This substantial volume of essays is published in honour of Edward J. Hughes. Focussing on the experience of work, community and the functioning of class society; on relations between France and Algeria and France's wider colonial project; and on creative labour as both artisanal and artistic, contributors to Labours of Attention follow paths opened up by the scholarship of Edward J. Hughes. Via critical engagements with the works of Albert Camus and Marcel Proust, as well as with a wider constellation of writers (including Pierre Michon, Jean Genet, Simone de Beauvoir, Blaise Cendrars), artists (including Vincent Van Gogh, Fernand Léger and Paul Cézanne) and film-makers (including Alain Resnais, Yacine Balah and Paolo Sorrentino) this collection of essays explores how these themes and critical preoccupations are captured, problematized and negotiated by twentieth-century literary writing and cultural production in French. Adam Watt is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter.