tour of a still-rural but progressive country. More patriotic and geographical than historical or political, the content was sufficiently neutral over religion to be used in both Church and state schools, though the revised edition of 1906 caused controversy by removing even phrases like ‘Mon Dieu’. Although it avoids explicit republicanism, the book's message is clearly humanist in tone, praising justice, compassion, and industry, while condemning tyranny, and it is identified as one of the ‘Lieux de mémoire’ of the Republic in the collection edited by P. Nora in 1985.
[Sian Reynolds]
