Albert Robida

Albert Robida
Albert Robida
	Robida c.1894
Born	14 May 1848; Compiègne, France
Died	11 October 1926 (aged 78); Neuilly-Sur-Seine, France
Occupation	Writer, illustrator, etcher, lithographer, caricaturist, novelist, publisher
Nationality	French
Genre	Children's Books, Graphic novels

Albert Robida (14 May 1848 – 11 October 1926) was a French illustrator, etcher, lithographer, caricaturist, and novelist. He edited and published La Caricature magazine for 12 years. Through the 1880s, he wrote an acclaimed trilogy of futuristic novels. In the 1900s he created 520 illustrations for Pierre Giffard's weekly serial La Guerre Infernale.

Biography

He was born in Compiègne, France, the son of a carpenter. He studied to become a notary, but was more interested in caricature. In 1866 he joined Journal amusant as an illustrator. In 1880, with Georges Decaux, he founded his own magazine La Caricature, which he edited for 12 years. He illustrated tourist guides, works of popular history, and literary classics. His fame disappeared after World War I.

Robida and his wife Marguerite (née Noiret) had seven children, three of which made contributions to the arts. His elder son Camille became a well-known architect. His youngest son, Henry, had been tabbed to serve as consulting architect to the government of Siam (today Thailand), but his life was cut short by World War I. Daughter Émilie was also an illustrator. In addition to several collaborations with her father, she was published in periodicals such as Le Journal pour tous and La Poupée modèle. Another son, Frédéric, was a president of the Touring Club de France.^[1]

École primaire Albert Robida, a school in his native Compiègne, is named in his honor.^[2]

Futuristic Trilogy

Albert Robida was rediscovered thanks to his trilogy of futuristic works:

Le Vingtième Siècle (1883)
La Guerre au vingtième siècle (1887)
Le Vingtième siècle. La vie électrique (1890)

These works drew comparison with Jules Verne. Unlike Verne, he proposed inventions integrated into everyday life, not creations of mad scientists, and he imagined the social developments that arose from them, often with accuracy: social advancement of women, mass tourism, pollution, etc. His La Guerre au vingtième siècle describes modern warfare, with robotic missiles and poison gas. His Téléphonoscope was a flat screen television display that delivered the latest news 24-hours a day, the latest plays, courses, and teleconferences.

Works with Pierre Giffard

Robida illustrated two works by Pierre Giffard:

La Fin du Cheval ("The End of the Horse"), on the inevitable replacement of the horse by the bicycle and then by the car.
La Guerre Infernale ("The Infernal War"), a 1908 serial adventure novel for children that appeared weekly every Saturday. Robida contributed 520 illustrations. The novel is set in the future and features uncanny parallels to World War Two, including an attack on London by Germany and a conflict between Japan and the United States. It was subsequently republished as a book.^[3]

Bibliography

Futuristic

Voyages très extraordinaires de Saturnin Farandoul, 1879 (translated by Brian Stableford as The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul)
Le Vingtième siècle, 1883 (translated by Phillipe Willems as The Twentieth Century)
La Guerre au vingtième siècle, 1887
Le Vingtième Siècle. La vie électrique, 1890 (translated by Brian Stableford as Electric Life)
Voyage de fiançailles au XX^e siècle
Un chalet dans les airs (translated by Brian Stableford as Chalet in the Sky)
L'horloge des siècles, 1902 (translated by Brian Stableford as The Clock of the Centuries ISBN 978-1-934543-13-9)
L'Ingénieur von Satanas, 1919

Other work

L'Île de Lutèce : enlaidissements et embellissements de la Cité
La Bête au bois dormant
La Part du hasard
Le Voyage de M. Dumollet
Les Vieilles Villes d'Italie : notes et souvenirs
La Grande Mascarade parisienne
La Fin des Livres, with Octave Uzanne
Contes pour les bibliophiles, 1895, with Octave Uzanne
Les Vieilles Villes d'Espagne, notes et souvenirs
Un caricaturiste prophète. La guerre telle qu'elle est
1430, les assiégés de Compiègne
Paris de siècle en siècle; le cœur de Paris, splendeurs et souvenir
Le 19^e siècle
Les Escholiers du temps jadis
Les Vieilles Villes d'Italie : notes et souvenirs
François Ier (Le Roi Chevalier), 1909, with texts by Georges Gustave-Toudouze
Le Voyage de M. Dumollet

La Vieille France series

La Bretagne, text, drawings and 40 additional lithographies hors by A. Robida, Paris, Librairie illustrée, ca. 1900, 336 p.
La Touraine, text, drawings and lithography by A. Robida, Paris, La Librairie Illustrée, 336 p., 40 illustrations, undated [1892]. Tome II: Le Mans, Laval, Sablé, Angers, Saumur, Thouars, Loudun, Chinon, Vendôme
Normandy, text, drawings and lithographies by A. Robida, Paris, La Librairie illustrée, undated [1890], 331 pages, 40 additional duotone illustrations. Tome II: Bayeux, Lisieux, Bernay, Honfleur, Le Havre, Fécamp, Dieppe, Eu, Rouen, Louviers, Évreux, Vernon. Republished: Éd. de Crémille, Genève, 1994, 169 p.
Provence, Paris, À la Librairie illustrée, undated [1893], 332 p. Avignon, Barbentane, Orange, Carpentras, Vaucluse, Cavaillon, Sisteron, Tarascon, Beaucaire, Arles, Marseille, Toulon, Fréjus, Nice, Monaco, Menton, Aix, Nîmes, Uzès, Montpellier, Béziers, Narbonne, Carcassonne
Paris, Splendeurs et Souvenirs, Éditions de Crémille, Genève, 1992, textes, dessins et lithographies par A. Robida, 824 p., 2 volumes. Tome 1 : Le Cœur de Paris, 412 p. Tome 2 : Paris, de Siècle en Siècle, 412 p.

Notes

^ "Emilie Robida & Albert Robida". Au bon vieux temps de La Semaine de Suzette. 24 August 2010. Retrieved 6 September 2022.
^ "École primaire Albert Robida grp A (60200, Compiègne)". journaldesfemmes.fr. Retrieved 6 September 2022.
^ Iannuzzi, Giulia (2017), The Cruel Imagination: Oriental Tortures from a Future Past in Albert Robida's Illustrations for La Guerre infernale (1908), EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, ISBN 9788883038426, retrieved 6 April 2019

Critical studies

Elizabeth Emery, "Albert Robida, Medieval Publicist," in: Cahier Calin: Makers of the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of William Calin Archived 29 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine, ed. Richard Utz and Elizabeth Emery (Kalamazoo, MI: Studies in Medievalism, 2011), pp. 51–55.