Bristol autographe signé et adressé à son amie Christiane Baroche pour son aimable critique de ses oeuvres "car les moments de "gloire" sont aussi ceux qu'on a envie de traverser avec les gens qu'on aime bien..."

Autograph card signed, dated 18 November 1984, 12 lines in blue ballpoint pen, addressed to her friend the woman of letters Christiane Baroche, in which she discusses her latest work "Plaisirs amers" and the friendship binding the two women writers.

Autograph envelope addressed to Christiane Baroche enclosed.

A fine and affectionate letter of thanks, written six days after the announcement of the Prix Renaudot awarded to Ernaux for La Place:

« Merci Christiane de ta lettre qui m'a fait très chaud au coeur, car les moments de "gloire" sont aussi ceux qu'on a envie de traverser avec les gens qu'on aime bien. Je t'embrasse. Annie. »

In a postscript, Ernaux adds her delight at learning of the reception given on television to Christiane Baroche's first novel, Plaisirs amers, published a few months earlier:

« PS. Jacques Duchateau a formidablement bien parlé de 'Plaisirs amers" à Droit de réponse, j'étais ravie. »

Christiane Baroche (1935-2024), winner of the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle, spent more than ten years as a manuscript reader for Gallimard, Ernaux's publisher, before becoming a novelist herself. It was in this capacity that she played a role in Ernaux's literary beginnings in the mid-1970s. A copy of La Place, inscribed by Ernaux to Baroche nine months earlier, thanks her for having «fait "naître" (dans le bonheur) il y a dix ans».

The present note, written the day immediately following the announcement of the 1984 Prix Renaudot, thus captures a moment of intimacy between two women writers whose careers were closely intertwined, one attaining literary consecration just as the other saw her own first novel "naitre" in turn.