It is worth stating in advance that the process of relating the livres pairs to Jarry's own work, and to the tendencies of the time, will show that some volumes from Faustroll's library are considerably more important than others. The notion of calling these books livres pairs suggests not only excellence but also parity, and is, to put it bluntly, bogus. The notion is simply not carried through, either in the Gestes et Opinions or elsewhere in Jarry; references to several auteurs pairs (for instance Desbordes-Valmore and Verhaeren) are very scarce or absent, in contrast to the relative wealth of references to other figures such as Rachilde or Régnier. I shall generally follow this implicit guidance that Jarry gives as to his preferences among his chosen authors. Another group of nineteenth-century auteurs pairs such as Rimbaud and Lautréamont are so universally recognised today that they do not need a detailed introduction for the modern reader, which is not true in the cases of several of Jarry's close contemporaries; however, it will be useful to clarify, to some extent, how 1890s readers viewed figures such as Rimbaud and Lautréamont. Subsequent chapters of this book will examine trends that emerge from several of these works, and which form identifiable links between the writings of Jarry and those of his influences.

The function of this section is to provide an overview of Dr Faustroll's entire library, both noting the presence of works that will probably be familiar to the reader, and introducing other works that are less well known. Naturally in the space available only relatively brief accounts of these less familiar works are possible, but a fuller picture of several of the more significant works will develop in subsequent chapters; we shall find that very often it is the neglected literature of the Belle Epoque that indicates the authentic intellectual character of the period. The later stages of the nineteenth century are characterised in today's literary criticism by tunnel vision – there is a great deal of work published, but it concentrates on a small number of authors to the almost total exclusion of figures whom contemporaries considered equally seminal. There is no better contemporary illustration of a writer's appreciation of his literary environment than Jarry's list of his livres pairs, despite the insertions of the peripheral oddities that we should expect from such a maverick intellect.