ABSTRACT
Before its inclusion in Incidences, this essay appeared in the Nouvelle Revue Française for April 1913. Years later Gide had to protest against those who assumed that he had listed here his ten favorite books in the whole world of literature and point out that he had been obliged to limit himself to French novels. “If in exile, I could take along only ten books,” he wrote, “not one of these would be among them”
