BATAILLE, GEORGES

born Sept. 10, 1897, Billom, France died July 9, 1962, Paris French librarian and writer whose essays, novels, and poetry expressed his fascination with eroticism, mysticism, and the irrational. He viewed excess as a way to gain personal "sovereignty." After training as an archivist at the school of paleography known as the cole des Chartes (School of Charters) in Paris, he worked as a librarian and medieval specialist at the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris until 1942. In 1951 he became keeper of the Orlans library. He also edited scholarly journals and in 1946 founded an influential literary review, Critique, which he edited until his death. His first novel, on sexual excess, was published under a pseudonym, Lord Auch; it appeared in 1928 as Histoire de l'oeil (The Story of the Eye). As Pierre Anglique, another pseudonym, he wrote Madame Edwarda (1937). Le Coupable (1944; Guilty) was the first major literary work published under his own name. La Littrature et le mal (1957; Literature and Evil) and L'rotisme (1957; Eroticism) followed. He also wrote Lascaux; ou, la naissance de l'art (1955; Lascaux; or, The Birth of Art) and Manet (1955). A novel, Ma Mre (My Mother), was published in 1966. The complete works (Oeuvres compltes) of Bataille, published between 1970 and 1988, occupy 12 volumes.