Respected by his peers and hugely successful internationally in the first half of the twentieth century - in 1935 the English translation of one of his fifteen major biographies was the first book to be published in Allen Lane's pioneering Penguin paperback series - André Maurois is now hardly read. His liberal humanism, his moderate and conciliatory stance in everything, from politics to his lucid and elegant writing style, his 'politeness' as he put it himself, appealed in his own time to a broad, educated public. As manners, values, and society itself have changed, and unquestioning respect for a shared European cultural tradition has diminished, have the very characteristics that once ensured Maurois' popularity caused new generations of readers to find his work, when they are aware of it, outdated or of little interest?

Lionel Gossman has taught French literature at various institutions, including Johns Hopkins University and, most recently, Princeton University, USA. His publications include Men and Masks: A Study of Molière (1963), Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment (1968), The Empire Unpossess'd: An Essay on Gibbon's Decline and Fall (1981), Between History and Literature (1990), Basel in the Age of Burckhardt (2000), and The Passion of Max von Oppenheim: Archaeology and Intrigue in the Middle East from Wilhelm II to Hitler (2013).

1. An International Reputation
2. A Literary Phenomenon
3. The Middle Road
4. The Mission of Reconciliation
5. Making Sense: The 'New Biography'
6. Mediator between France and Britain, France and the US
7. Concluding Comment. The Limits of the Middle Ground