Ombres et diaphanéités des masques auctoriaux. Le cas de l’atelier Willy

In the history of literature, from its origins to nowadays, the writer has often been assisted by scribes or ghostwriters. The first one copied and the last one composed for a wealthy patron. Therefore, the ghostwriter is a worker in the writing process, perceived as a subordinate figure in the background, who can sometimes be seen behind the auctorial mask of certain authors, as was the case for one of the greatest entrepreneurs of industrial literature known by the pseudonym Willy. Powerless in the face of writing, at the end of the century, Henry Gauthier-Villars (1859-1931) - known as Willy - founded his own book factory and hired, with an indissoluble pact of anonymity, a whole horde of young literary talents who composed about fifty novels for him. In the ateliers, the collaborators work without respite and share, as in a production line, the different phases of the elaboration of the book that Willy corrects, shapes and finally makes disappear as to leave no trace before engraving his trademark on the cover. The crown jewel of Willy’s ateliers is still today Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette, the famous author of the self-fictionalized Claudine series, who, in addition to revealing her pen through her resemblance to the heroine, will end up supplanting her husband’s name in a few years by bringing down forever, through Mes apprentissages (1936), the masks of one of the most renowned literary impostures.