Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood.

[3] She lives with her widowed father and her somewhat odd brother Frantz in a vast and ancient family château, Les Sablonnières, which has seen better days.

François, who has now become a school teacher like his father, finally manages to find Yvonne de Galais and reunites her with Meaulnes.

Yvonne still lives with her aging father in what is left of les Sablonnières, which is closer than the two young friends had first imagined in earlier years.

However, the restless Meaulnes leaves Yvonne the day after their wedding in order to find her lost brother Frantz (whom he had once promised to help) and re-unite him with his fiancée, Valentine.

Frantz De Galais is also Alain-Fournier’s alter ego, reflecting his evolving identity emerging after his own heartbreak: his refusal to fit in the confinement of adulthood, his thirst for freedom and imagination and his hypersensitivity making him be seen as emotionally unstable by regular people.

As of 2012, several English translations were available:[4] Le Grand Meaulnes was featured on the BBC Radio 4 programme Book at Bedtime, recorded in 1980 and repeated in 1999.

Another film adaptation, Le Grand Meaulnes, was released in November 2006, starring Jean-Baptiste Maunier, Clémence Poésy, and Nicolas Duvauchelle.

The book is the inspiration for the song 'My Yvonne', the ninth track from UK singer-songwriter Jack Peñate's debut album, Matinée, featuring backing vocals from a then-unknown Adele.

Le Grand Meaulnes is referenced multiple times in Simone de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.

[6] In his autobiography Living to Tell the Tale, Gabriel García Márquez remembers a crewmate from his youth who was an insatiable reader and who owned a copy of Le Grand Meaulnes, which became one of the author's preferred literary masterpieces.