By the turn of the century Claude Simon had written fourteen novels and published a variety of shorter works including two volumes of photographs. His production spanned nearly sixty years, from Le Tricheur, begun in 1941 and published in 1945, to Le Jardin des Plantes (1997). Like Les Géorgiques and L'Acacia, which preceded it in 1981 and 1989, Le Jardin des Plantes is a work on a grand scale, at once a personal memoir and a sweeping historical fresco. Like them, it recapitulates many of the main themes of his oeuvre, reworks familiar incidents and motifs, and rewrites his literary and personal past. It also offers new insights into Simon's own conception of the relationship between autobiography and fiction, of that between his novels and the nouveau roman, and of his place in literary history. Thus Le Jardin des Plantes invites Simon's readers and critics to reflect anew on the whole turning constellation of his work in the light of this bright new star. In this spirit was the present collection of essays conceived: contributors were invited to look back over Simon's work and to open new avenues suggested by Le Jardin des Plantes. A number of the essays in this volume were given their first airing at a conference held in London in May 1999. It had been hoped that Claude Simon would attend the conference. In the event he was unable to do so; the trace of his intention is to be found in the encouraging and very generous message that precedes this introduction. The bearer of that message was Madame Simon, whose acute questioning sharpened the focus of various contributions and who in turn answered questions about just how in practice many of Claude Simon's later novels have been written, from manuscript, through successive typescripts – typed and discussed with her – and on to the correction of proofs. The purpose of this introduction is to set the volume in the broader context of Simon criticism and to give an outline of its contents.

Consideration of how in practice Simon's novels are written has not always been a characteristic of criticism devoted to his work. Indeed this focus contrasts sharply with the critical orthodoxy of earlier years. Within France, Simon's novels were for long seen in the context of the nouveau roman.