ABSTRACT
George Bataille (1897-1962) was born in Puy-de-Dôme, France. He converted to Catholicism in 1914, at age 17, though he lost his faith abruptly in 1920. He studied paleography and library science, and worked for 20 years at the Bibliothèque nationale. In 1951 he was named conservator at Bibliothèque municipale at Orléans. In a scholarly and artistic career spanning more than four decades, he wrote on a wide range of subjects, including numismatics, eroticism (he wrote erotic fiction as well as non-fiction on the subject of eroticism), autobiography, politics, literary criticism, philosophy, sociology, and religion.
