Political firebrand, tireless reformer, champion of the avant-garde, Octave Mirbeau embraced his role as disturber of the peace. Inspired by Kropotkin and Dostoyevsky, Mirbeau became the social conscience of the era, speaking in a clear voice to impugn capitalist ideology, to defend the cause of the worker, the child, the pauper, the prostitute, and the soldier sacrificed as cannon fodder. Mirbeau's critiques of society seethe with indictments of indoctrinating agencies: the family, which stifled the child's freedom and expressive creativity, the school, which besotted students with the...