Maxime Du Camp

Maxime Du Camp (8 February 1822 – 8 February 1894) was a French writer, journalist, photographer, and man of letters whose work spans travel writing, literary memoir, urban sociology, and photographic documentation. He is remembered primarily for two things: his intimate, decades-long friendship with Gustave Flaubert — documented in Souvenirs littéraires (1882–1883), one of the essential texts for understanding the French literary world of the mid-nineteenth century — and his pioneering photographs of Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities, taken during his 1849–1851 journey with Flaubert, which constitute some of the earliest photographic records of these monuments.

Life

Du Camp was born in Paris into a prosperous family. He was independently wealthy, which allowed him to travel, write, and engage in literary and political life without financial pressure. He met Flaubert in the late 1840s, and the two young men formed a friendship that would last — with some strain — for the rest of Flaubert’s life.

In 1849, Du Camp and Flaubert embarked on a journey through Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Italy that lasted over a year. Du Camp carried calotype photographic equipment — cumbersome glass plates that required on-site chemical preparation — and produced approximately 200 photographs of Egyptian temples, tombs, and monuments. These images, published as Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852), were among the first photographic books of the Middle East and established Du Camp as a pioneer of documentary photography. Flaubert, characteristically, mocked Du Camp’s enthusiasm for the camera.

Literary Career

Back in Paris, Du Camp founded the Revue de Paris (1851), the literary journal in which Flaubert’s Madame Bovary was first serialised in 1856. He wrote prolifically: novels, travel books, poetry, and journalism. His most substantial literary work is Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle (1869–1875, six volumes), a massive sociological study of Paris — its sewers, prisons, hospitals, markets, and institutions — that anticipates the urban documentation of later writers and photographers.

Les Convulsions de Paris (1878–1880, four volumes) is his detailed account of the Paris Commune of 1871, written from a conservative, anti-Communard perspective. It remains a valuable primary source despite its political bias.

Souvenirs littéraires (1882–1883)

Du Camp’s most enduring book is his two-volume literary memoir, which provides firsthand accounts of Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, Louis Bouilhet, and the literary culture of mid-century France. His portrait of Flaubert — at once admiring and critical, insightful and occasionally resentful — is an indispensable document for Flaubert scholars. Du Camp’s account of reading the first draft of The Temptation of Saint Anthony aloud with Bouilhet, and their verdict that Flaubert should throw it in the fire and write about ordinary life instead (leading to Madame Bovary), is one of the most famous anecdotes in literary history, though its accuracy has been disputed.

Critical Standing

Du Camp was elected to the Académie française in 1880. His literary reputation, however, has always been overshadowed by Flaubert’s — he is remembered as the friend of a genius rather than as a figure of independent importance. This is partly justified: his fiction is competent but unremarkable, and his prose lacks Flaubert’s obsessive precision. But his contributions to photography, urban documentation, and literary memoir are genuinely significant.

Collecting Du Camp

Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852, with 125 calotype prints) is a museum-level item, bringing $50,000–$200,000+ at auction. Individual calotype prints from the series appear occasionally and bring $5,000–$30,000. Souvenirs littéraires (1882–1883, Hachette) in first edition brings $50–$200. Other first editions are generally affordable.