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Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui, 336

n°336

Periodical

Author

Person cited Paul Alexis
Drawings by Manuel Luque de Soria, dit Luque

Description

The collection of Les Hommes D'Aujourd'hui was founded in September 1878 by André Gill and Félicien Champsaur. The journal was first published by Cinqualbre (until 1883), then by Léon Vanier after two years of interruption. The last publication appeared in 1899. André Breton posessed 27 numbers of the collection.

The revue was originally inspired by the successful journal, Le Bulletin de vote, published in collaboration with the journalist Maxime Rude which was a collection of illustrated biographies, promoting the republican candidats in the legislative elections of October 1877. The collection of Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui strays from militant politics; each number (containing 4 pages) is devoted to a different contemporary figure belonging to the world of arts, literature or science. A colorful portrait of the spotlight celebrity is on each cover, followed by three pages of text, citations from the author, entire poems or various notable facts about the author's work. The texts are playful, and at times written in jest, composed of contemporaneous and fantastic elements.

When Léon Vanier took over the publication in 1885, he decided that more than one caricaturist would design and draw the portraits. André Gill and Henri Demare were the artists of the very first portraits. Among the artists that would join would be Manuel Luque de Soria, called "Luque" who signed the caricature of Paul Alexis, on the cover of n°336. The novelist is represented before The Cry of the People (Le Cri du peuple), a journal in which he participated under the allonyms Trublot, the name of a character from the novel Pot-Bouille by Émile Zola. The pristine posture and decided step that Luque gives to him illustrates the zealous militant that Paul Alexis was: the writer never ceased to plead in favor for the naturalist cause, Zola's in particular -- the telegram that he sent in response to the literary quest of Jules Huret has not been forgotten: "Naturalism is not dead -- letter follows" (1891).