List of French language authors
Encyclopedia
Chronological list of French language authors (regardless of nationality), by date of birth. For an alphabetical list of writers of French nationality (broken down by genre), see French writers category.

Middle Ages

  • Turold (eleventh century)
  • Wace
    Wace
    Wace was a Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy , ending his career as Canon of Bayeux.-Life:...

     (1110 – c.1180)
  • Chrétien de Troyes
    Chrétien de Troyes
    Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...

     (c.1135 – c.1183)
  • Richard the Lionheart
    Richard I of England
    Richard I was King of England from 6 July 1189 until his death. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Nantes, and Overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period...

     (Richard Coeur de Lion) (1157–1199)
  • Benoît de Sainte-Maure
    Benoît de Sainte-Maure
    Benoît de Sainte-Maure was a 12th century French poet, most probably from Sainte-Maure de Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenets' administrative center was located in Chinon - west of Tours....

     (twelfth century)
  • Le Châtelain de Couci (d.1203)
  • Jean Bodel
    Jean Bodel
    Jean Bodel, who lived in the late twelfth century, was an Old French poet who wrote a number of chansons de geste as well as many fabliaux. He lived in Arras....

     (12th century – c.1210)
  • Conon de Béthune
    Conon de Béthune
    Conon de Béthune was a crusader and "trouvère" poet.-Life:...

     (c.1150–1220)
  • Geoffroi de Villehardouin (c.1160 – c.1213)
  • Béroul
    Béroul
    Béroul was a Norman poet of the 12th century. He wrote Tristan, a Norman language version of the legend of Tristan and Iseult of which a certain number of fragments have been preserved; it is the earliest representation of the so-called "vulgar" version of the legend...

     (c.1170)
  • Thomas d'Angleterre (c.1170)
  • Gace Brulé
    Gace Brulé
    Gace Brulé , French trouvère, was a native of Champagne.His name is simply a description of his Blazonry. He owned land in Groslière and had dealings with the Knights Templar, and received a gift from the future Louis VIII. These facts are known from documents from the time...

     (c.1170)
  • Marie de France
    Marie de France
    Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II of England...

     (c.1175)
  • Gautier de Coincy
    Gautier de Coincy
    Gautier de Coincy was a French abbot, poet and musical arranger, chiefly known for his devotion to the Virgin Mary.While he served as prior of Vic-sur-Aisne he compiled Les Miracles de Nostre-Dame in which he set poems in praise of the Virgin Mary to popular melodies and songs of his...

     (1177/8–1236)
  • Gautier de Dargies
    Gautier de Dargies
    Gautier de Dargies was a trouvère from Dargies. He was one of the most prolific of the early trouvères; possibly twenty-five of his lyrics survive, twenty-two with accompanying melodies, in sixteen separate chansonniers. He was a major influence on contemporary and later trouvères, and one of the...

     (c.1170–after 1236)
  • Gautier d'Espinal († before July 1272)
  • Gillebert de Berneville (fl
    Floruit
    Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

     c.1255)
  • Gontier de Soignies
    Gontier de Soignies
    Gontier de Soignies was a medieval trouvère and composer who was active from around 1180 to 1220.-Biography:Gontier was from the region of Soignies in the County of Hainaut, a region that was then a state of the Holy Roman Empire...

     (fl
    Floruit
    Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

     c.1180–1220)
  • Guiot de Dijon
    Guiot de Dijon
    Guiot de Dijon was a Burgundian trouvère. The seventeen chansons ascribed to him are found in two chansonniers: the Chansonnier du Roi and the less reliable Berne Chansonnier...

     (fl
    Floruit
    Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

     c.1200–30)
  • Perrin d'Angicourt (fl
    Floruit
    Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

     c.1245–50)
  • Jean Renart
    Jean Renart
    Jean Renart, also known as Jean Renaut, was a Norman trouvère or troubadour from the end of the 12th century and the first half of the 13th century to whom three works are ascribed. Nothing else is known of him or his life...

     (fl. late 12th-first half of 13th century)
  • Philippe de Rémi
    Philippe de Rémi (died 1265)
    Philippe de Rémi was an Old French poet and trouvère from Picardy, and the bailli of the Gâtinais from 1237 to at least 1249. He was also the father of Philippe de Beaumanoir, the famous jurist, by his wife Marie....

     (c.1205–c1265)
  • Philippe de Beaumanoir (c.1247–c1296)
  • Raoul de Soissons
    Raoul de Soissons
    Raoul de Soissons was a French nobleman, Crusader, and trouvère. He was the second son of Raoul le Bon, Count of Soissons, and became the Sire de Coeuvres in 1232. Raoul participated in three Crusades....

     (c.1215–1272)
  • Richard de Fournival
    Richard de Fournival
    Richard de Fournival or Richart de Fornival was a medieval philosopher and trouvère perhaps best known for the Bestiaire d'amour .-Life:...

     (1201– c.1260)
  • Andrieu Contredit d'Arras
    Andrieu Contredit d'Arras
    Andrieu Contredit d'Arras was a trouvère from Arras and active in the Puy d'Arras. "Contredit" is probably a nickname. He wrote mostly grand chants, but also a pastourelle, a lai, and a jeu-parti with Guillaume li Vinier....

     († c.1248)
  • Jehan le Cuvelier d'Arras
    Jehan le Cuvelier d'Arras
    Jehan le Cuvelier d'Arras was a trouvère associated with the so-called "school of Arras". He may be the same person as Johannes Cuvellarius from Bapaume, a suburb of Arras, who is mentioned in documents of 1258. He was the respondent in nine jeux partis and judge of six; he also composed six...

     (fl
    Floruit
    Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

     c.1240–70)
  • Guillaume le Vinier
    Guillaume le Vinier
    Guillaume le Vinier was a French trouvère and poet. He was the older brother of Gilles le Vinier. He wrote over thirty essays, many accompanied by melodies, including jeu parti and partimen with Andrieu Contredit d'Arras.-References:...

     (fl
    Floruit
    Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

     c.1220–45; †1245)
  • Audefroi le Bâtard
    Audefroi le Batard
    Audefroi le Bastart was a French trouvère from Artois, who flourished in the early thirteenth century.Of his life nothing is known, though he is certainly the illegitimate child of a noble or upper-class bourgeouis family, but his family is not to be identified with the noble family Arras or with...

     (fl
    Floruit
    Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

     c.1200–1230)
  • Jehan Bretel
    Jehan Bretel
    Jehan Bretel was a trouvère. Of his known oeuvre of probably 97 songs, 96 have survived. Judging by his contacts with other trouvères he was famous and popular...

     (c.1200–1272)
  • Jehan Erart
    Jehan Erart
    Jehan Erart was a trouvère from Arras, particularly noted for his favouring the pastourelle genre. He has left behind eleven pastourelles, ten grand chants, and one serventois....

     († c.1259)
  • Moniot d'Arras
    Moniot d'Arras
    Moniot d'Arras was a French composer and poet of the trouvère tradition. He was a monk of the abbey of Arras in northern France; the area was at the time a center of trouvère activity, and his contemporaries included Adam de la Halle and Colin Muset. His songs were all monophonic in the tradition...

     (fl
    Floruit
    Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

     c.1250–75)
  • Robert de Clari
    Robert de Clari
    Robert de Clari was a knight from Picardy. He participated in the Fourth Crusade with his lord, Count Peter of Amiens, and his brother, Aleaumes de Clari, and left a chronicle of the events in Old French...

     (late twelfth century)
  • Blondel de Nesle (late twelfth century)
  • Robert de Boron
    Robert de Boron
    Robert de Boron was a French poet of the late 12th and early 13th centuries who is most notable as the author of the poems Joseph d'Arimathe and Merlin.-Work:...

     (twelfth–thirteenth century)
  • Guiot de Provins
    Guiot de Provins
    Guiot de Provins was a French poet and trouvère from the town of Provins in the Champagne area. A declining number of scholars identify him with Kyot the Provençal, the alleged writer of the source material used by Wolfram von Eschenbach for his romance Parzival, but most others consider such a...

     (d. After 1208)
  • Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube
    Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube
    Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube was an Old French poet from the Champagne region of France who wrote a number of chansons de geste. He is the author of Girard de Vienne, and it is likely that he also wrote Aymeri de Narbonne...

     (late twelfth-early thirteenth)
  • Guillaume de Lorris
    Guillaume de Lorris
    Guillaume de Lorris was a French scholar and poet from Lorris. He was the author of the first section of the Roman de la Rose. Little is known about him, other than that he wrote the earlier section of the poem around 1230, and that the work was completed forty years later by Jean de Meun.-...

     (c.1200 – c.1238)
  • Theobald IV of Champagne (1201–1253)
  • Jean de Joinville
    Jean de Joinville
    Jean de Joinville was one of the great chroniclers of medieval France.Son of Simon de Joinville and Beatrice d'Auxonne, he belonged to a noble family from Champagne. He received an education befitting a young noble at the court of Theobald IV, count of Champagne: reading, writing, and the...

     ( c.1224 – c.1317)
  • Rutebeuf
    Rutebeuf
    Rutebeuf , a trouvère, was born in the first half of the 13th century, possibly in Champagne ; he was evidently of humble birth, and he was a Parisian by education and residence. His name is nowhere mentioned by his contemporaries...

     (c.1230 – c.1285)
  • Adam de la Halle
    Adam de la Halle
    Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu was a French-born trouvère, poet and musician, whose literary and musical works include chansons and jeux-partis in the style of the trouveres, polyphonic rondel and motets in the style of early liturgical polyphony, and a musical play, "The Play of...

     (c.1250 – c.1285)
  • Jean de Meun
    Jean de Meun
    Jean de Meun was a French author best known for his continuation of the Roman de la Rose.-Life:...

    g or Jean de Meun
    Jean de Meun
    Jean de Meun was a French author best known for his continuation of the Roman de la Rose.-Life:...

     (1250 – c.1305) or Jean Clopinel or Chopinel
  • Jacques Bretel (c. 1285 – c. 1310)
  • Jean Le Bel
    Jean Le Bel
    Jean Le Bel was a Medieval Flemish chronicler. His father, Gilles le Beal des Changes, was an alderman of Liege, where Jean himself was active....

     (c.1290–1370)
  • Colin Muset
    Colin Muset
    Colin Muset was an Old French trouvère and a native of Lorraine. He made his living in the Champagne by travelling from castle to castle singing songs of his own composition and playing the vielle. These are not confined to the praise of courtly love that formed the usual topic of the trouvères,...

     (end of thirteenth century)
  • Guillaume de Machaut
    Guillaume de Machaut
    Guillaume de Machaut was a Medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available....

     ( c.1300 – c.1377)
  • Nicole Oresme (1325–1382)
  • Philippe de Mézières
    Philippe de Mézières
    Philippe de Mézières , French soldier and author, was born at the chateau of Mézières in Picardy.He belonged to the poorer nobility, and first served under Lucchino Visconti in Lombardy, but within a year he entered the service of Andrew, Duke of Calabria, who was assassinated in September 1345...

     (c.1327–1405)
  • Jean Froissart
    Jean Froissart
    Jean Froissart , often referred to in English as John Froissart, was one of the most important chroniclers of medieval France. For centuries, Froissart's Chronicles have been recognized as the chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 14th century Kingdom of England and France...

     (1333 – c.1404)
  • Eustache Deschamps
    Eustache Deschamps
    Eustache Deschamps was a medieval French poet, also known as Eustache Morel . Born at Vertus, in Champagne, he received lessons in versification from Guillaume de Machaut and later studied law at Orleans University. He then traveled through Europe as a diplomatic messenger for Charles V...

     (c.1346 – c.1407)
  • Jean Charlier called Gerson (1363–1429
  • Christine de Pisan (1364–1430)
  • Alain Chartier
    Alain Chartier
    Alain Chartier was a French poet and political writer.He was born at Bayeux, into a family marked by considerable ability. His eldest brother Guillaume became bishop of Paris; and Thomas became notary to the king. Jean Chartier, a monk of St Denis, whose history of Charles VII is printed in vol. III...

     (c.1385 – c.1435)
  • Jean Juvénal des Ursins
    Jean Juvénal des Ursins
    Jean Juvénal des Ursins was a French chronicler and historian. He wrote Histoire de Charles VI Roy de France, and is one of the main sources for information on the Battle of Agincourt....

     (1388–1473)
  • Antoine de la Sale
    Antoine de la Sale
    Antoine de la Sale or la Salle was a French writer.-Family and Early Years:He was born in Provence, probably at Arles, the illegitimate son of Bernardon de la Salle, a celebrated Gascon mercenary, mentioned in Froissart's Chronicles. His mother was a peasant, Perrinette Damendel.-At the Court of...

     (1388 – c.1469)
  • Enguerrand de Monstrelet
    Enguerrand de Monstrelet
    Enguerrand de Monstrelet , French chronicler, belonged to a noble family of Picardy.In 1436 and later he held the office of lieutenant of the gavenier at Cambrai, and he seems to have made this city his usual place of residence...

     (c.1390 – c.1453)
  • Charles, duc d'Orléans
    Charles, duc d'Orléans
    Charles of Valois was Duke of Orléans from 1407, following the murder of his father, Louis I, Duke of Orléans, on the orders of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy...

     (1394–1465)

Fifteenth century

  • Martin Le Franc
    Martin le Franc
    Martin le Franc was a French poet of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.He was born in Normandy, and studied in Paris. He entered clerical orders, becoming an apostolic prothonotary, and later becoming secretary to both Antipope Felix V and Pope Nicholas V.He was named provost at Lausanne...

     (c.1410–1461)
  • Eustache Marcadé
    Eustache Marcadé
    Eustache Marcadé, born in Artois at an unknown date, died in 1440, is accused of one of the first mysteries French known date.He is provost of Dampierre, official of the Abbey of Corbie from 1414 and dean of the Faculty of Order, the forerunner of the Faculty of laws...

     (1414–1440)
  • Georges Chastellain
    Georges Chastellain
    Georges Chastellain , Burgundian chronicler and poet, was a native of Aalst in Flanders. In spite of excessive partiality to the Duke of Burgundy, Chastellain's historical works are valuable for the accurate information they contain. As a poet he was famous among his contemporaries...

     (1415–1475)
  • Arnoul Gréban (c.1420 – c.1470)
  • Olivier de la Marche
    Olivier de la Marche
    Olivier de la Marche was a courtier, soldier, chronicler and poet in the last decades of the independent Duchy of Burgundy. He was close to Charles the Bold, and after his death held the important position of maître d'hotel to his daughter Mary of Burgundy, and her husband, and was sent on a...

     (1425–1502)
  • Martial d'Auvergne ( c.1430–1508)
  • François Villon
    François Villon
    François Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...

     (c.1431–after 1463)
  • Jean Michel
    Jean Michel
    Jean Michel was a French dramatic poet of the fifteenth century known for revising and enlarging "the Mystery of the Passion" composed by Arnoul Gréban. There are three Michels mentioned in connection with this work...

     (c.1435–1501)
  • Jean Molinet
    Jean Molinet
    Jean Molinet was a French poet, chronicler, and composer. He is best remembered for his prose translation of Roman de la rose.Born in Desvres, which is now part of France, he studied in Paris...

     (1435–1507)
  • Philippe de Commines
    Philippe de Commines
    Philippe de Commines was a writer and diplomat in the courts of Burgundy and France. He has been called "the first truly modern writer" and "the first critical and philosophical historian since classical times"...

     (1445–1511)
  • Jean Marot
    Jean Marot
    Jean Marot was a French poet and the father of French Renaissance poet Clément Marot. He is often grouped with the "Grands Rhétoriqueurs"....

     (1450–1526)
  • Lefèvre d'Etaples (1455–1537)
  • Guillaume Crétin
    Guillaume Crétin
    -Life:He was treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes, then cantor of the Sainte-Chapelle de Paris and ordinary almoner to Francis I of France....

     (Guillaume Dubois) (1460–1525)
  • Octavien de Saint-Gelais
    Octavien de Saint-Gelais
    Octavien de Saint-Gelais was a French churchman, poet, and translator. He translated the Aeneid into French, as well as Ovid's Heroides....

     (1468–1505)
  • Guillaume Budé
    Guillaume Budé
    Guillaume Budé was a French scholar.-Life:Budé was born in Paris. He went to the University of Orléans to study law, but for several years, being possessed of ample means, he led an idle and dissipated life...

     (1468–1540)
  • Jean Meschinot
    Jean Meschinot
    Jean Meschinot was a Breton poet who wrote in French at the court of the dukes of Brittany. His birthplace was in the Mortiers domain, around 30km south of Nantes, capital of the duchy, and he came from the minor nobility...

     (active from 1450–1490)
  • Guillaume Alexis
    Guillaume Alexis
    Guillaume Alexis was a French Benedictine monk and poet of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, nicknamed the "Good Monk". His abbey was that at Lire , in the diocese of Évreux, He became prior of Bussy, in Perche...

     (active from 1450–1490)
  • Jacques Millet (active from 1450–1466)
  • Henri Baude (active from 1460–1495)
  • Jean Castel (active from 1460–1480)
  • Jean Robertet (active from 1460–1500)
  • Roger de Collerye (1470–1538)
  • Jean Lemaire de Belges
    Jean Lemaire de Belges
    Jean Lemaire de Belges was a Walloon poet and historian who lived primarily in France.He was born in Hainaut , the godson and possibly a nephew of Jean Molinet, and spent some time with him at Valenciennes, where the elder writer held a kind of academy of poetry. Lemaire in his first poems calls...

     (1473 – c.1525)
  • Pierre Gringore
    Pierre Gringore
    Pierre Gringoire was a popular French poet and playwright. He was born in Normandy, at Thury-Harcourt, but the exact date and place of his death are unknown. His first work was Le Chasteau de Labour , an allegorical poem....

     or Gringoire (c.1475–1538/1539)
  • Jean Bouchet (1476 – c.1558)
  • François Rabelais
    François Rabelais
    François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...

     (c.1483–1553)
  • Aliénor de Poitiers
    Aliénor de Poitiers
    Aliénor de Poitiers , flourished late 15th century, Poitiers, France, was the daughter of the countess of Poitiers. It is known she was also the widowed Viscountess of Veurne....

     (fl.1484)
  • Mellin de Saint-Gelais
    Mellin de Saint-Gelais
    Mellin de Saint-Gelais was a French poet of the Renaissance and Poet Laureate of Francis I of France.- Life :...

     (c.1491–1558)
  • Marguerite de Navarre
    Marguerite de Navarre
    Marguerite de Navarre , also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the queen consort of Henry II of Navarre...

     (c.1492–1549)
  • Clément Marot
    Clément Marot
    Clément Marot was a French poet of the Renaissance period.-Youth:Marot was born at Cahors, the capital of the province of Quercy, some time during the winter of 1496-1497. His father, Jean Marot , whose more correct name appears to have been des Mares, Marais or Marets, was a Norman from the Caen...

     (c.1496–1544)
  • André de La Vigne (active from 1485–1515)
  • Jean d'Auton (active from 1499–1528)

1500-1549

  • Bonaventure des Périers
    Bonaventure des Périers
    Bonaventure des Périers was a French author.He was born of a noble family at Arnay-le-duc in Burgundy at the end of the fifteenth century....

     (c.1500–1544)
  • Maurice Scève
    Maurice Scève
    Maurice Scève , French poet, was born at Lyon, where his father practised law.He was the centre of the Lyonnese côterie that elaborated the theory of spiritual love, derived partly from Plato and partly from Petrarch...

     (c.1505 – c.1562)
  • Michel de l'Hospital
    Michel de l'Hôpital
    Michel de l'Hôpital was a French statesman.-Biography:De l'Hôpital was born near Aigueperse in Auvergne ....

     (1505–1573)
  • Étienne Dolet
    Étienne Dolet
    Étienne Dolet was a French scholar, translator and printer.-Early life:He was born in Orléans. A doubtful tradition makes him the illegitimate son of Francis I; but it is evident that he was at least connected with some family of rank and wealth.From Orléans he was taken to Paris about 1521, and...

     (1509–1546)
  • Jean Calvin (1509–1564)
  • De Cholières, sieur (sometimes listed as Nicolas de Cholières) (1509–1592)
  • Hélisenne de Crenne
    Hélisenne de Crenne
    Hélisenne de Crenne was the pseudonym of Marguerite Briet , a French novelist, epistolary writer and translator during the Renaissance.-Life:...

     (Marguerite Briet de Crenne) (c.1510–after 1552)
  • Pierre Viret
    Pierre Viret
    Pierre Viret was a Swiss Reformed theologian.- Early life :Pierre Viret was born to a devout middle class Roman Catholic family in Orbe, a small town now in Switzerland. He was a close friend of John Calvin....

     (1511–1571)
  • Thomas Sébillet
    Thomas Sébillet
    Thomas Sébillet was a French jurist and grammarian. He is now remembered for his Art Poétique from 1548, on French verse. He was strongly contradicted later by Joachim du Bellay, whose art poétique became normative. This "decapitation of richesse" lead to a centralisation of language, too...

     (c.1512–1589)
  • Jacques Amyot
    Jacques Amyot
    Jacques Amyot , French Renaissance writer and translator, was born of poor parents, at Melun.He found his way to the University of Paris, where he supported himself by serving some of the richer students. He was nineteen when he became M.A. at Paris, and later he graduated doctor of civil law at...

     (1513–1593)
  • Louis des Masures (c.1515–1574)
  • Guillaume Bouchet (1515–1594)
  • Jacques Peletier du Mans
    Jacques Peletier du Mans
    Jacques Pelletier du Mans, also spelled Peletier, in Latin: Peletarius , was a humanist, poet and mathematician of the French Renaissance....

     (1517–1582)
  • Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605)
  • Noël du Fail
    Noël du Fail
    Noël du Fail, seigneur de La Hérissaye , was a French jurist and writer of the Renaissance...

     (1520–1591)
  • Pernette Du Guillet
    Pernette Du Guillet
    Pernette Du Guillet was a female French poet of the Renaissance.She was born in a noble family and married in 1537 or 1538 a man with the last name Du Guillet. In the spring of 1536, she met the poet Maurice Scève , and she would serve as Scève's poetic muse, inspiring his Délie...

     (c.1520–1545)
  • Jacques Yver (1520–1570)
  • Gilles de Gouberville (1521–1578)
  • Pontus de Tyard
    Pontus de Tyard
    Pontus de Tyard was a French poet and priest, a member of "La Pléiade".He was born at Bissy-sur-Fley in Burgundy, of which he was seigneur, but the exact year of his birth is uncertain. He became a friend of Antoine Héroet and Maurice Scève...

     or de Thiard (1521–1605)
  • Joachim du Bellay
    Joachim du Bellay
    Joachim du Bellay was a French poet, critic, and a member of the Pléiade.-Biography:He was born at the Château of La Turmelière, not far from Liré, near Angers, being the son of Jean du Bellay, Lord of Gonnor, first cousin of the cardinal Jean du Bellay and of Guillaume du Bellay.Both his parents...

     (1522–1560)
  • Pierre de Ronsard
    Pierre de Ronsard
    Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...

     (1524–1585)
  • Pierre Boaistuau
    Pierre Boaistuau
    Pierre Boaistuau, also known as Pierre Launay or Sieur de Launay was a French humanist. 'Boaistuau' is the manner of spelling followed by the majority of secondary works in which he has been mentioned...

     (?–1566)
  • Louise Labé
    Louise Labé
    Louise Labé, , also identified as La Belle Cordière, , was a female French poet of the Renaissance, born at Lyon, the daughter of a rich ropemaker, Pierre Charly, and his second wife, Etiennette Roybet...

     (c.1526 – c.1565)
  • Jacques Tahureau (1527–1555)
  • Remy Belleau
    Remy Belleau
    Remy Belleau , was a poet of the French Renaissance. He is most known for his paradoxical poems of praise for simple things and his poems about precious stones....

     (1528–1577)
  • Etienne Pasquier
    Étienne Pasquier
    Étienne Pasquier , French lawyer and man of letters, was born at Paris, on 7 June 1529 by his own account, according to others a year earlier. He was called to the Paris bar in 1549....

     (1529–1615)
  • Étienne de La Boétie
    Étienne de La Boétie
    Étienne de La Boétie was a French judge, writer, anarchist, and "a founder of modern political philosophy in France." He "has been best remembered as the great and close friend of the eminent essayist Michel de Montaigne, in one of history's most notable friendships."-Life:"La Boétie was born in...

     (1530–1563)
  • Claude Fauchet
    Claude Fauchet (historian)
    Claude Fauchet was a French historian and antiquary.He was born at Paris; of his early life few particulars are known. He applied himself to the study of the early French chroniclers, and proposed to publish extracts which would throw light on the first periods of the monarchy...

     (1530–1601)
  • Jean Bodin
    Jean Bodin
    Jean Bodin was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. He is best known for his theory of sovereignty; he was also an influential writer on demonology....

     (1530–1596)
  • François de Belleforest
    François de Belleforest
    François de Belleforest was a prolific French author, poet and translator of the Renaissance. He was born in a poor family and his father was killed when he was seven...

     (1530–1583)
  • Henri Estienne (1531–1598)
  • Jean Antoine de Baïf (1532–1589)
  • Étienne Jodelle
    Étienne Jodelle
    Étienne Jodelle, seigneur de Limodin , French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris of a noble family.He attached himself to the poetic circle of the Pléiade and proceeded to apply the principles of the reformers to dramatic composition...

     (1532–1573)
  • Michel de Montaigne
    Michel de Montaigne
    Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...

     (Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne) (1533–1592)
  • Jean de la Taille
    Jean de La Taille
    Jean de La Taille was a French poet and dramatist born in Bondaroy.He studied the humanities in Paris under Muretus, and law at Orléans under Anne de Bourg. He began his career as a Huguenot, but afterwards adopted a mild Catholicism...

     (c.1533/1540 – c.1617)
  • Robert Garnier
    Robert Garnier
    Robert Garnier was a French tragic poet. He published his first work while still a law-student at Toulouse, where he won a prize in the Académie des Jeux Floraux. It was a collection of lyrical pieces, now lost, entitled Plaintes amoureuses de Robert Garnier...

     (1534–1590)
  • Nicolas Rapin
    Nicolas Rapin
    Nicolas Rapin was a French Renaissance magistrate, royal officer, translator, poet and satirist, known for being one of the authors of the Satire Ménippée and an outspoken critic of the excesses of the Holy League during the Wars of Religion.- Life :Born at Fontenay-le-Comte, Vendée into a family...

     (1535–1608)
  • Jacques Grévin
    Jacques Grévin
    Jacques Grévin was a French dramatist.Grévin was born at Clermont, Oise in about 1539, and he studied medicine at the University of Paris. He became a disciple of Ronsard, and was one of the band of dramatists who sought to introduce the classical drama in France...

     (1538–1570)
  • Olivier de Serres
    Olivier de Serres
    Olivier de Serres was a French author and soil scientist whose Théâtre d'Agriculture was the text book of French agriculture in the 17th century..Serres was born at Villeneuve-de-Berg, Ardèche...

     (1539–1619)
  • Pierre Pithou
    Pierre Pithou
    Pierre Pithou was a French lawyer and scholar. He is also known as Petrus Pithoeus.He was born at Troyes. From childhood he loved literature, and his father Pierre encouraged this interest. Young Pithou was called to the Paris bar in 1560...

     (1539–1596)
  • Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme
    Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme
    Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme was a French historian, soldier and biographer.-Life:Brantôme was born in Périgord, Aquitaine, the third son of the baron de Bourdeille...

     (1540–1614)
  • Pierre de Larivey
    Pierre de Larivey
    Pierre de Larivey was a French dramatist of Italian origin. He is credited with introducing the Italian "comedy of intrigue" into France.-Life:Little is known of Larivey's biography...

     (1540–1619)
  • Florent Chrestien
    Florent Chrestien
    Florent Chrestien was a French satirist and Latin poet.Chrestien was the son of Guillaume Chrestien, an eminent French physician and writer on physiology, was born at Orléans. A pupil of Henri Estienne, the Hellenist, at an early age he was appointed tutor to Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV,...

     (1540–1596)
  • Pierre Charron
    Pierre Charron
    Pierre Charron was a French 16th-century Catholic theologian and philosopher, and a disciple and contemporary of Michel Montaigne.-Biography:...

     (1541–1603)
  • Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas
    Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas
    Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas was a French poet. A Huguenot, he served under Henry of Navarre. He is known as an epic poet. La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde was a hugely influential hexameral work, relating the creation of the world and the history of man...

     (1544–1590)
  • Antoine du Verdier
    Antoine du Verdier
    Antoine du Verdier , lord of Vauprivast, was a French politician and writer. He was conseiller du roi and controller-general in Lyon, but is best known for his work as a bibliographer alongside his friend and contemporary François Grudé.-Publications:* Prosopographie, description des...

     (1544–1600)
  • Pierre Joulet, sieur de Chastillon (1545–1621)
  • Philippe Desportes
    Philippe Desportes
    Philippe Desportes was a French poet.-Biography:Philippe Desportes was born in Chartres. While serving as secretary to the bishop of Le Puy he visited Italy, where he learned Italian poetry. This experience became a good account. On his return to France he attached himself to the duke of Anjou,...

     (1546–1606)
  • Pierre de L'Estoile
    Pierre de L'Estoile
    -Life:Born in Paris into a middle-class background, Pierre de l'Estoile was tutored by Mathieu Béroalde. He knew Agrippa d'Aubigné. He became a law student at Bourges...

     (1546–1611)
  • Gabrielle Chappuys (1546? – c.1613)
  • Jean de La Ceppède (1548–1623)
  • Etienne Tabourot des Accords (1549–1590)
  • Philippe Duplessis-Mornay
    Philippe de Mornay
    Philippe de Mornay , seigneur du Plessis Marly, usually known as Du-Plessis-Mornay or Mornay Du Plessis, was a French Protestant writer and member of the Monarchomaques .- Biography :...

     (Philippe de Mornay, called Duplessis-Mornay) (1549–1623)

1550-1599

  • Benigne Poissenot (c.1550–?)
  • François d'Amboise
    François d'Amboise
    François d'Amboise was a French jurist and writer. He was counseller to the Parlement of Brittany and advocate general to the Grand Conseil.- Biography :...

     (1550–1619)
  • Odet de Turnèbe
    Odet de Turnèbe
    Odet de Turnèbe was a French dramatist.-Biography:Son of the Greek scholar Adrien Turnèbe, Odet de Turnèbe received a solid education and was known, from an early age, for his intelligence and wit...

     (1552–1581)
  • Jean Bertaut
    Jean Bertaut
    Jean Bertaut , French poet, was born at Caen.He figures with Philippe Desportes in the disdainful couplet of Boileau on Ronsard:"Ce poëte orgueilleux, trébuché de si haut,Rendit plus retenus Desportes et Bertaut."...

     (1552–1611)
  • Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné
    Agrippa d'Aubigné
    Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné was a French poet, soldier, propagandist and chronicler. His epic poem Les Tragiques is widely regarded as his masterpiece.-Life:...

     (1552–1630)
  • François de Malherbe
    François de Malherbe
    François de Malherbe was a French poet, critic, and translator.-Life:Born in Le-Locheur , his family was of some position, though it seems not to have been able to establish to the satisfaction of heralds the claims which it made to nobility older than the 16th century.He was the eldest son of...

     (1552–1630)
  • Marc de Papillon a/k/a "Capitaine Lasphrise" (1555–1599)
  • Jacques Davy Du Perron (1556–1618)
  • François Béroalde de Verville
    Béroalde de Verville
    François Béroalde de Verville was a French Renaissance novelist, poet and intellectual. He was the son of Matthieu Brouard , called "Béroalde", a professor of Agrippa d'Aubigné and Pierre de l'Estoile and a Huguenot; his mother, Marie Bletz, was the niece of the humanist and Hebrew scholar...

     (1556–1626)
  • Guillaume du Vair
    Guillaume du Vair
    Guillaume du Vair was a French author and lawyer.He was born in Paris. After taking holy orders, he exercised only legal functions for most of his career. However, from 1617 till his death he was Bishop of Lisieux. His reputation is that of a lawyer, a statesman and a man of letters...

     (1556–1621)
  • Jean de Sponde
    Jean de Sponde
    Jean de Sponde was a Baroque French poet.- Biography :Born at Mauléon, in what is now Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Jean de Sponde was raised in an austere Protestant family in the Basque region of France with close relations with the royal court of Navarre...

     (1557–1595)
  • Maximilien de Béthune, baron de Rosny, duc de Sully (1560–1641)
  • Alexandre Hardy
    Alexandre Hardy
    Alexandre Hardy was a French dramatist, one of the most prolific of all time. He claimed to have written some six hundred plays, but only thirty-four are extant....

     (1560/1570 – c.1632)
  • Nicolas de Montreux
    Nicolas de Montreux
    Nicolas de Montreux was a French nobleman, novelist, poet, translator and dramatist.Born in province of Maine, he was the son of a maître des requêtes and may have become a priest around 1585. In 1591 he came under the protection of the Duke of Mercœur and participated in the civil wars on the...

     (1561–1608)
  • Pierre Matthieu
    Pierre Matthieu
    Pierre Matthieu was a French writer, poet, historian and dramatist.-Biography:Pierre Matthieu studied under the Jesuits and mastered Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew...

     (1563–1621)
  • Eustache de Refuge
    Eustache de Refuge
    Eustache de Refuge, seigneur de Précy et de Courcelles , was an Early Modern French courtier, statesman and author.- Biography :...

    , seigneur de Précy et de Courcelles (1564–1617)
  • Saint François de Sales
    Francis de Sales
    Francis de Sales was Bishop of Geneva and is a Roman Catholic saint. He worked to convert Protestants back to Catholicism, and was an accomplished preacher...

     (1567–1622)
  • Honoré d'Urfé
    Honoré d'Urfé
    Honoré d'Urfé, marquis de Valromey, comte de Châteauneuf was a French novelist and miscellaneous writer.- Life :...

     (1567–1625)
  • Antoine de Nervèze
    Antoine de Nervèze
    Antoine de Nervèze was a French nobleman and writer of novels, translations, letters and moral works at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries.-Biography:...

     (c.1570–after 1622)
  • Nicolas des Escuteaux
    Nicolas des Escuteaux
    Nicolas des Escuteaux was a French novelist from the early 17th century.-Life:He was born into a noble family in the region around Loudun...

     (after 1570 – c.1628)
  • François du Souhait
    François du Souhait
    François du Souhait was a French language author of the late 16th and early 17th century from the Duchy of Lorraine .- Life :François du Souhait was born to a noble family in the Champagne region...

     (between 1570 & 1580–1617)
  • Jean-Baptiste Chassignet (1570–1635)
  • Jean Ogier de Gombaud (1570–1666)
  • Mathurin Régnier
    Mathurin Régnier
    Mathurin Régnier was a French satirist.-Life:Régnier was born in Chartres, current region of Centre....

     (1573–1613)
  • Antoine de Montchrestien
    Antoine de Montchrestien
    Antoine de Montchrestien was a French soldier, dramatist, adventurer and economist.Montchrestien was born in Falaise, Normandy...

     (c.1575–1621)
  • Henri, duc de Rohan
    Henri, duc de Rohan
    Henri de Rohan, Viscount then Duke of Rohan , later duke of Rohan, French soldier, writer and leader of the Huguenots, was born at the Château de Blain , in Brittany....

     (1579–1638)
  • Saint Vincent de Paul (1581–1660)
  • Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran (1581–1643)
  • François Maynard
    François Maynard
    François Maynard, sometimes seen as "de Maynard" was a French poet who spent much of his life in Toulouse.-Life and works:...

     (1582–1646)
  • Jean-Pierre Camus
    Jean-Pierre Camus
    Jean-Pierre Camus de Pontcarré was a French bishop, preacher, and author of works of fiction and spirituality.-Biography:...

     (1584–1652)
  • Jean de Schelandre
    Jean de Schelandre
    Jean de Schelandre , Seigneur de Saumazènes, was a French poet.-Biography:He was born about 1585 near Verdun of a Calvinist family, and studied at the university of Paris...

     (c.1585–1635)
  • François de La Mothe-Le-Vayer (1588–1672)
  • Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan
    Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan
    Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan was a French aristocrat, soldier, poet, dramatist and member of the Académie française....

     (1589–1670)
  • Théophile de Viau
    Théophile de Viau
    Théophile de Viau was a French Baroque poet and dramatist.Born at Clairac, near Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne and raised as a Huguenot, Théophile de Viau participated in the Protestant wars in Guyenne from 1615-1616 in the service of the Comte de Candale. After the war, he was pardoned and became a...

     (1590–1626)
  • François le Métel de Boisrobert
    François le Métel de Boisrobert
    François le Métel de Boisrobert was a French poet.-Biography:He was born at Caen, and trained as a lawyer, practising for some time at the bar at Rouen. About 1622 he went to Paris, and by the next year had established a footing at court, for he had a share in the ballet of the Bacchanales...

     (1592–1662)
  • Antoine Gérard de Saint-Amant
    Antoine Gérard de Saint-Amant
    Antoine Girard, sieur de Saint-Amant , French poet, was born near Rouen.His father was a merchant who had, according to his son's account, been a sailor and had commanded for 22 years "une escadre de la reine Elizabeth"--a vague statement that lacks confirmation...

     (1594–1661)
  • Jean Chapelain
    Jean Chapelain
    Jean Chapelain was a French poet and writer.-Biography:Chapelain was born in Paris. His father wanted him to become a notary; but his mother, who had known Pierre de Ronsard, had decided otherwise...

     (1595–1674)
  • Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1595–1676)
  • René Descartes
    René Descartes
    René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

     (1596–1650)
  • Claude de Malleville
    Claude de Malleville
    Claude Malleville was a French poet and one of the founder members of the Académie française in 1634.- External links :...

     (1597–1647)
  • Vincent Voiture
    Vincent Voiture
    Vincent Voiture , French poet, was the son of a rich merchant of Amiens. He was introduced by a schoolfellow, the count Claude d'Avaux, to Gaston, Duke of Orléans, and accompanied him to Brussels and Lorraine on diplomatic missions.Although a follower of Gaston, he won the favour of Cardinal...

     (1597–1648)
  • Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac
    Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac
    Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac was a French author, best known for his epistolary essays, which were widely circulated and read in his day. He was one of the founding members of Académie française.-Biography:...

     (1597–1684)

1600-1649

  • Marin le Roy de Gomberville
    Marin le Roy de Gomberville
    Marin le Roy, sieur du Parc et de Gomberville was a French poet and novelist.He was born at Paris, and at fourteen he produced a volume of poetry. At twenty he wrote a Discours sur l'histoire and at twenty-two a pastoral, La Charité, which is really a novel...

     (1600–1674)
  • Georges de Scudéry
    Georges de Scudéry
    Georges de Scudéry , the elder brother of Madeleine de Scudéry, was a French novelist, dramatist and poet.Georges de Scudéry was born in Le Havre, in Normandy, whither his father had moved from Provence...

     (1601–1667)
  • François Tristan l'Hermite
    François Tristan l'Hermite
    François l'Hermite was a French dramatist who wrote under the name Tristan l'Hermite. He was born at the Château de Soliers in the Haute Marche....

     (1601–1655)
  • Guy Patin
    Guy Patin
    Guy Patin was a French doctor and man of letters.Guy Patin was headmaster of the School of Medicine in Paris and professor in the Collège de France starting in 1655...

     (1601–1672)
  • Charles Sorel (1602–1674)
  • Le Père Le Moyne (1602–1671)
  • Charles Cotin
    Charles Cotin
    Charles Cotin or Abbé Cotin was a French abbé, philosopher and poet. He was made a member of the Académie française on 7 January 1655....

     (1604–1682)
  • Jean Mairet
    Jean Mairet
    Jean Mairet was a classical French dramatist who wrote both tragedies and comedies.- Life :He was born at Besançon, and went to Paris to study at the Collège des Grassins about 1625. In that year he produced his first piece Chryséide et Arimand...

     (1604–1686)
  • François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac
    François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac
    François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac was a French author who was born in Paris.His father practised at the Paris bar, and his mother was a daughter of the great surgeon Ambroise Paré...

     (1604–1676)
  • Pierre du Ryer
    Pierre du Ryer
    Pierre du Ryer was a French dramatist.He was born in Paris. His early comedies are loosely modelled on those of Alexandre Hardy, but after the production of the Cid he became an imitator of Pierre Corneille; this was the period when he produced his masterpiece Scévole, probably in 1644...

     (1605–1658)
  • Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy (1605–1675)
  • Jean François Sarrazin
    Jean François Sarrazin
    Jean François Sarrazin , or Sarasin, was a French author.-Biography:Sarrazin was born at Hermanville, near Caen, the son of Roger Sarasin, treasurer-general at Caen....

     (1605–1654)
  • Pierre Corneille
    Pierre Corneille
    Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

     (1606–1684)
  • Antoine Gombaud
    Antoine Gombaud
    Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de Méré was a French writer, born at Poitou in 1607, and died on December 29, 1684. Although he was not a nobleman, he adopted the title Chevalier for the character in his dialogues who represented his own views...

    , chevalier de Méré (1607–1685)
  • Madeleine de Scudéry
    Madeleine de Scudéry
    Madeleine de Scudéry , often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer. She was the younger sister of author Georges de Scudéry.-Biography:...

     (1607–1701)
  • Jean Rotrou
    Jean Rotrou
    Jean Rotrou was a French poet and tragedian.Rotrou was born at Dreux in Normandy. He studied at Dreux and at Paris, and, though three years younger than Pierre Corneille, began writing before him. In 1632 he became playwright to the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne...

     (1609–1650)
  • Paul Scarron
    Paul Scarron
    Paul Scarron was a French poet, dramatist, and novelist. His precise birthdate is unknown, but he was baptized on July 4, 1610...

     (1610–1660)
  • François-Eudes de Mézeray
    François-Eudes de Mézeray
    François Eudes de Mézeray was a French historian.He was born at Rye near Argentan, where his father was a surgeon.He had two brothers, one of whom, Jean-Eudes, was the founder of the order of the Eudists. François studied at the University of Caen, and completed his education at the College of Ste...

     (1610–1683)
  • Charles de Saint-Evremond
    Charles de Saint-Évremond
    Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Saint-Évremond was a French soldier, hedonist, essayist and literary critic. After 1661, he lived in exile, mainly in England, as a consequence of his attack on French policy at the time of the peace of the Pyrenees . He is buried in Poets' Corner,...

     (c.1610–1703)
  • Antoine Arnauld
    Antoine Arnauld
    Antoine Arnauld — le Grand as contemporaries called him, to distinguish him from his father — was a French Roman Catholic theologian, philosopher, and mathematician...

     (1612–1694)
  • Isaac de Benserade
    Isaac de Benserade
    Isaac de Benserade was a French poet.Born in Lyons-la-Forêt in the Province of Normandy, his family appears to have been connected with Richelieu, who bestowed on him a pension of 600 livres. He began his literary career with the tragedy of Cléopâtre , which was followed by four other pieces...

     (1612–1691)
  • Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz
    Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz
    Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz was a French churchman, writer of memoirs, and agitator in the Fronde....

     (1613–1679)
  • François de la Rochefoucauld
    François de La Rochefoucauld
    François de La Rochefoucauld may be:* François de La Rochefoucauld , French author* François de La Rochefoucauld , French cardinal of the Catholic Church...

     (1613–1680)
  • Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède
    Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède
    Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède was a French novelist and dramatist. He was born at the Château of Tolgou in Salignac-Eyvigues . After studying at Toulouse, he came to Paris and entered the regiment of the guards, becoming in 1650 gentleman-in-ordinary of the royal household...

     (1614–1663)
  • Georges de Brébeuf
    Georges de Brébeuf
    Georges de Brébeuf was a French poet and translator best known for his verse translation of Lucan's Pharsalia which was warmly received by Pierre Corneille, but which was ridiculed by Nicolas Boileau in his Art poétique....

     (1618–1661)
  • Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy
    Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy
    Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy , commonly known as Bussy-Rabutin, was a French memoirist. He was the cousin and frequent correspondent of Madame de Sévigné....

    , called Bussy-Rabutin (1618–1693)
  • Cyrano de Bergerac
    Cyrano de Bergerac
    Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French dramatist and duelist. He is now best remembered for the works of fiction which have been woven, often very loosely, around his life story, most notably the 1897 play by Edmond Rostand...

     (Hector-Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac) (1619–1655)
  • Antoine Furetière
    Antoine Furetière
    Antoine Furetière , French scholar and writer, was born in Paris.-Biography:He studied law and practised for a time as an advocate, but eventually took orders and after various promotions became abbé of Chalivoy in the diocese of Bourges in 1662...

     (1619–1688)
  • Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux
    Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux
    Gédéon Tallemant, Sieur des Réaux was a French writer known for his Historiettes, a collection of short biographies.-Biography:...

     (1619–1692)
  • Jean de La Fontaine
    Jean de La Fontaine
    Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...

     (1621–1695)
  • Molière
    Molière
    Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

     (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) (1622–1673)
  • Blaise Pascal
    Blaise Pascal
    Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...

     (1623–1662)
  • Jean Renaud de Segrais
    Jean Renaud de Segrais
    Jean Renaud de Segrais was a French poet and novelist born in Caen.In 1662, he was elected a member of the Académie française....

     (1624–1701)
  • Paul Pellisson
    Paul Pellisson
    thumb|Paul Pellisson,Paul Pellisson was a French author.He was born in Béziers, of a distinguished Calvinist family. He studied law at Toulouse, and practised at the bar of Castres. Going to Paris with letters of introduction to Valentin Conrart, a fellow Calvinist, he was introduced to the...

     (1624–1693)
  • Thomas Corneille
    Thomas Corneille
    Thomas Corneille was a French dramatist.- Personal life :Born in Rouen nearly twenty years after his brother Pierre, the "great Corneille", Thomas's skill as a poet seems to have shown itself early. At the age of fifteen he composed a play in Latin which was performed by his fellow-pupils at the...

     (1625–1709)
  • Samuel Chappuzeau
    Samuel Chappuzeau
    Samuel Chappuzeau was a French scholar, author, poet and playwright whose best-known work today is Le Théâtre François, a description of French Theatre in the 17th century....

     (1625–1701)
  • Madame de Sévigné (Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné) (1626–1696)
  • Laurent Drelincourt
    Laurent Drelincourt
    Laurent Drelincourt was son of the French Reformed Church theologian Charles Drelincourt , who was a French Protestant divine. Laurent also was a theologian, who later became a pastor, and was the author of Sonnets chrétiens sur divers sujets .His orientation is said to have followed largely the...

     (1626–1680)
  • Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704)
  • Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues (1628–1685)
  • Charles Perrault
    Charles Perrault
    Charles Perrault was a French author who laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , Cendrillon , Le Chat Botté and La Barbe bleue...

     (1628–1703)
  • Pierre Daniel Huet
    Pierre Daniel Huet
    Pierre Daniel Huet was a French churchman and scholar, editor of the Delphin Classics, founder of the Academie du Physique in Caen and Bishop of Soissons from 1685 to 1689 and afterwards of Avranches.-Life:...

     (1630–1721)
  • Louis Bourdaloue
    Louis Bourdaloue
    Louis Bourdaloue was a French Jesuit and preacher.He was born in Bourges. At the age of sixteen he entered the Society of Jesus, and was appointed successively professor of rhetoric, philosophy and moral theology, in various Jesuit colleges...

     (1632–1704)
  • Esprit Fléchier
    Esprit Fléchier
    Esprit Fléchier was a French preacher and author, Bishop of Nîmes from 1687 to 1710.-Life:He was born at Pernes-les-Fontaines, in the département of Vaucluse, in the Comtat Venaissin, and brought up at Tarascon by his uncle, Hercule Audiffret, superior of the Congrégation des Doctrinaires...

     (1632–1710)
  • Jacques Pradon
    Jacques Pradon
    Jacques Pradon, often called Nicolas Pradon, was a French playwright. Early in his career he was helped by Pierre Corneille and was introduced to the salons at the Hôtel de Nevers and the Hôtel de Bouillon by Madame Deshoulières....

     (1632–1698)
  • Madame de Villedieu (Marie-Catherine-Hortence Desjardins, marquise de Villedieu) (1632–1683)
  • Madame de Lafayette (Marie-Madeleine, comtesse de La Fayette) (1634–1693)
  • Pierre Thomas
    Pierre Thomas
    Pierre Thomas, sieur du Fossé was a French scholar and author, and was the son of a master of accounts at Rouen. He was sent as a child to be educated to the Jansenists at Port-Royal des Champs. There he received his bent towards the life of a recluse, and even of a hermit, which drew him to...

    , sieur du Fossé (1634–1698)
  • Philippe Quinault
    Philippe Quinault
    Philippe Quinault , French dramatist and librettist, was born in Paris.- Biography :Quinault was educated by the liberality of François Tristan l'Hermite, the author of Marianne. Quinault's first play was produced at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, when he was only eighteen...

     (1635–1688)
  • Adrien Thomas Perdou de Subligny (1636–1696)
  • Nicolas Boileau
    Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
    Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was a French poet and critic.-Biography:Boileau was born in the rue de Jérusalem, in Paris, France. He was brought up to the law, but devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière...

     (1636–1711)
  • Edmé Boursault
    Edmé Boursault
    Edmé Boursault was a French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, born at Mussy l'Evéque, now Mussy-sur-Seine ....

     (1638–1701)
  • Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières
    Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières
    Antoinette Du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières was a French poet born in Paris. She was the daughter of Melchior du Ligier, sieur de la Garde, maitre d'hôtel to the queens Marie de Medici and Anne of Austria....

     (1638–1694)
  • Nicolas Malebranche
    Nicolas Malebranche
    Nicolas Malebranche ; was a French Oratorian and rationalist philosopher. In his works, he sought to synthesize the thought of St. Augustine and Descartes, in order to demonstrate the active role of God in every aspect of the world...

     (1638–1715)
  • Jean Donneau de Visé
    Jean Donneau de Visé
    Jean Donneau de Visé was a French journalist, royal historian , playwright and publicist. He was founder of the literary, arts and society gazette "le Mercure galant" and was associated with the "Moderns" in the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns".Donneau de Visé was among the detractors...

     (1638–1710)
  • Philippe de Courcillon, marquis de Dangeau (1638–1720)
  • Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu
    Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu
    Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu , French poet and wit, was born at Fontenay, Normandy.His father, maître des comptes of Rouen, sent him to study at the Collège de Navarre. Guillaume early showed the wit that was to distinguish him, and gained the favor of the duke of Vendôme, who procured for him the...

     (1639–1720)
  • César Vichard de Saint-Réal
    César Vichard de Saint-Réal
    César Vichard de Saint-Réal was a French polygraph.He was born in Chambéry, Savoy, but educated in Lyon by the Jesuits. He used to work in the royal library with Antoine Varillas. This French historiographer influenced the way Saint-Réal wrote history...

     (1639–1692)
  • Jean Racine
    Jean Racine
    Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

     (1639–1699)
  • Claude de Fleury
    Fleury
    Fleury can refer to:* Abbo of Fleury abbot of the monastery of Fleury* Andrew of Fleury, historian from the monstery of Fleury* Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus , chief minister of Louis XV of France...

     (1640–1723)
  • Louis Moréri
    Louis Moréri
    Louis Moréri was a French encyclopaedist.His encyclopaedia, Le grand Dictionaire historique, ou le mélange curieux de l'histoire sacrée et profane was first published in Lyon in 1674. The encyclopaedia focused particularly on historical and biographical articles...

     (1643–1680)
  • Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras
    Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras
    Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras was a French novelist, journalist, pamphleteer and memorialist.His abundant output includes short stories, gallant letters, tales of historical love affairs , historical and political works, biographies and semi-fictional "memoirs" Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (1644,...

     (1644–1712)
  • Anne de La Roche-Guilhen (1644–1707)
  • Jean de La Bruyère
    Jean de La Bruyère
    Jean de La Bruyère was a French essayist and moralist.-Ancestry:He was born in Paris, not, as was once thought, at Dourdan in 1645...

     (1645–1696)
  • Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert
    Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert
    Pierre le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert or Boisguillebert was a French economist and a Jansenist, one of the inventors of the notion of an economical market....

     ( c.1646–1714)
  • Antoine Galland
    Antoine Galland
    Antoine Galland was a French orientalist and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of The Thousand and One Nights...

     (1646–1715)
  • Pierre Bayle
    Pierre Bayle
    Pierre Bayle was a French philosopher and writer best known for his seminal work the Historical and Critical Dictionary, published beginning in 1695....

     (1647–1706)
  • Charles Dufresny (1648–1724)

1650-1699

  • Madame d'Aulnoy
    Madame d'Aulnoy
    Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy , also known as Countess d'Aulnoy, was a French writer known for her fairy tales...

     (Marie-Catherine le Jumelle de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy) (1650/1651–1705)
  • François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715)
  • Charlotte-Rose de Caumont La Force
    Charlotte-Rose de Caumont La Force
    Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force or Mademoiselle de La Force was a French novelist and poet. Her best-known work was her 1698 fairy tale Persinette which was adapted by the Brothers Grimm as the story Rapunzel....

     (Mademoiselle de La Force) (1654–1724)
  • Jean-François Regnard
    Jean-François Regnard
    Jean-François Regnard , "the most distinguished, after Molière, of the comic poets of the seventeenth century", was a dramatist, born in Paris, who is equally famous now for the travel diary he kept of a voyage in 1681....

     (1655–1709)
  • Jean Galbert de Campistron
    Jean Galbert de Campistron
    Jean Galbert de Campistron was a French dramatist-Biography:Campistron was born in Toulouse, France to a noble family.At the age of seventeen he was wounded in a duel and sent to Paris...

     (1656–1723)
  • Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
    Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
    Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle , also called Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, was a French author.Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France and died in Paris just one month before his 100th birthday. His mother was the sister of great French dramatists Pierre and Thomas Corneille...

     (1657–1757)
  • Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658–1712)
  • Charles Rollin
    Charles Rollin
    Charles Rollin was a French historian and educator. He was born in Paris.-Biography:He was the son of a cutler, and at the age of twenty-two was made a master in the Collège du Plessis. In 1694 he was rector of the University of Paris, rendering great service among other things by reviving the...

     (1661–1741)
  • Florent Carton Dancourt
    Florent Carton Dancourt
    Florent Carton aka Dancourt , French dramatist and actor, was born at Fontainebleau. He belonged to a family of rank, and his parents entrusted his education to Pere de la Rue, a Jesuit, who made earnest efforts to induce him to join the order...

     (1661–1725)
  • Alain-René Lesage
    Alain-René Lesage
    Alain-René Lesage was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel The Devil upon Two Sticks , his comedy Turcaret , and his picaresque novel Gil Blas .-Youth and education:Claude Lesage, the father of the novelist, held the united...

     (1668–1747)
  • Jean-Baptiste Rousseau
    Jean-Baptiste Rousseau
    Jean-Baptiste Rousseau was a French poet.-Biography:Rousseau was born in Paris, the son of a shoemaker, and was well educated. As a young man, he gained favour with Boileau, who encouraged him to write. Rousseau began with the theatre, for which he had no aptitude...

     (1670–1741)
  • Jean-Baptiste Dubos
    Jean-Baptiste Dubos
    Jean-Baptiste Dubos , also referred to as l'Abbé Du Bos, was a French author.-Life:He was born in Beauvais. After studying theology, he gave it up in favour of public law and politics. He was employed by M...

     (1670–1742)
  • Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon
    Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon
    Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon was a French poet and tragedian.-Life and works:He was born in Dijon, where his father, Melchior Jolyot, was notary-royal. Having been educated at the Jesuit school in the town, and afterwards at the Collège Mazarin. He became an advocate, and was placed in the office...

     (Crébillon père) (1674–1762)
  • Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
    Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
    Louis de Rouvroy commonly known as Saint-Simon was a French soldier, diplomatist and writer of memoirs, was born in Paris...

     (1675–1755)
  • Philippe Néricault Destouches
    Philippe Néricault Destouches
    Philippe Néricault Destouches was a French dramatist.-Biography:Destouches was born at Tours, in the today's department of Indre-et-Loire....

     (1680–1754)
  • Claudine Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin (Madame de Tencin) (1681–1749)
  • Marivaux (Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux) (1688–1763)
  • Alexis Piron
    Alexis Piron
    Alexis Piron was a French epigrammatist and dramatist.He was born at Dijon, where his father, Aimé Piron, was an apothecary. Piron senior wrote verse in the Burgundian language. Alexis began life as clerk and secretary to a banker, and then studied law...

     (1689–1773)
  • Montesquieu (Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu) (1689–1755)
  • Louis Petit de Bachaumont (1690–1771)
  • Voltaire
    Voltaire
    François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

     (François-Marie Arouet) (1694–1778)
  • René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d' Argenson
    René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d' Argenson
    René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d'Argenson was a French statesman, son of Marc-René de Voyer de Paulmy d'Argenson, the first Marquis d'Argenson, and brother of Marc-Pierre d'Argenson...

     (1694–1757)
  • Françoise de Graffigny
    Françoise de Graffigny
    Françoise de Graffigny, née d'Issembourg Du Buisson d'Happoncourt was a French novelist, playwright and salon hostess....

     (1695–1758)
  • Antoine François Prévost
    Antoine François Prévost
    Antoine François Prévost , usually known simply as the Abbé Prévost, was a French author and novelist.- Life and works :...

     (Antoine Francois Prevost d'Exiles) a/k/a Abbé Prévost (1697–1763)
  • Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand
    Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand
    Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand was a French hostess and patron of the arts.She was born at the Château de Chamrond, in Ligny-en-Brionnais, a village near Charolles of a noble family. Educated at a convent in Paris, she showed great intelligence and a sceptical, cynical turn of...

     (1697–1780)

1700-1749

  • Charles Pinot Duclos
    Charles Pinot Duclos
    Charles Pinot Duclos was a French author.-Life:He was born at Dinan, in Brittany. At an early age, he was sent to study at Paris...

     (1704–1772)
  • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon
    Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon
    Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon was a French novelist.Born in Paris, he was the son of a famous tragedian, Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon. He received a Jesuit education at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand...

     (Crébillon, fils) (1707–1777)
  • Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
    Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
    Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author.His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier...

     (Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon) (1707–1788)
  • Julien Offray de La Mettrie
    Julien Offray de La Mettrie
    Julien Offray de La Mettrie was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment...

     (1709–1751)
  • Gabriel Bonnot de Mably
    Gabriel Bonnot de Mably
    Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , sometimes known as Abbé de Mably, was a French philosopher and politician. He was born in Grenoble of a legal family, and, like his younger brother, the well-known philosopher, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac , took holy orders...

     (1709–1785)
  • Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset
    Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset
    Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset was a French poet and dramatist, best known for his poem Vert-Vert....

     (1709–1777)
  • Jean-Jacques Lefranc, marquis de Pompignan
    Jean-Jacques Lefranc, marquis de Pompignan
    Jean-Jacques Lefranc , Marquis de Pompignan was a French man of letters and erudition, who published a considerable output of theatrical work, poems, literary criticism, and polemics; treatises on archeology, nature, travel and many other subjects; and a wide selection of highly-regarded...

     (1709–1784)
  • Charles-Simon Favart (1710–1792)
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

     (1712–1778)
  • Denis Diderot
    Denis Diderot
    Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....

     (1713–1784)
  • Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
    Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
    Étienne Bonnot de Condillac was a French philosopher and epistemologist who studied in such areas as psychology and the philosophy of the mind.-Biography:...

     (1714–1780)
  • Marie Jeanne Riccoboni
    Marie Jeanne Riccoboni
    Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni , whose maiden name was Laboras de Mezières, was a French novelist.She was born in Paris in 1714.In 1735 she married Antoine François Riccoboni, a comedian and dramatist, from whom she soon separated...

     (Madame Riccoboni) (1714–1792)
  • Claude Adrien Helvétius
    Claude Adrien Helvétius
    Claude Adrien Helvétius was a French philosopher and littérateur.-Life:...

     (1715–1771)
  • Vauvenargues
    Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues
    Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues was a minor French writer, a moralist. He died at age 31, in broken health, having published the year prior—anonymously—a collection of essays and aphorisms with the encouragement of Voltaire, his friend. He first received public notice under his own name...

     (Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues) (1715–1747)
  • Jean-François de Saint-Lambert (1716–1803)
  • Louis Carrogis Carmontelle
    Louis Carrogis Carmontelle
    Louis Carrogis Carmontelle was a French dramatist, painter, architect, set designer and author, and designer of one of the earliest examples of the French landscape garden, Parc Monceau in Paris...

     (1717–1806
  • Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
    Jean le Rond d'Alembert
    Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...

     (1717–1783)
  • Michel-Jean Sedaine
    Michel-Jean Sedaine
    Michel-Jean Sedaine was a French dramatist, was born in Paris.- Biography :His father, who was an architect, died when Sedaine was quite young, leaving no fortune, and the boy began life as a mason's labourer...

     (1719–1797)
  • Jacques Cazotte
    Jacques Cazotte
    Jacques Cazotte was a French author.Born at Dijon, he was educated by the Jesuits. Cazotte then worked for the French Ministry ofthe Marine and at the age of 27 he obtained a public office at Martinique....

     (1720–1792)
  • Tiphaigne de la Roche
    Tiphaigne de la Roche
    Charles-François Tiphaigne de la Roche, , was a French author.He was born at Montebourg, Cotentin, studied medicine at the University of Caen and became a physician in 1744....

     (Charles-François Tiphaigne de la Roche) (1722–1774)
  • Baron d'Holbach
    Baron d'Holbach
    Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon...

     (Paul Henri Dietrich, baron d'Holbach) (1723–1789)
  • Jean-François Marmontel
    Jean-François Marmontel
    Jean-François Marmontel was a French historian and writer, a member of the Encyclopediste movement.-Biography:He was born of poor parents at Bort, Limousin...

     (1723–1799)
  • Casanova
    Giacomo Casanova
    Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie , is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century...

     a/k/a Jacques Casanova de Seingalt (1725–1798)
  • Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune
    Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune
    Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune , often referred to as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Turgot was a student of Francois Quesnay and as such belonged to the Physiocratic school of economic thought...

     (1727–1781)
  • Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–1799)
  • Jacques Charles Louis de Clinchamp de Malfilâtre (1733–1767)
  • Nicolas Edme Restif de La Bretonne
    Nicolas-Edme Rétif
    Nicolas-Edme Rétif or Nicolas-Edme Restif , also known as Rétif de la Bretonne, was a French novelist. The term retifisme for shoe fetishism was named after him.-Biography:...

     (1734–1806)
  • Charles Joseph, Prince de Ligne
    Charles Joseph, Prince de Ligne
    Charles-Joseph Lamoral, 7th Prince de Ligne in French, Charles Joseph Lamoral 7te Fürst von Ligne : was a Field marshal and writer, and member of the princely family of Ligne.-Military service:He was the son of Field Marshal Claude Lamoral, 6th Prince of Ligne and Elisabeth Alexandrine...

     (1735–1814)
  • Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
    Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
    Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was a French writer and botanist...

     (1737–1814)
  • Jacques Delille
    Jacques Delille
    Jacques Delille was a French poet and translator. He was born at Aigueperse in Auvergne.-Life:He was an illegitimate child, and was descended by his mother from the chancellor De l'Hôpital. He was educated at the College of Lisieux in Paris and became an elementary teacher...

     (1738–1813)
  • Jean-François de la Harpe
    Jean-François de La Harpe
    Jean-François de La Harpe was a French playwright, writer and critic.-Life:La Harpe was born in Paris of poor parents. His father, who signed himself Delharpe, was a descendant of a noble family originally of Vaud...

     (1739–1803)
  • Marquis de Sade
    Marquis de Sade
    Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...

     (Donatien Alphonse François de Sade) (1740–1814)
  • Isabelle de Charrière
    Isabelle de Charrière
    Isabelle de Charrière , known as Belle van Zuylen in the Netherlands and Madame de Charrière elsewhere, is a Dutch writer of the Enlightenment who lived the latter half of her life in Switzerland. She is now best known for her letters although she also wrote novels, pamphlets, music and plays...

     a/k/a Belle de Zuylen (1740–1805)
  • Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos (1741–1803)
  • Condorcet (Marie Jean Antoine Caritat, marquis de Condorcet) (1744–1794)
  • Gabriel Brizard
    Gabriel Brizard
    Gabriel Brizard often known as Abbé Brizard, and sometimes by the pen-name Gallophile , was a writer and historian whose work was popular and respected in the 18th century. He was a lawyer at the Parliament of Paris...

     (c1744–1793)
  • Jean Antoine Roucher (1745–1794)
  • Jean-Sifrein Maury
    Jean-Sifrein Maury
    Jean-Sifrein Maury was a French cardinal and Archbishop of Paris.-Biography:The son of a poor cobbler, he was born on at Valréas in the Comtat-Venaissin, the enclave within France that belonged to the pope. His acuteness was observed by the priests of the seminary at Avignon, where he was educated...

     (Abbé Maury) (1746–1817)
  • Joseph-Alexandre-Victor Hupay de Fuveau (1746–1818)
  • Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin, comtesse de Genlis
    Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin, comtesse de Genlis
    Madame de Genlis, full name Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Aubin, comtesse de Genlis, or Madame Brûlart, was a French writer, harpist and educator.-Biography:...

     (Madame de Genlis) (1746–1830)
  • Armand Louis de Gontaut
    Armand Louis de Gontaut
    Armand Louis de Gontaut, Duc de Lauzun, later duc de Biron, and usually referred to by historians of the French Revolution simply as Biron was a French soldier and politician, known for the part he played in the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars.-Early titles:Born in...

    , duc de Biron, duc de Lauzun (1747–1793)
  • Olympe de Gouges
    Olympe de Gouges
    Olympe de Gouges , born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience....

     (1748–1793)
  • Pierre-Louis Ginguené
    Pierre-Louis Ginguené
    Pierre-Louis Ginguené was a French author.-Biography:He was born at Rennes, in Brittany, and educated at a Jesuit college there. He came to Paris in 1772, and wrote criticisms for the Mercure de France. He also composed a comic opera, Pomponin . The Satire des satires and the Confession de...

     (1748–1815)
  • Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau
    Mirabeau
    Mirabeau can refer to:People* Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, a French physiocrat and economist.* Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, renowned orator, a figure in the French Revolution and son of Victor....

     (1749–1791)
  • Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois
    Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois
    Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois was a French actor, dramatist, essayist, and revolutionary. He was a member of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror and, while he saved Madame Tussaud from the Guillotine, he administered the execution of more than 2,000 people in the city of...

     (1749–1796)

1750-1799

  • Nicolas Joseph Laurent Gilbert
    Nicolas Joseph Laurent Gilbert
    Nicolas-Joseph-Laurent Gilbert was a French poet born at Fontenoy-le-Château, Vosges, Lorraine.Having completed his education at the college of Dole, he devoted himself for a time to a half-scholastic, half-literary life at Nancy, but in 1774 he found his way to the capital...

     (1751–1780)
  • Évariste de Forges de Parny
    Évariste de Forges de Parny
    Évariste Desiré de Forges, vicomte de Parny in Paris) was a French poet.- Biography :...

     (1753–1814)
  • Joseph de Maistre
    Joseph de Maistre
    Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre was a French-speaking Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat. He defended hierarchical societies and a monarchical State in the period immediately following the French Revolution...

     (1753–1821)
  • Joseph Joubert
    Joseph Joubert
    Joseph Joubert was a French moralist and essayist, remembered today largely for his Pensées published posthumously....

     (1754–1824)
  • Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian
    Florian
    Florian may refer to:*Florian , including a list of people with the given name or surname of Florian* Marcus Annius Florianus, Roman emperor for a few months before his death in 276 AD* Saint Florian, patron saint of Poland, died around 304 AD...

     (1754–1794)
  • Jacques Pierre Brissot
    Jacques Pierre Brissot
    Jacques Pierre Brissot , who assumed the name of de Warville, was a leading member of the Girondist movement during the French Revolution. Some sources give his name as Jean Pierre Brissot.-Biography:...

     a/k/a Jean-Pierre Brissot (1754–1793)
  • Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754–1838)
  • Constantin François de Chasseboeuf, Comte de Volney (1757–1820)
  • Adelaide Filleul, Marquise de Souza-Botelho
    Adelaide Filleul, Marquise de Souza-Botelho
    Adélaïde-Emilie Filleul, Marquise de Souza-Botelho was a French writer.-Biography:She was born in Paris....

     (Madame de Souza) (1761–1836)
  • André Chénier
    André Chénier
    André Marie Chénier was a French poet, associated with the events of the French Revolution of which he was a victim. His sensual, emotive poetry marks him as one of the precursors of the Romantic movement...

     (1762–1794)
  • Louis-Charles Caigniez (1762–1842)
  • Joseph Chénier
    Joseph Chénier
    Marie-Joseph Blaise de Chénier was a French poet, dramatist and politician.The younger brother of André Chénier, he was born at Constantinople, but brought up at Carcassonne. He was educated in Paris at the Collège de Navarre...

     (1764–1811)
  • Barbara Juliana, Baroness von Krüdener
    Barbara Juliana, Baroness von Krüdener
    Baroness Barbara Juliane von Krüdener was a Baltic German religious mystic and author.Von Krüdener was born in Riga, Governorate of Livonia. Her father, Otto Hermann von Vietinghoff-Scheel, who had fought as a colonel in Catherine II's wars, was one of the two councillors for Livonia and a man of...

     (Madame de Krüdener) (1764–1824)
  • Madame de Staël (1766–1817)
  • Las Cases (Emmanuel-Augustin-Dieudonné, comte de Las Cases) (1766–1842)
  • Benjamin Constant
    Benjamin Constant
    Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born French nobleman, thinker, writer and politician.-Biography:...

     (Benjamin Constant de Rebecque) (1767–1830)
  • Joseph Fiévée
    Joseph Fiévée
    Joseph Fiévée was a French journalist, novelist, essayist, playwright, civil servant and secret agent...

     (1767–1839)
  • François-René de Chateaubriand
    François-René de Chateaubriand
    François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...

     (1768–1848)
  • Étienne Pivert de Senancour
    Étienne Pivert de Senancour
    thumb|143px|right|Senancour Étienne Pivert de Senancour , was a French writer.-Life:...

     (1770–1846)
  • Paul Louis Courier
    Paul Louis Courier
    Paul Louis Courier , French Hellenist and political writer, was born in Paris.Brought up on his father's estate of Méré in Touraine, he conceived a bitter aversion for the nobility, which seemed to strengthen with time. He would never take the name "de Méré", to which he was entitled, lest he...

     de Méré (1772–1825)
  • René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt
    René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt
    René Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt was a French theatre director and playwright, active at the Théâtre de la Gaîté and best known for his modern melodramas such as The Dog of Montarges, the performance of which at Weimar roused the indignation of Goethe.-Life:He was born at Nancy into a Lorraine...

     (1773–1844)
  • Sophie Ristaud Cottin
    Sophie Ristaud Cottin
    Sophie Cottin was a French writer whose novels were popular in the 19th century, and were translated into several different languages.-Biography:...

     (Madame Cottin) (1773–1807)
  • Eugène François Vidocq
    Eugène François Vidocq
    Eugène François Vidocq was a French criminal and criminalist whose life story inspired several writers, including Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac...

     (1775–1857)
  • Claire de Duras
    Claire de Duras
    Claire, Duchess of Duras was a French writer best known for her 1823 novel called Ourika, which examines issues of racial and sexual equality, and which inspired the 1969 John Fowles novel The French Lieutenant's Woman.-Biography:Claire de Duras left her native France for London during the French...

     (Madame de Duras) (1777–1828)
  • Charles Nodier
    Charles Nodier
    Jean Charles Emmanuel Nodier , was a French author who introduced a younger generation of Romanticists to the conte fantastique, gothic literature, vampire tales, and the importance of dreams as part of literary creation, and whose career as a librarian is often underestimated by literary...

     (1780–1844)
  • Pierre-Jean de Béranger
    Pierre-Jean de Béranger
    Pierre-Jean de Béranger was a prolific French poet and chansonnier , who enjoyed great popularity and influence in France during his lifetime, but faded into obscurity in the decades following his death...

     (1780–1857)
  • Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782–1854)
  • Amable Guillaume Prosper Brugière, baron de Barante
    Amable Guillaume Prosper Brugière, baron de Barante
    Amable Guillaume Prosper Brugière, baron de Barante was a French statesman and historian.Barante was born at Riom, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of an advocate. At the age of sixteen he entered the École Polytechnique at Paris, and at twenty obtained his first appointment in the civil service...

     (1782–1866)
  • Victor Henri-Joseph Brahain Ducange (1783–1833)
  • Stendhal
    Stendhal
    Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...

     (Henri Beyle) (1783–1842), (The Red and the Black
    The Red and the Black
    Le Rouge et le Noir , 1830, by Stendhal, is a historical psychological novel in two volumes, chronicling a provincial young man’s attempts to socially rise beyond his plebeian upbringing with a combination of talent and hard work, deception and hypocrisy — yet who ultimately allows his passions to...

    , 1830)
  • Pierre-Antoine Lebrun
    Pierre-Antoine Lebrun
    Pierre-Antoine Lebrun was a French poet.Lebrun was born in Paris. An Ode à la grande armée, mistaken at the time for the work of Écouchard Lebrun, attracted Napoleon's attention, and secured for the author a pension of 1200 francs. Lebrun's plays, once famous, are now forgotten...

     (1785–1873)
  • Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
    Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
    Marceline Desbordes-Valmore was a French poet.She was born in Douai. Following the French Revolution, her family emigrated to Guadeloupe. In 1817 she married her second husband, the actor Prosper Lanchantin-Valmore....

     (1786–1859)
  • Alphonse Rabbe
    Alphonse Rabbe
    Alphonse Rabbe was a French writer, historian, critic, and journalist.-Life:Disfigured by syphilis and addicted to opium in an effort to make his life bearable, Rabbe is today remembered for his Album d’un pessimiste in which he writes of the pointlessness of existence. It was published...

     (1786–1829)
  • Théodore Leclercq (1787–1851)
  • François Guizot
    François Guizot
    François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, a conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, and worked to sustain a constitutional...

     (1787–1874)
  • Alexandre Guiraud
    Alexandre Guiraud
    Pierre Marie Jeanne Alexandre Thérèse Guiraud better known as Alexandre Guiraud was a French poet, dramatic author and novelist.-Biography:...

     (1788–1847)
  • Alphonse de Lamartine
    Alphonse de Lamartine
    Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...

     (1790–1869)
  • Charles Paul de Kock
    Charles Paul de Kock
    Charles Paul de Kock was a French novelist.-Biography:His father, Jean Conrad de Kock, a banker of Dutch extraction, victim of the Terror, was guillotined in Paris 24 March 1794. His mother, Anne-Marie Perret, née Kirsberger, was a widow from Basel. Paul de Kock began life as a banker's clerk...

     (1793–1871)
  • Casimir Delavigne
    Casimir Delavigne
    Jean-François Casimir Delavigne was a French poet and dramatist.-Biography:Delavigne was born at Le Havre, but was sent to Paris to be educated at the Lycée Napoleon. He read extensively...

     (Jean-François Casimir Delavigne) (1793–1843)
  • Augustin Thierry (1795–1856)
  • Alfred de Vigny
    Alfred de Vigny
    Alfred Victor de Vigny was a French poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life:Alfred de Vigny was born in Loches into an aristocratic family...

     (1797–1863)
  • Antoinette Henriette Clémence Robert
    Antoinette Henriette Clémence Robert
    -External links:...

     (1797-1872)
  • Adolphe Thiers
    Adolphe Thiers
    Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...

     (1797–1877)
  • Auguste Comte
    Auguste Comte
    Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...

     (1798–1857)
  • Eugène Delacroix
    Eugène Delacroix
    Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...

     (1798–1863)
  • Charles Dezobry
    Charles Dezobry
    Louis Charles Dezobry was a French historian and historical novelist, born at St-Denis.-Works:* Rome au siècle d'Auguste, ou Voyage d'un Gaulois à Rome à l'époque du règne d'Auguste et pendant une partie du règne de Tibère...

    , (1798–1871)
  • Jules Michelet
    Jules Michelet
    Jules Michelet was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.-Early life:His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press...

     (1798–1874)
  • Sophie Rostopchine, Comtesse de Ségur
    Sophie Rostopchine, Comtesse de Ségur
    Sophie, Countess of Ségur was a French writer of Russian birth....

     (1799–1874)
  • Henri-Bonaventure Monnier (1799–1877)
  • Honoré de Balzac
    Honoré de Balzac
    Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

     (1799–1850)

1800-1824

  • Claude Tillier (1801–1844)
  • Victor Hugo
    Victor Hugo
    Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

     (1802–1885), (Les Misérables
    Les Misérables
    Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...

    , 1862)
  • Alexandre Dumas, père
    Alexandre Dumas, père
    Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...

     (1802–1870)
  • Prosper Mérimée
    Prosper Mérimée
    Prosper Mérimée was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.-Life:...

     (1803–1870)
  • Edgar Quinet
    Edgar Quinet
    Edgar Quinet was a French historian and intellectual.-Early years:Born at Bourg-en-Bresse, in the département of Ain. His father, Jérôme Quinet, had been a commissary in the army, but being a strong republican and disgusted with Napoleon's 18 Brumaire coup, he gave up his post and devoted himself...

     (1803–1875)
  • Eugène Sue
    Eugène Sue
    Joseph Marie Eugène Sue was a French novelist.He was born in Paris, the son of a distinguished surgeon in Napoleon's army, and is said to have had the Empress Joséphine for godmother. Sue himself acted as surgeon both in the Spanish campaign undertaken by France in 1823 and at the Battle of Navarino...

     (1804–1857)
  • Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869)
  • Jules Janin
    Jules Janin
    Jules Gabriel Janin was a French writer and critic.-Biography:Born in Saint-Étienne , Janin's father was a lawyer, and he was educated first at St. Étienne, and then at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris...

     (1804–1874)
  • George Sand
    George Sand
    Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

     (Amandine-Lucie-Aurore Dupin, baronne Dudevant) (1804–1876)
  • Alexis Henri Charles de Clérel, vicomte de Tocqueville
    Alexis de Tocqueville
    Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...

     (1805–1859)
  • Anicet Bourgeois (1806–1871
  • Emile de Girardin
    Émile de Girardin
    Émile de Girardin , was a French journalist, publicist, and politician. He was born in Paris in 1802, the son of General Alexandre de Girardin and of Madame Dupuy , wife of a Parisian advocate....

     (1806–1881)
  • Désiré Nisard
    Désiré Nisard
    Jean Marie Napoléon Désiré Nisard was a French author and critic. He was born at Châtillon-sur-Seine.In 1826 he joined the staff of the Journal des Débats, but subsequently transferred his pen to the National...

     (1806–1888)
  • Émile Souvestre
    Émile Souvestre
    Émile Souvestre was a French novelist who was a native of Morlaix, Finistère.He was the son of a civil engineer and was educated at the college of Pontivy, with the intention of following his father's career by entering the Polytechnic School...

     (1806–1854)
  • Aloysius Bertrand
    Aloysius Bertrand
    Louis-Jacques-Napoléon “Aloysius” Bertrand was a French poet instrumental in the introduction of the prose poem into French literature and is credited with inspiring later Symbolist poets...

     (1807–1841)
  • Gérard de Nerval
    Gérard de Nerval
    Gérard de Nerval was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.- Biography :...

     (Gérard Labrunie) (1808–1855)
  • Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808–1889)
  • Petrus Borel
    Petrus Borel
    Petrus Borel was a French writer of the Romantic movement.Born Joseph-Pierre Borel dHauterive at Lyon, the 12 of 14 children of an ironmonger, he studied architecture in Paris but abandoned it for literature...

     (1809–1859)
  • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
    Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
    Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...

     (1809–1865)
  • Xavier Forneret
    Xavier Forneret
    Xavier Forneret was a French writer; poet, playwright and journalist.- Life :Born in Beaune in a rich bourgeois family by the name Antoine Charles Ferdinand, he was one of the few members of the Romantic movement who never experienced poverty and could afford to publish his books himself...

     (1809–1884)
  • Hégésippe Moreau
    Hégésippe Moreau
    Hégésippe Moreau was a French lyric poet. From birth, he was called by the last name of his biological father and took on the pseudonym Hégésippe when he first began publishing poetry in 1829...

     (1810–1838)
  • Maurice de Guérin
    Maurice de Guérin
    Georges Maurice de Guérin du Cayla was a French poet.Descended from a noble and rich family, he was born at the chateau of Le Cayla in Andillac, Tarn. He was educated for the church at a religious seminary at Toulouse, and then at the Collège Stanislas, Paris, after which he entered the society at...

     (1810–1839)
  • Alfred de Musset
    Alfred de Musset
    Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist.Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siècle from 1836.-Biography:Musset was born on 11 December 1810 in Paris...

     (1810–1857)
  • Joseph Bouchardy (1810–1870)
  • Adolphe-Philippe d'Ennery
    Adolphe d'Ennery
    Adolphe Philippe d'Ennery or Dennery was a French Jewish dramatist and novelist.Born in Paris, his real surname was Philippe...

     (1811–1889)
  • Théophile Gautier
    Théophile Gautier
    Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....

     (1811–1872)
  • Louis Blanc
    Louis Blanc
    Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc was a French politician and historian. A socialist who favored reforms, he called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor....

     (1811–1882)
  • Victor de Laprade
    Victor de Laprade
    Pierre Martin Victor Richard de Laprade , known as Victor de Laprade, was a French poet and critic.-Biography:...

     (1812–1883)
  • Eugène Labiche (1815–1888)
  • Joseph Arthur, comte Gobineau (1816–1882)
  • Victor Séjour
    Victor Séjour
    Juan Victor Séjour Marcou et Ferrand was an American expatriate writer who worked in France. Though mostly unknown to later African American authors, his short story "Le Mulâtre" is the earliest known work of fiction by an African American author.Séjour was born in New Orleans to a free mulatto...

     (1817–1874)
  • Paul Féval, père
    Paul Féval, père
    Paul Henri Corentin Féval, père was a French novelist and dramatist.He was the author of popular swashbuckler novels such as Le Loup Blanc and the perennial best-seller Le Bossu...

     (1817–1887)
  • Pierre Zaccone (1817–1895)
  • Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle (1818–1894)
  • Eugène Fromentin
    Eugène Fromentin
    Eugène Fromentin was a French painter and writer.He was born in La Rochelle. After leaving school he studied for some years under Louis Cabat, the landscape painter...

     (1820–1876)
  • Émile Augier
    Émile Augier
    Guillaume Victor Émile Augier was a French dramatist. He was the thirteenth member to occupy seat 1 of the Académie française on 31 March 1857.-Biography:...

     (1820–1889)
  • Charles Baudelaire
    Charles Baudelaire
    Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...

     (1821–1867), (Les Fleurs du mal
    Les Fleurs du mal
    Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements...

    , 1857)
  • Gustave Flaubert
    Gustave Flaubert
    Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...

     (1821–1880), (Madame Bovary
    Madame Bovary
    Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...

    , 1857)
  • Octave Feuillet
    Octave Feuillet
    Octave Feuillet was a French novelist and dramatist.- Overview :Octave Feuillet was born at Saint-Lô, Manche . His father Jacques Feuillet was a prominent lawyer and Secretary-General of La Manche, but also a hypersensitive invalid. His mother died when he was an infant...

     (1821–1890)
  • Jules-François-Félix Husson
    Champfleury
    Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson , who wrote under the name Champfleury, was a French art critic and novelist, a prominent supporter of the Realist movement in painting and fiction.In 1843 Fleury-Husson moved to Paris...

     a/k/a Champfleury (1821–1889)
  • Edmond de Goncourt
    Edmond de Goncourt
    Edmond de Goncourt , born Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt.-Biography:...

     (1822–1896)
  • Erckmann-Chatrian (Emile Erckmann & Alexandre Chatrian) (1822–1899 & 1826–1890)
  • Louis-Nicolas Ménard
    Louis-Nicolas Ménard
    Louis-Nicolas Ménard was a French man of letters also known for his early discoveries on collodion.He was born in Paris. His versatile genius occupied itself in turn with chemistry, poetry, painting and history. In 1843 he published, under the pseudonym of L. de Senneville, a translation of...

     (1822–1901)
  • Théodore de Banville
    Théodore de Banville
    Théodore Faullain de Banville was a French poet and writer.-Biography:Banville was born in Moulins in Allier, Auvergne, the son of a captain in the French navy. His boyhood, by his own account, was cheerlessly passed at a lycée in Paris; he was not harshly treated, but took no part in the...

     (1823–1891)
  • Ernest Renan
    Ernest Renan
    Ernest Renan was a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher and writer, devoted to his native province of Brittany...

     (1823–1892)
  • Alexandre Dumas, fils
    Alexandre Dumas, fils
    Alexandre Dumas, fils was a French author and dramatist. He was the son of Alexandre Dumas, père, also a writer and playwright.-Biography:...

     (1824–1895)

1825-1849

  • Charles De Coster
    Charles De Coster
    Charles-Theodore-Henri De Coster was a Belgian novelist whose efforts laid the basis for a native Belgian literature....

     (1827–1879)
  • Eugène Chavette (1827–1902)
  • Clair Tisseur
    Clair Tisseur
    Clair Tisseur , was a French architect whose best known work is Église du Bon-Pasteur, a prominent Romanesque Revival church in the 1st arrondissement of Lyon...

     (Nizier du Puitspelu) (1827–1896)
  • Edmond About (1828–1885)
  • Hyppolyte Taine (1828–1893)
  • Jules Verne
    Jules Verne
    Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

     (1828–1905)
  • Zénaïde Fleuriot
    Zénaïde Fleuriot
    Zénaïde-Marie-Anne Fleuriot , was a French novelist. She wrote eighty three novels, all aimed at young women, most of which were published in the series Bibliothèque rose and Bibliothèque bleue...

     (1829–1890)
  • Numa-Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1830–1889)
  • Jules de Goncourt
    Jules de Goncourt
    Jules de Goncourt , born Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, who published books together with his brother Edmond.- Works :With Edmond de Goncourt:* Sœur Philomène...

     (1830–1870)
  • Hector Malot
    Hector Malot
    Hector Malot was a French writer born in La Bouille, Seine-Maritime. He studied law in Rouen and Paris, but eventually literature became his passion. He worked as a dramatic critic for Lloyd Francais and as a literary critic for L'Opinion Nationale.His first book, published in 1859, was Les...

     (1830–1907)
  • Henri Rochefort (1830–1913)
  • Raoul de Naverry (1831–1885)
  • Henri Meilhac
    Henri Meilhac
    Henri Meilhac , was a French dramatist and opera librettist.-Biography:Meilhac was born in Paris in 1831. As a young man, he began writing fanciful articles for Parisian newspapers and vaudevilles, in a vivacious boulevardier spirit which brought him to the forefront...

     (1831–1897)
  • Victorien Sardou
    Victorien Sardou
    Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...

     (1831–1908)
  • Émile Gaboriau
    Émile Gaboriau
    Émile Gaboriau , was a French writer, novelist, and journalist, and a pioneer of modern detective fiction.- Life :Gaboriau was born in the small town of Saujon, Charente-Maritime...

     (1832–1873)
  • Jules Vallès
    Jules Vallès
    Jules Vallès was a French journalist and author.-Early life:Vallès was born in Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute-Loire. His father was a supervisor of studies , later a teacher, and unfaithful to Jules' mother. Jules was a brilliant student...

     (1832–1885)
  • G. Bruno (Augustine Tuillerie) (1833–1923)
  • Edouard Pailleron
    Édouard Pailleron
    Édouard Jules Henri Pailleron was a French poet and dramatist.-Biography:Born in Paris, he was educated for the bar, but after pleading a single case he entered the first dragoon regiment and served for two years. With the artist J.A...

     (1834–1899)
  • Ludovic Halévy
    Ludovic Halévy
    Ludovic Halévy was a French author and playwright. He was half Jewish : his Jewish father had converted to Christianity prior to his birth, to marry his mother, née Alexandrine Lebas.-Biography:Ludovic Halévy was born in Paris...

     (1834–1908)
  • Jean-Marie Déguignet (1834–1905)
  • Amélie Gex
    Amélie Gex
    Amélie Rose Françoise Gex, was a Savoyard writer and poet who created works in French and Franco-Provençal . Until 1880, she published most of her writings under the pen name Dian de la Jeânna.-Biography:Amélie Gex was the daughter of the physician and winemaker Marc-Samuel Gex...

     (Dian de la Jeânna) (1835–1883)
  • Henry Becque
    Henry Becque
    Henry François Becque , French dramatist, was born in Lille.In 1867, he wrote, in imitation of Lord Byron, the libretto for Victorin de Joncières's opera Sardanapale, but his first important work, Michel Pauper, appeared in 1870. The importance of this sombre drama was first realized when it was...

     (1837–1899)
  • Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
    Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
    Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was a French symbolist writer.-Life:Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, to a distinguished aristocratic family...

     (1838–1889)
  • Sully Prudhomme
    Sully Prudhomme
    René François Armand Prudhomme was a French poet and essayist, winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1901....

     (1839–1907)
  • Jules Lermina
    Jules Lermina
    Jules Lermina was a French writer. He began his career as a journalist in 1859. He was arrested for his socialist political opinions, and received Victor Hugo's support....

     (1839–1913)
  • Alphonse Daudet
    Alphonse Daudet
    Alphonse Daudet was a French novelist. He was the father of Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet.- Early life :Alphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer — a man dogged through life by misfortune...

     (1840–1897)
  • Emile Zola
    Émile Zola
    Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...

     (1840–1902)
  • Arvède Barine
    Arvède Barine
    Arvède Barine was a French writer and historian. Arvède Barine was the pseudonym of Mme. Charles Vincens, born Louise-Cécile Bouffé on 17 November 1840. She mostly wrote on the subject of women, but she also wrote about travel and the political issues of the day...

     (1840–1908)
  • Jules Claretie (1840–1913)
  • Catulle Mendès
    Catulle Mendès
    Catulle Mendès was a French poet and man of letters.Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, he was born in Bordeaux. He early established himself in Paris and promptly attained notoriety by the publication in the Revue fantaisiste of his Roman d'une nuit, for which he was condemned to a month's...

     (1841–1909)
  • Charles Cros
    Charles Cros
    Charles Cros was a French poet and inventor. He was born in Fabrezan, Aude, France, 35 km to the East of Carcassonne....

     (1842–1888)
  • Stéphane Mallarmé
    Stéphane Mallarmé
    Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...

     (1842–1898)
  • José María de Heredia
    José María de Heredia
    José-Maria de Heredia was a Cuban-born French poet. He was the fifteenth member elected for seat 4 of the Académie française during 1894.-Early years:...

     (1842–1905)
  • François Coppée
    François Coppée
    François Edouard Joachim Coppée was a French poet and novelist.-Biography:He was born in Paris to a civil servant. After attending the Lycée Saint-Louis he became a clerk in the ministry of war, and won public favour as a poet of the Parnassian school. His first printed verses date from 1864...

     (1842–1908)
  • Paul Arène
    Paul Arène
    Paul-Auguste Arène, born 26 June 1843 in Sisteron, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and died 17 December 1896 in Antibes, was a Provençal poet and French writer....

     (1843–1896)
  • Paul Verlaine
    Paul Verlaine
    Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...

     (1844–1896)
  • Anatole France
    Anatole France
    Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...

     (Anatole François Thibault) (1844–1924)
  • Tristan Corbière
    Tristan Corbière
    Tristan Corbière , born Édouard-Joachim Corbière, was a French poet born in Coat-Congar, Ploujean in Brittany, where he lived most of his life and where he died....

     (Edouard-Joachim) (1845–1875)
  • Comte de Lautréamont
    Comte de Lautréamont
    Comte de Lautréamont was the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse , an Uruguayan-born French poet....

     (Isidore Lucien Ducasse) (1846–1870)
  • Léon Bloy
    Léon Bloy
    Léon Bloy , was a French novelist, essayist, pamphleteer and poet.-Biography:Bloy was born in Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac, in the arondissement of Périgueux, Dordogne. He was the second of six sons of Voltairean freethinker and stern disciplinarian Jean Baptiste Bloy and his wife Anne-Marie Carreau,...

     (1846–1917)
  • Emile Faguet
    Émile Faguet
    Auguste Émile Faguet was a French author and literary critic.Faguet was born at La Roche-sur-Yon, and educated at the École normale supérieure in Paris. After teaching for some time in La Rochelle and Bordeaux, he returned to Paris to act as assistant professor of poetry in the university. He...

     (1847–1916)
  • Joris-Karl Huysmans
    Joris-Karl Huysmans
    Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...

     (1848–1907)
  • George de Peyrebrune (1848–1917)
  • Ferdinand Brunetière
    Ferdinand Brunetière
    Ferdinand Brunetière was a French writer and critic.-Early years:Brunetière was born in Toulon, Var, Provence. After school at Marseille, he studied in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Desiring a teaching career, he entered for examination at the École Normale Supérieure, but failed, and the...

     (1849–1906)
  • Jean Richepin
    Jean Richepin
    Jean Richepin , French poet, novelist and dramatist, the son of an army doctor, was born at Médéa, French Algeria.At school and at the École Normale Supérieure he gave evidence of brilliant, if somewhat undisciplined, powers, for which he found physical vent in different directions—first as a...

     (1849–1926)
  • Georges de Porto-Riche
    Georges de Porto-Riche
    Georges de Porto-Riche was a French dramatist and novelist.At the age of twenty, his pieces in verse began to be produced at the Parisian theatres; he also wrote some books of verse which met with a favorable reception, but these early works were not reprinted...

     (1849–1930)

1850-1859

  • Guy de Maupassant
    Guy de Maupassant
    Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....

     (1850–1893)
  • Octave Mirbeau
    Octave Mirbeau
    Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...

     (1850–1917)
  • Pierre Loti
    Pierre Loti
    Pierre Loti was a French novelist and naval officer.-Biography:Loti's education began in his birthplace, Rochefort, Charente-Maritime. At the age of seventeen he entered the naval school in Brest and studied at Le Borda. He gradually rose in his profession, attaining the rank of captain in 1906...

     (Julien Viaud) (1850–1923)
  • Gyp
    Gyp
    Gyp may refer to:* A cheat or swindle* Gyp, the French writer and activist, Sibylle Gabrielle Marie Antoinette Riqueti de Mirabeau * Gypsophila, a flower* Gyp the Blood, a gangster* Gyp the Cat, a song by Bobby Darin...

     (1850–1932)
  • Germain Nouveau
    Germain Nouveau
    Germain Marie Bernard Nouveau was born and died in Pourrières, Var, in France . He was a French poet associated with the symbolist movement, and a friend of Rimbaud and Verlaine. In 1874 he traveled to London with Rimbaud. In 1876 he published "Dixains réalistes," a parody of the Parnassians...

     (1851–1920)
  • Élémir Bourges
    Élémir Bourges
    Élémir Bourges was a French novelist. A winner of the Goncourt Prize, he was also a member of the Académie Goncourt. Bourges, who accused the Naturalists of having "belittled and deformed man", was closely linked with the Decadent and Symbolist modes in literature...

     (1852–1925)
  • Paul Bourget
    Paul Bourget
    Paul Charles Joseph Bourget , was a French novelist and critic.-Biography:He was born in Amiens in the Somme département of Picardie, France. His father, a professor of mathematics, was later appointed to a post in the college at Clermont-Ferrand, where Bourget received his early education...

     (1852–1935)
  • Alfred Masson-Forestier
    Alfred Masson-Forestier
    Alfred Masson-Forestier was a French writer, born at Le Havre. He studied law and from 1884 to 1899 practiced his profession at Rouen. After 1899 Masson-Fortier settled in Paris and devoted all his time to literature, contributing to the Revue des Deux Mondes, Le Temps, La Revue, etc...

     1852–1912
  • Maurice Rollinat
    Maurice Rollinat
    Maurice Rollinat was a French poet.-Early works:His father represented Indre in the National Assembly of 1848, and was a friend of George Sand, whose influence is very marked in young Rollinat's first volume, Dans les brandes , and to whom it was dedicated.-Brief fame:After its publication, he...

     (1853–1903)
  • Arthur Rimbaud
    Arthur Rimbaud
    Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...

     (1854–1891), Une Saison en Enfer
  • Alphonse Allais
    Alphonse Allais
    Alphonse Allais was a French writer and humorist born in Honfleur, Calvados.He is the author of many collections of whimsical writings. A poet as much as a humorist, he in particular cultivated the verse form known as holorhyme, i.e. made up entirely of homophonous verses, where entire lines rhyme...

     (1854–1905)
  • Laurent Tailhade
    Laurent Tailhade
    Laurent Tailhade was a French satirical poet, anarchist polemicist, essayist, and translator, active in Paris in the 1890s and early 1900s...

     (1854–1919)
  • Georges Rodenbach
    Georges Rodenbach
    Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach was a Belgian Symbolist poet and novelist.- Biography :Georges Rodenbach was born in Tournai to a French mother and a German father from the Rhineland . He went to school in Ghent at the prestigious Sint-Barbaracollege, where he became friends with the poet...

     (1855–1898)
  • Jean Lorrain
    Jean Lorrain
    Jean Lorrain , born Paul Duval, was a French poet and novelist of the Symbolist school....

     (1855–1906)
  • Emile Verhaeren
    Emile Verhaeren
    Emile Verhaeren was a Belgian poet who wrote in the French language, and one of the chief founders of the school of Symbolism....

     (1855–1916)
  • Adolphe Chenevière
    Adolphe Chenevière
    -External links:...

     (1855-1917)
  • Jean Moréas
    Jean Moréas
    Jean Moréas , was a Greek poet, essayist, and art critic, who wrote mostly in the French language but also in Greek during his youth.-Background:...

     (Jean Papadiamantopoulos) (1856–1910)
  • Pierre Decourcelle (1856–1926)
  • Gustave Lanson
    Gustave Lanson
    Gustave Lanson was a French historian and literary critic. He taught at the Sorbonne in Paris.-Biography:...

     (1857–1934)
  • Albert Samain
    Albert Samain
    Albert Victor Samain was a French poet and writer of the Symbolist school.Born in Lille, his family were Flemish and had long lived in the town or its suburbs. At the time of the poet's birth, his father, Jean-Baptiste Samain, and his mother, Elisa-Henriette Mouquet, conducted a business in "wines...

     (1858–1900)
  • Jules Lemaitre
    Jules Lemaître
    François Élie Jules Lemaître , was a French critic and dramatist.He was born at Vennecy . He became a professor at the university of Grenoble, but was already well known for his literary criticism, and in 1884 he resigned his position to devote his time to literature...

     (1858–1915)
  • Remy de Gourmont
    Remy de Gourmont
    Remy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...

     (1858–1915)
  • Émile Durkheim
    Émile Durkheim
    David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...

     (1858–1917)
  • Alfred Capus
    Alfred Capus
    Alfred Capus was a French journalist and playwright, born in Aix-en-Provence and deceased in Neuilly-sur-Seine.-Biography:Son to a lawyer from Marseille, Alfred Capus went to university in Toulon...

     (1858–1922)
  • Georges Courteline
    Georges Courteline
    Georges Courteline was a French dramatist and novelist.Born Georges Victor Marcel Moinaux, in Tours in the Indre-et-Loire département, his family moved to Paris shortly after his birth...

     (Georges Moineaux) (1858–1929)
  • Neel Doff
    Neel Doff
    Cornelia Hubertina Doff was an author of Dutch origin living and working in Belgium and mainly writing in French...

     (1858–1942)
  • Anatole Le Braz
    Anatole Le Braz
    Anatole le Braz, the "Bard of Brittany" was a Breton folklore collector and translator. He was highly regarded amongst both European and American scholars, and known for his warmth and charm....

     (1859–1926)
  • Gustave Kahn
    Gustave Kahn
    Gustave Kahn was a French Symbolist poet and art critic.Kahn was born in Metz.He claimed to have invented the term vers libre, or free verse; he was in any case one of the first European exponents of the form. His principal publications include Les Palais nomades, 1887, Domaine de fée, 1895, and...

     (1859–1936)
  • Henri Bergson
    Henri Bergson
    Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...

     (1859–1941)

1860-1869

  • Jules Laforgue
    Jules Laforgue
    Jules Laforgue was an innovative Franco-Uruguayan poet, often referred to as a Symbolist poet. Critics and commentators have also pointed to Impressionism as a direct influence and his poetry has been called "part-symbolist, part-impressionist".-Life:...

     (1860–1887)
  • Paul Margueritte
    Paul Margueritte
    Paul Margueritte, , as his brother Victor Margueritte, was born in Algeria, the son of General Jean Auguste Margueritte , who was mortally wounded in the Battle of Sedan. An account of his life was published by Paul Margueritte as Mon père . The names of the two brothers are generally associated,...

     (1860–1918)
  • Michel Zévaco
    Michel Zevaco
    Michel Zevaco was a French journalist, novelist, publisher, film director, and anti-clerical as well as anarchist activist....

     (1860–1918)
  • Paul Roux
    Paul Roux
    Paul Roux is a small town in the flatlands of Free State province of South Africa that produces poplar wood for the safety match industry. General farming however remains the main industry. It was established in 1909 by Dutch Reform Reverend Paul Roux on the farm Palmietfontein, and today has a...

     a/k/a Saint-Pol-Roux le Magnifique (1861–1940)
  • Paul Adam (1862–1920)
  • Georges Darien
    Georges Darien
    Georges Darien , , was a French writer associated with anarchism and an outspoken advocate of Georgism.- Life :...

     (1862–1921)
  • Georges Feydeau
    Georges Feydeau
    Georges Feydeau was a French playwright of the era known as the Belle Époque. He is remembered for his many lively farces.-Biography:Georges Feydeau was born in Paris, the son of novelist Ernest-Aimé Feydeau and Léocadie Bogaslawa Zalewska. At the age of twenty, Feydeau wrote his first comic...

     (1862–1921)
  • Maurice Barrès
    Maurice Barrès
    Maurice Barrès was a French novelist, journalist, and socialist politician and agitator known for his nationalist and antisemitic views....

     (1862–1923)
  • René Ghil (1862–1925)
  • Max Elskamp (1862–1931)
  • Maurice Maeterlinck
    Maurice Maeterlinck
    Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...

     (1862–1949)
  • Stuart Merrill
    Stuart Merrill
    Stuart Fitzrandolph Merrill was an American poet, born in Hempstead, New York, who wrote mostly in the French language. He belonged to the Symbolist school. His principal books of poetry were Les Gammes . Les Fastes , and Petits Poèmes d'Automne .-Life:Merrill was the product of a conservative,...

     (1863–1915)
  • Marguerite Audoux
    Marguerite Audoux
    Marguerite Audoux was a French novelist.- Biography :Marguerite Donquichote, who took her mother's name, Audoux, in 1895, was orphaned by age three, following the death of her mother and abandonment by her father...

     (1863–1937)
  • Jules Renard
    Jules Renard
    Pierre-Jules Renard or Jules Renard was a French author and member of the Académie Goncourt, most famous for the works Poil de carotte and Les Histoires Naturelles...

     (1864–1910)
  • Henri de Régnier
    Henri de Régnier
    Henri François Joseph de Régnier was a French symbolist poet, considered one of the most important of France during the early 20th century....

     (1864–1936)
  • Maurice Leblanc
    Maurice Leblanc
    Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsène Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes.- Biography :Leblanc was born in...

     (1864–1941)
  • Romain Rolland
    Romain Rolland
    Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...

     (1866–1944)
  • Tristan Bernard
    Tristan Bernard
    Tristan Bernard was a French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer.-Life:Born Paul Bernard into a Jewish family in Besançon, Doubs, Franche-Comté, France, he was the son of an architect...

     (1866–1947)
  • René Boylesve
    René Boylesve
    René Boylesve , born René Marie Auguste Tardiveau, was a French author.-Works:* Le Médecin des Dames de Néans ,* Mademoiselle Cloque ,* La Becquée ,...

     (René Tardivaux) (1867–1926
  • Jehan Rictus
    Jehan Rictus
    Jehan Rictus was a French poet, born Gabriel Randon in Boulogne-sur-Mer ....

     (Gabriel Randon) (1867–1933)
  • Léon Daudet
    Léon Daudet
    Léon Daudet was a French journalist, writer, an active monarchist, and a member of the Académie Goncourt.-Move to the right:...

     (1867–1942)
  • Marcel Schwob
    Marcel Schwob
    Marcel Schwob was a Jewish French writer.-Biography:He was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine on 23 August 1867...

     (1867–1905)
  • Paul-Jean Toulet
    Paul-Jean Toulet
    Paul-Jean Toulet was a French poet, novelist and feuilleton writer.- Life and works :Paul-Jean Toulet was a descendant of Charlotte Corday, and son of a wealthy man living in Mauritius...

     (1867–1920)
  • Patrice Contamine a/k/a J.P. Contamine de Latour a/k/a Lord Cheminot (1867–1926)
  • Edmond Rostand
    Edmond Rostand
    Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century...

     (1868–1918)
  • Gaston Leroux
    Gaston Leroux
    Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera , which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon...

     (1868–1927), (The Phantom of the Opera
    The Phantom of the Opera
    Le Fantôme de l'Opéra is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialisation in "Le Gaulois" from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910...

    , Le Mystère de la chambre jaune)
  • Achille Essebac
    Achille Essebac
    Achille Essebac was a French writer primarily known for his novel Dédé about an ill-fated homoerotic friendship between two schoolboys...

     (1868–1936)
  • Francis Jammes
    Francis Jammes
    Francis Jammes was a French poet. Coming from an ancient family, he spent most of his life in his native region of Béarn and the Basque Country and his poems are known for their lyricism and for singing the pleasures of a humble country life...

     (1868–1938)
  • Emile Auguste Chartier a/k/a "Alain" (1868–1951)
  • Paul Claudel
    Paul Claudel
    Paul Claudel was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism.-Life:...

     (1868–1955)
  • André Spire
    André Spire
    André Spire was a French poet, writer, and Zionist activist.-Biography:Born in 1868 in Nancy to a Jewish family of the middle bourgeoisie, long established in the Lorraine, Spire studied literature, then law...

     (1868–1966)
  • Emile Bodin (1869–1923)
  • Gaston Arman de Caillavet
    Gaston Arman de Caillavet
    Gaston Arman de Caillavet was a French playwright. He was the son of Albert Arman de Caillavet and Léontine Lippmann, the muse of Anatole France. In April 1893 he married Jeanne Pouquet...

     (1869–1915)
  • André Gide
    André Gide
    André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...

     (1869–1951)

1870-1879

  • Marcelle Tinayre
    Marcelle Tinayre
    Marcelle Marguerite Suzanne Tinayre, born October 8, 1870 in Tulle, Corrèze, and died August 23, 1948 in Grossouvre, Cher, was a French woman of letters and prolific author...

     (1870–1948)
  • Henri Bordeaux (1870–1963)
  • Octave Mirbeau
    Octave Mirbeau
    Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...

     (1870–1917)
  • Pierre Louÿs
    Pierre Louÿs
    Pierre Louÿs was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who "expressed pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection."-Life:...

     (Pierre Louis) (1870–1925)
  • Jacques Boulenger (1870–1944)
  • Marcel Proust
    Marcel Proust
    Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...

     (1871–1922), In Search of Lost Time
    In Search of Lost Time
    In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...

  • Paul Valéry
    Paul Valéry
    Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...

     (1871–1945)
  • Henry Bataille
    Henry Bataille
    Félix-Henri Bataille was a French dramatist and poet. His works were extremely popular between 1900 and the start of World War I....

     (1872–1922)
  • Robert de Flers
    Robert de Flers
    Robert de Flers was a French playwright, opera librettist, and journalist....

     (1872–1927)
  • Louis Mandin (1872–1944)
  • Paul Fort
    Paul Fort
    Paul Fort was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. At the age of 18, reacting against the Naturalistic theatre, Fort founded the Théâtre d’Art...

     (1872–1960)
  • Alfred Jarry
    Alfred Jarry
    Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....

     (1873–1907)
  • Charles Péguy
    Charles Péguy
    Charles Péguy was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a devout but non-practicing Roman Catholic.From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his...

     (1873–1914)
  • Henri Barbusse
    Henri Barbusse
    Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...

     (1873–1935)
  • François Paul Alibert (1873–1953)
  • Colette
    Colette
    Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...

     (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette) (1873–1954)
  • Pierre Souvestre
    Pierre Souvestre
    Pierre Souvestre was a French lawyer, journalist, writer and organizer of motor races. He is mostly remembered today for his co-creation with Marcel Allain of the fictional arch-villain and master criminal Fantômas...

     (1874–1914)
  • Albert Thibaudet
    Albert Thibaudet
    Albert Thibaudet was a French essayist and literary critic. A former student of Henri Bergson, he was a professor of Jean Rousset...

     (1874–1936)
  • Tristan Klingsor
    Tristan Klingsor
    Tristan Klingsor, birth name Léon Leclère , was a French poet, musician, painter and art critic, best known for his artistic association with the composer Maurice Ravel.His pseudonym, combining the names of Wagner's hero Tristan and his villain Klingsor...

     (1874–1966)
  • Marc Leclerc (1874–1946)
  • Henry J.-M. Levet (1874–1906)
  • André Baillon (1875–1932)
  • Binet-Valmer
    Binet-Valmer
    Jean-Auguste-Gustave Binet , also known as Binet-Valmer, was a Franco-Swiss novelist and journalist. The trademark element of his style was the almost clinical precision with which he dissected the psychologies and motivations of his characters.-Biography:Born as the son of a physician,...

     (1875–1940)
  • Anne de Noailles
    Anne de Noailles
    Anna, Comtesse Mathieu de Noailles , was a Romanian-French writer.-Biography:Born Princess Anna Elisabeth Bibesco-Bassaraba de Brancovan in Paris, she was a descendant of the Bibescu and Craioveşti families of Romanian boyars...

     (Anne de Brancovan, comtesse de Noailles) (1876–1933)
  • Max Jacob
    Max Jacob
    Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...

     (1876–1944)
  • Léon-Paul Fargue
    Léon-Paul Fargue
    Léon-Paul Fargue was a French poet and essayist.He was born in Paris, France on rue Coquilliére. As a poet he was noted for his poetry of atmosphere and detail. His work spanned numerous literary movements...

     (1876–1947)
  • Pierre Albert-Birot
    Pierre Albert-Birot
    Pierre Albert-Birot was a French avant-garde author.Born in Angoulôme, he moved to Paris in 1894. There he attended art school and befriended Gustave Moreau. He worked for five decades as a restorer for antique dealer Madame Lelong....

     (1876–1967)
  • Alphonse de Brédenbec de Châteaubriant (1877–1951)
  • Raymond Roussel
    Raymond Roussel
    Raymond Roussel was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his novels, poems, and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French literature, including the Surrealists, Oulipo, and the authors of the nouveau...

     (1877–1933)
  • Oscar Venceslas de Lubicz-Milosz
    Oscar Milosz
    Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz was a French-Lithuanian writer and representative of Lithuania at the League of Nations. His literary work was concerned with symbols and associations. A recluse, his poems were vibrant and tormented, concerned with love, loneliness and anger. Milosz was primarily...

     (1877–1939)
  • Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
    Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
    Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz was a French-speaking Swiss writer.He was born in Lausanne in the canton of Vaud and educated at the University of Lausanne. He taught briefly in nearby Aubonne, and then in Weimar, Germany. In 1903, he left for Paris and remained there until World War I, with frequent...

    , dit C.F. Ramuz (1878–1947)
  • Victor Segalen
    Victor Segalen
    Victor Segalen was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic....

     (1878–1919)
  • Henry de Monfreid
    Henry de Monfreid
    Henry de Monfreid was a French adventurer and author. Born in Leucate, Aude, France, he was the son of artist painter Georges-Daniel de Monfreid and knew Paul Gauguin as a child....

     (1879–1974)
  • André Mary (1879–1962)
  • Francis Picabia
    Francis Picabia
    Francis Picabia was a French painter, poet, and typographist, associated with both the Dada and Surrealist art movements.- Early life :...

     (1879–1953)
  • Henri Fauconnier
    Henri Fauconnier
    Henri Fauconnier was a French writer, known mainly for his novel, Malaysia, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1930. He was part of the Groupe de Barbezieux.-Family:...

     (1879–1973)

1880-1889

  • Louis Hémon
    Louis Hémon
    Louis Hémon , was a francophone writer best known for his novel Maria Chapdelaine.- Biography :He was born in Brest, France. In Paris, where he resided with his family, he was enrolled in the Montaigne and Louis-le-Grand secondary schools...

     (1880–1913)
  • Guillaume Apollinaire
    Guillaume Apollinaire
    Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

     (Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) (1880–1918)
  • Lucie Delarue-Mardrus
    Lucie Delarue-Mardrus
    Lucie Delarue-Mardrus was a French journalist, poet, novelist, sculptor, historian and designer...

     (1880–1945)
  • Francis de Miomandre
    Francis de Miomandre
    Francis de Miomandre was a French novelist and well-known translator from Spanish into French.-Biography:He was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire and educated in Marseille. He began writing in his early twenties and won the Prix Goncourt in 1908 for his novel, Ecrít sur de l'Eau...

     (Francis Durand) (1880–1959)
  • Valery Larbaud
    Valery Larbaud
    Valery Larbaud was a French writer.-Life:He was born in Vichy, Allier, the only child of a pharmacist. His father died when he was 8, and he was brought up by his mother and aunt. His father had been owner of the Vichy Saint-Yorre mineral water springs, and the family fortune assured him an easy...

     (1881–1957)
  • Roger Martin du Gard
    Roger Martin du Gard
    Roger Martin du Gard was a French author and winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature. Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for details...

     (1881–1958)
  • André Salmon
    André Salmon
    André Salmon was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the defenders of cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal.-Biography:Andre Salmon was born in Paris...

     (1881–1969)
  • Jérôme Carcopino
    Jérôme Carcopino
    Jérôme Carcopino was a French historian and author. He was the fifteen member elected to occupy seat 3 of the Académie française in 1955.-Biography:...

     (1881–1970)
  • Louis Pergaud
    Louis Pergaud
    Louis Pergaud was a French writer and soldier, whose principal works were known as "Animal Stories" due to their rooting in the flora and fauna of the Franche-Comté. His most famous work was the novel La Guerre des boutons , written in 1912...

     (1882–1915)
  • Jean Giraudoux
    Jean Giraudoux
    Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...

     (1882–1944)
  • André Billy
    André Billy
    André Billy was a French writer....

     (1882–1971)
  • Pierre MacOrlan (Pierre Dumarchais) (1883–1970)
  • Marie Noël (1883–1933)
  • Jules Supervielle
    Jules Supervielle
    Jules Supervielle was a French poet and writer born in Uruguay.Jules Supervielle always kept away from Surrealism which was dominant in the first half of the twentieth century...

     (1884–1960
  • Gaston Bachelard
    Gaston Bachelard
    Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...

     (1884–1962)
  • Georges Duhamel
    Georges Duhamel
    Georges Duhamel , was a French author, born in Paris. Duhamel trained as a doctor, and during World War I was attached to the French Army. In 1920, he published Confession de minuit , the first of a series featuring the anti-hero Salavin...

     (1884–1966)
  • Jacques Chardonne
    Jacques Chardonne
    Jacques Chardonne is the pseudonym of French writer Jacques Boutelleau...

     (Jacques Boutelleau) (1884–1968)
  • Jean Paulhan
    Jean Paulhan
    Jean Paulhan was a French writer, literary critic and publisher, director of the literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française from 1925 to 1940 and from 1946 to 1968. He was a member of the Académie Française...

     (1884–1968)
  • Denis Amiel (1884–1977)
  • Alexandre Arnoux (1884–1973)
  • Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes
    Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes
    Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes was a French writer and artist associated with the Dada movement. He was born in Montpellier....

     (1884–1974)
  • Sacha Guitry
    Sacha Guitry
    Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the Boulevard theatre.- Biography :...

     (1885–1957)
  • André Maurois
    André Maurois
    André Maurois, born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog was a French author.-Life:Maurois was born in Elbeuf and educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen, both in Normandy. Maurois was the son of Ernest Herzog, a Jewish textile manufacturer, and Alice Herzog...

     (Emile Herzog) (1885–1967)
  • Fernand Crommelynck
    Fernand Crommelynck
    Fernand Crommelynck was a Belgian dramatist. He was born into a family of actors, the child of a French mother and a Belgian father and he himself was also an actor...

     (1885–1970)
  • Jules Romains
    Jules Romains
    Jules Romains, born Louis Henri Jean Farigoule , was a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement...

     (Jules-Louis de Farigoule) (1885–1972)
  • Marthe Bibesco
    Marthe Bibesco
    Marthe, Princess Bibesco was a Romanian-French writer of the Belle Époque...

     (1885–1973)
  • Jean Pellerin (1885–1921)
  • Alain-Fournier
    Alain-Fournier
    Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban-Fournier , a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes , which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature.-Biography:Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher...

     (Henri Fournier) (1886–1914)
  • Francis Carco
    Francis Carco
    Francis Carco was a French author, born at Nouméa, New Caledonia. He was a poet, belonging to the Fantaisiste school, a novelist, a dramatist, and art critic for L'Homme libre and Gil Blas. During the War he became aviation pilot at Étampes, after studying at the aviation school there...

     (François Carcopino-Tusoli) (1886–1958)
  • Pierre Benoit
    Pierre Benoit
    Pierre Benoit may refer to:*Pierre Benoit , novelist and member of the Académie française*Pierre Basile Benoit , former member of the Canadian House of Commons...

     (1886–1962)
  • Geneviève Fauconnier
    Geneviève Fauconnier
    Geneviève Fauconnier was a French novelist who lived in the south of the Charente département, . She was one of the most sensitive members of the so called Groupe de Barbezieux...

     (1886–1969)
  • Roland Dorgelès
    Roland Dorgelès
    Roland Dorgelès , was a French novelist and a member of the Académie Goncourt.Born Roland Lecavelé , he spent his childhood in Paris....

     (Roland Lecavelé) (1886–1973)
  • Henri Pourrat
    Henri Pourrat
    Henry Pourrat was a French writer and anthropologist who collected the oral literature of the Auvergne.-Biography :...

     (1887–1959)
  • Jean de La Varende (Jean-Balthazar Mallard, comte de La Varende) (1887–1959)
  • Blaise Cendrars
    Blaise Cendrars
    Frédéric Louis Sauser , better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.-Early years:...

     (1887–1961)
  • François Mauriac
    François Mauriac
    François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...

     (1887–1970)
  • Saint-John Perse
    Saint-John Perse
    Saint-John Perse was a French poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was also a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, after which he lived primarily in the USA until 1967.-Biography:Alexis Leger was...

     (Alexis Léger) (1887–1975)
  • Pierre-Jean Jouve (1887–1976)
  • Marcel Martinet
    Marcel Martinet
    -Life:Martinet, a Communist and pacifist, opposed the First World War from its outset: his antiwar poems Les temps maudits were banned in France during the war, but circulated secretly: helped by Marguerite Rosmer, he sent copies on thin paper to soldiers at the front. La Maison à l'Abri, a novel...

     (1887–1944)
  • Georges Bernanos
    Georges Bernanos
    Georges Bernanos was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.-Biography:Bernanos was born at Paris, into a family of...

     (1888–1948)
  • Henri Bosco
    Henri Bosco
    Henri Bosco was a French writer.Bosco was born in Avignon, Vaucluse into a family of Piedmontese origin. Through his father, he was related to Saint John Bosco, of whom he wrote a biography. His novels for adults and children provide a sensitive evocation of Provençal life...

     (1888–1976)
  • Paul Morand
    Paul Morand
    Paul Morand was a French diplomat, novelist, playwright and poet, considered an early Modernist.He was a graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies...

     (1888–1976)
  • Marcel Jouhandeau
    Marcel Jouhandeau
    Marcel Jouhandeau was a French writer.-Biography:Marcel Jouhandeau grew up in a world of women presided over by his grandmother. Under the influence of a young woman from the Carmel of Limoges, he embraced a mystical form of Catholicism and for a time thought to enter the orders...

     (1888–1979)
  • Jacques de Lacretelle
    Jacques de Lacretelle
    Jacques de Lacretelle was a French novelist. He was elected to the Académie française on November 12, 1936.-Bibliography:* 1920 La vie inquiète de Jean Hermelin...

     (1888–1985)
  • Charles Silvestre (1889–1948)
  • Tristan Derème
    Tristan Derème
    Tristan Derème , born Philippe Huc, was a French poet and writer.He had lived in Paris, but would often return to Oloron-Sainte-Marie, where his mother lived...

     (1889–1941)
  • Pierre Reverdy
    Pierre Reverdy
    Pierre Reverdy was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne and grew up near the Montagne Noire in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse and Narbonne.Reverdy...

     (1889–1960)
  • Jean Cocteau
    Jean Cocteau
    Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...

     (1889–1963)
  • Émile Henriot
    Émile Henriot (writer)
    Émile Henriot was a French poet, novelist, essayist and literary critic.-Life:A son of the caricaturist Henri Maigrot, known under the pen name Henriot, he fought in the First World War. He first wrote as a journalist for Temps in the inter-war period...

     (1889–1961)

1890-1899

  • Maurice Genevoix
    Maurice Genevoix
    Maurice Genevoix was a French author.Born on 29 November 1890 at Decize, Nièvre as Maurice-Charles-Louis-Genevoix, Genevoix spent his childhood in Châteauneuf-sur-Loire. After attending the local school, he studied at the lycée of Orléans and the Lycée Lakanal...

     (1890–1980)
  • Victor Serge
    Victor Serge
    Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...

     (1890–1947)
  • Max Ernst
    Max Ernst
    Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

     (1891–1976)
  • Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
    Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
    Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris...

     (1893–1945)
  • Claude Cahun
    Claude Cahun
    Claude Cahun was a French artist, photographer and writer. Her work was both political and personal, and often played with the concepts of gender and sexuality.-Early life:...

     (Lucy Schwob) (1894–1954)
  • Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...

     (Louis Destouches) (1894–1961), (Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932)
  • Joseph Delteil (1894–1978)
  • Paul Éluard
    Paul Éluard
    Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...

     (Eugène Grindel) (1895–1952)
  • Jean Giono
    Jean Giono
    Jean Giono was a French author who wrote works of fiction set in the Provence region of France.-First period:...

     (1895–1970)
  • Marcel Pagnol
    Marcel Pagnol
    Marcel Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. In 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie Française.-Biography:...

     (1895–1974)
  • Albert Cohen
    Albert Cohen
    Albert Cohen was a Greek-born Romaniote Jewish Swiss novelist who wrote in French. He worked as a civil servant for various international organizations, such as the International Labour Organization...

     (1895–1981)
  • Antonin Artaud
    Antonin Artaud
    Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...

     (1896–1948)
  • André Breton
    André Breton
    André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

     (1896–1966)
  • Henry de Montherlant
    Henry de Montherlant
    Henry de Montherlant or Henry Marie Joseph Frédéric Expedite Millon de Montherlant was a French essayist, novelist and one of the leading French dramatists of the twentieth century.- Works :...

     (Henry Millon de Montherlant) (1896–1972)
  • Tristan Tzara
    Tristan Tzara
    Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...

     (1896–1963)
  • Louis Aragon
    Louis Aragon
    Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...

     (1897–1982)
  • Georges Bataille
    Georges Bataille
    Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...

     (1897–1962)
  • Joë Bousquet
    Joë Bousquet
    Joë Bousquet was a French poet.Wounded on May 27, 1918 at Vailly near the Aisne battlelines at the end of the First World War, he was paralysed for the rest of his life, and lived a life largely bedridden, surrounded by his books...

     (1897–1950)
  • Kikou Yamata (1897–1975)
  • Philippe Soupault
    Philippe Soupault
    Philippe Soupault was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton...

     (1897–1990)
  • Marcel Thiry
    Marcel Thiry
    Marcel Thiry was a French-speaking Belgian poet.He was awarded the Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud in 1976 for Toi qui pâlis au nom de Vancouver, a book of poems reminiscent of Cendrars and Apollinaire...

     (1897–1977)
  • Eugène Dabit
    Eugène Dabit
    Eugene Dabit was a French socialist writer.He was part of the group "proletarian literature" and had a great success for his short story collection Hôtel du Nord which won the du Prix du roman populiste and was filmed in 1938 by Marcel Carné...

     (1898–1936)
  • Michel de Ghelderode
    Michel De Ghelderode
    Michel de Ghelderode was an avant-garde Belgian dramatist, writing in French.-Career:...

     (1898–1962)
  • Michel Goffin (1898–1984)
  • Joseph Kessel
    Joseph Kessel
    Joseph Kessel was a French journalist and novelist.He was born in Villa Clara, Entre Ríos, Argentina, because of the constant journeys of his father, a Lithuanian doctor of Jewish origin. Joseph Kessel lived the first years of his childhood in Orenburg, Russia, before the family moved to France...

     (1898–1979)
  • Paul Vialar (1898–1996)
  • Géo Norge (1898–1990)
  • Roger Vitrac
    Roger Vitrac
    Roger Vitrac was a French surrealist playwright and poet.Born in Pinsac, Roger Vitrac moved to Paris in 1910. As a young man, he was influenced by symbolism and the writings of Lautréamont and Alfred Jarry, and he developed a passion for theatre and poetry...

     (1899–1952)
  • Jacques Audiberti
    Jacques Audiberti
    Jacques Audiberti was a French playwright, poet and novelist and exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd.He was born in Antibes, France. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine...

     (1899–1965)
  • Marcel Achard
    Marcel Achard
    Marcel Achard was a French playwright and screenwriter whose popular sentimental comedies maintained his position as a highly-recognizable name in his country's theatrical and literary circles for five decades...

     (1899–1974)
  • Louis Guilloux
    Louis Guilloux
    Louis Guilloux was a French writer born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, where he lived throughout his life. He is known for his Social Realist novels describing working class life and political struggles in the mid-twentieth century...

     (1899–1980)
  • Henri Michaux
    Henri Michaux
    Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...

     (1899–1984)
  • Marcel Arland
    Marcel Arland
    Marcel Arland , was a French novelist, literary critic, and journalist.-Life:...

     (1899–1986)
  • Armand Salacrou
    Armand Salacrou
    Armand Camille Salacrou was a French dramatist.He was born in Rouen, but spent most of his childhood at Le Havre, and moved to Paris in 1917. His first works show the influence of the Surrealists....

     (1899–1989)
  • Francis Ponge
    Francis Ponge
    Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. In many ways, he combined the two — essay and poem — into a single art form.-Life:...

     (1899–1988)

1900-1909

  • Louis Brauquier (1900–1976)
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...

     (1900–1944)
  • Robert Desnos
    Robert Desnos
    Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...

     (1900–1945)
  • Jacques Prévert
    Jacques Prévert
    Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain very popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. Some of the movies he wrote are extremely well regarded, with Les Enfants du Paradis considered one of the greatest films of all time.-Life and...

     (1900–1977)
  • André Chamson
    André Chamson
    André Chamson was a French archivist, novelist and essayist. He was the father of the novelist Frédérique Hébrard.-Life:Chamson was born at , Nîmes, Gard....

     (1900–1983)
  • André Dhôtel (1900–1991)
  • Albert Ayguesparse
    Albert Ayguesparse
    Albert Ayguesparse was a Belgian writer.-Poetry:* Neuf offrandes claires * Le Vin noir de Cahors * Langage-Novels:* La main morte* Notre ombre nous précède...

     (1900–1996)
  • Julien Green
    Julien Green
    Julien Green , was an American writer, who authored several novels, including Léviathan and Each in His Own Darkness...

     (1900–1998)
  • Nathalie Sarraute
    Nathalie Sarraute
    Nathalie Sarraute was a French lawyer and writer of Russian Jewish origin.-Life:Sarraute was born Natalia/Natacha Tcherniak in Ivanovo , 300 km north-east of Moscow in 1900 , and, following...

     (1900–1999)
  • Amadou Hampâté Bâ
    Amadou Hampâté Bâ
    Amadou Hampâté Bâ was a Malian writer and ethnologist.-Biography:...

     (1900 or 1901–1991)
  • Georges Limbour
    Georges Limbour
    Georges Limbour was a French writer of prose and poetry.He was a member of the Surrealist Movement in Paris during the 1920s, but was expelled in 1929. Before his association with André Breton and the Surrealists, Limbour co-edited, along with Roger Vitrac and René Crevel, the avant-garde review...

     (1900–1970)
  • Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (1901–1937)
  • Jean Prévost
    Jean Prévost
    Jean Prévost was a French writer , journalist, and Resistance fighter.Born in Saint-Pierre-lès-Nemours, Prévost was educated at the primary school in Montivilliers. near Rouen, where his father was principal. In 1911, he moved to the prestidigious Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen...

     (1901–1944)
  • Henri Daniel-Rops
    Henri Daniel-Rops
    Daniel-Rops , French writer and historian whose real name was Henri Petiot.-Early life:...

     (Henri Petiot) (1901–1965)
  • Lanza del Vasto
    Lanza del Vasto
    Lanza del Vasto, , was a philosopher, poet, artist, catholic and nonviolent activist.He was born in San Vito dei Normanni, Italy and died in Elche de la Sierra, Spain....

     (1901–1981)
  • Charles Lecocq (1901–1922)
  • Michel Leiris
    Michel Leiris
    Julien Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer.-Biography:...

     (1901–1990)
  • Suzanne Lilar
    Suzanne Lilar
    Suzanne, Baroness Lilar was a Flemish Belgian essayist, novelist, and playwright writing in French...

     (1901–1992)
  • André Malraux
    André Malraux
    André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...

     (1901–1976)
  • Alexandre Vialatte (1901–1971)
  • Marcel Aymé
    Marcel Aymé
    Marcel Aymé was a French novelist, children's writer, humour writer and also a screenwriter and theatre playwright.- Biography :...

     (1902–1967)
  • Malcom de Chazal, (1902–1981)
  • Julien Torma
    Julien Torma
    Julien Torma was a French writer, playwright and poet who was part of the Dadaist movement. He was born in Cambrai, France, and died in Tyrol....

     (1902–1933)
  • Louise de Vilmorin (1902–1969)
  • Vercors (pseudonym for Jean Bruller
    Jean Bruller
    Jean Marcel Bruller was a French writer and illustrator who co-founded Les Éditions de Minuit with Pierre de Lescure and Yvonne Paraf. During the World War II occupation of northern France he joined the Resistance and his texts were published under the pseudonym Vercors.Several of his novels have...

    ) (1902–1991)
  • Jean Tardieu
    Jean Tardieu
    Jean Tardieu was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author. He earned a degree in literature and worked for a publishing house. He published several poetry collections in the 1930s before starting to write for the stage...

     (1903–1995)
  • Raymond Radiguet
    Raymond Radiguet
    Raymond Radiguet was a French author whose two novels were noted for their explicit themes and writing style and tone.-Early life:...

     (1903–1923)
  • Irène Némirovsky
    Irène Némirovsky
    Irène Némirovsky was a French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz, Nazi Germany occupied Poland. She was killed by the Nazis for being classified as a Jew under the racial laws, which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism.-Biography:Irène Némirovsky was born in...

     (1903–1942)
  • Jean Follain
    Jean Follain
    Jean Follain, was a French author, poet and corporate lawyer. In the early days of his career he was a member of the "Sagesse" group. Follain was a friend of Max Jacob, André Salmon, Jean Paulhan, Pierre Pussy, Armen Lubin, and Pierre Reverdy...

     (1903–1971)
  • Georges Simenon
    Georges Simenon
    Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.-Early life and education:...

     (1903–1989)
  • Raymond Queneau
    Raymond Queneau
    Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...

     (1903–1976)
  • Marguerite Yourcenar
    Marguerite Yourcenar
    Marguerite Yourcenar was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980, and the seventeenth person to occupy Seat 3.-Biography:Yourcenar was born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie...

     (Marguerite de Crayencour) (1903–1987)
  • Gilbert Lely (1904–1985)
  • Guy Levis Mano (1904–1980)
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

     (1905–1980)
  • Maurice Fombeure (1906–1981)
  • Charles Exbrayat
    Charles Exbrayat
    Charles Exbrayat was born in Saint-Étienne, Loire, France on 5 May 1906 and died in the same city on 8 March 1989. He published over 100 novels and short stories, most of them humorous thrillers...

     (1906–1989)
  • Samuel Beckett
    Samuel Beckett
    Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

     (1906–1989)
  • Roger Frison-Roche (1906–1999)
  • Roger Vailland
    Roger Vailland
    Roger Vailland was a French novelist, essayist, and screenwriter.Vailland's novels include Drôle de jeu , Les mauvais coups , Un jeune homme seul , 325 000 francs , and La loi , winner of the Prix Goncourt...

     (1907–1965)
  • Pauline Réage
    Pauline Réage
    Anne Desclos was a French journalist and novelist who wrote under the pseudonyms Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage.-Early life:...

     (Anne Desclos) (1907–1998)
  • Violette Leduc
    Violette Leduc
    Violette Leduc was a French author.She was born in Arras, Pas de Calais, France, the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl, Berthe. In Valenciennes, the young Violette spent most of her childhood suffering from poor self-esteem, exacerbated by her mother's hostility and overprotectiveness...

     (1907–1972)
  • Raymond Abellio
    Raymond Abellio
    Raymond Abellio is the pseudonym of French writer Georges Soulès. He was born November 11, 1907 in Toulouse, and died August 26, 1986 in Nice.Abellio went to the Ecole Polytechnique and then took part in the X-Crise Group...

     (Georges Soulès) (1907–1986)
  • René Char
    René Char
    René Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...

     (1907–1988)
  • Louis Guillaume (1907–1971)
  • Maurice Blanchot
    Maurice Blanchot
    Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...

     (1907–2003)
  • Roger Peyrefitte
    Roger Peyrefitte
    Roger Peyrefitte was a French diplomat, writer of bestseller novels and gossipy non-fiction, and a defender of gay rights.-Life and work:...

     (1907–2000)
  • Roger Gilbert-Lecomte
    Roger Gilbert-Lecomte
    Roger Gilbert-Lecomte was a French avant-garde poet and co-founder of the artistic group and magazine Le Grand Jeu. The group, associated with surrealists, was "excommunicated" from the movement by André Breton...

     (1907–1943)
  • Jacques Roumain
    Jacques Roumain
    Jacques Roumain was a Haitian writer, politician, and advocate of Communism. He is considered one of the most prominent figures in Haitian literature. Although poorly known in the English-speaking world, Roumain has significant following in Europe, and is renowned in the Caribbean and Latin America...

     (1907–1944)
  • René Daumal
    René Daumal
    René Daumal was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France....

     (1908–1944)
  • Simone de Beauvoir
    Simone de Beauvoir
    Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...

     (1908–1986)
  • Paul Bénichou
    Paul Bénichou
    Paul Bénichou, was a French writer, intellectual, critic, and literary historian.Bénichou first achieved prominence in 1948 with Morales du grand siècle, his work on the social context of the French seventeenth-century classics...

     (1908–2001)
  • Robert Merle
    Robert Merle
    Robert Merle was a French novelist.-Biography:Born in Tébessa in French Algeria, he moved to France in 1918. A professor of English Literature at several universities, during World War II Merle was conscripted in the French army and assigned as an interpreter to the British Expeditionary Force...

     (1908–2004)
  • Simone Weil
    Simone Weil
    Simone Weil , was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist.-Biography:Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. She grew up in comfortable circumstances, and her father was a doctor. Her only sibling was...

     (1909–1943)
  • Anaïs Nin
    Anaïs Nin
    Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...

     (1909–1977)
  • Jean-Fernand Brierre
    Jean-Fernand Brierre
    Jean-Fernand Brierre was a Haitian poet. Born in Jérémie, Brierre worked as a politician and diplomat. He is recognized "as one of the most brilliant Haitian writers." Poet, dramatist, and Haiti's ambassador to Argentina. He emerged in the 1930s as a poet and militant in the backlash against the...

     (1909–1993)
  • Robert Brasillach
    Robert Brasillach
    Robert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. Brasillach is best known as the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which came to advocate various fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot...

     (1909–1945)
  • André Pieyre de Mandiargues
    André Pieyre de Mandiargues
    André Pieyre de Mandiargues was a French writer born in Paris. He became an associate of the Surrealists and married the Italian painter Bona Tibertelli de Pisis...

     (1909–1991)
  • Léo Malet
    Léo Malet
    -Biography:Leo Malet was born in Montpellier. He had little formal education and began work as a cabaret singer at "La Vache Enragee" in Montmartre, Paris in 1925....

     (1909–1996)

1910-1919

  • Jean Anouilh
    Jean Anouilh
    Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...

     (1910–1987)
  • Jean Genet
    Jean Genet
    Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

     (1910–1986)
  • Paul Guth
    Paul Guth
    Paul Guth was a French humorist, journalist and writer, and the President of the Académie des provinces françaises....

     (1910–1997)
  • Julien Gracq
    Julien Gracq
    Julien Gracq , born Louis Poirier in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, in the French département of Maine-et-Loire, was a French writer. He wrote novels, critiques, a play, and poetry. His literary works were noted for their Surrealism.Gracq first studied in Paris at the Lycée Henri IV, where he earned his...

     (Louis Poirier) (1910–2007)
  • André Hardellet (1911–1974)
  • Patrice de La Tour du Pin (1911–1975)
  • René Barjavel
    René Barjavel
    René Barjavel was a French author, journalist and critic who may have been the first to think of the grandfather paradox in time travel. He was born in Nyons, a town in the Drôme department in southeastern France...

     (1911–1985)
  • Guy des Cars
    Guy des Cars
    Guy Augustin Marie Jean de la Pérusse des Cars was a French author who specialized in detective stories. He was born on 6 May 1911 in Paris and died on 21 December 1993 in the same city.-Family:...

     (Guy de Pérusse des Cars) (1911–1993)
  • Hervé Bazin
    Hervé Bazin
    Hervé Bazin was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families.- Biography :...

     (Jean Hervé-Bazin) (1911–1996)
  • Jean Cayrol
    Jean Cayrol
    Jean Cayrol was a French poet, publisher, and member of the Académie Goncourt. He is perhaps best known for writing the narration in Alain Resnais's 1955 documentary film, Night and Fog...

     (1911–2005)
  • Henri Troyat
    Henri Troyat
    Henri Troyat was a Russian born French author, biographer, historian and novelist.-Biography:Troyat was born Lev Aslanovich Tarasov, in Moscow to parents of mixed heritage, including Armenian, Russian, German and Georgian...

     (Lev Tarassov) (1911–2007)
  • Pierre Boulle
    Pierre Boulle
    Pierre Boulle was a French novelist largely known for two famous works, The Bridge over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes .-Biography:...

     (1912–1994)
  • Edmond Jabès
    Edmond Jabes
    ----Edmond Jabès was a Jewish writer and poet, and one of the best known literary figures to write in French after World War II.- Life :...

     (1912–1991)
  • Eugène Ionesco
    Eugène Ionesco
    Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

     (1912–1994)
  • Jacques de Bourbon Busset
    Jacques de Bourbon Busset
    Jacques de Bourbon Busset, Count of Busset was a French novelist, essayist and politician. He was elected to the Académie française on June 4, 1981.-Bibliography:...

     (1912–2001)
  • Armand Robin
    Armand Robin
    Armand Robin was a French poet, translator, and journalist.- Life :Robin was born in Plouguernével by Rostrenen and came to Paris. He was unable to settle down for all his life. He traveled to USSR in 1934, and returned shocked by the reality of communism...

     (1912–1961)
  • Claude Simon
    Claude Simon
    Claude Simon was a French novelist and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and died in Paris, France....

     (1913–2005)
  • Luc Dietrich
    Luc Dietrich
    Luc Dietrich was a French writer.Dietrich was born in Dijon. His father died when he was very young, and his mother was ill and addicted to drugs. She was frequently incapable of taking care of her son; several times he was sent asylums and similar establishments...

     (1913–1944)
  • Albert Camus
    Albert Camus
    Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

     (1913–1960)
  • Mouloud Feraoun
    Mouloud Feraoun
    Mouloud Feraoun was an Algerian writer and martyr of the Algerian revolution born in Tizi Hibel, Kabylia. Some of his books, written in French, have been translated into several languages including English and German...

     (1913–1962)
  • Gilbert Cesbron
    Gilbert Cesbron
    Gilbert Cesbron was a French novelist.Born in Paris, Cesbron attended what is now known as Lycée Condorcet. In 1944, he published his first novel, Les innocents de Paris , in Switzerland...

     (1913–1979)
  • Armand Lanoux
    Armand Lanoux
    Armand Lanoux was a French writer.-Biography :He first made several trades, teacher, designer of subjects for boxes of candy, bank employee, amounting in luxury books, painter, journalist....

     (1913–1983)
  • Pierre Daninos
    Pierre Daninos
    Pierre Daninos was a French writer and humorist.Daninos wrote Les carnets du Major Thompson, which was published in 1954, and was followed by many sequels. The books in the series pretended to be the observations of a retired British officer living in France, and were witty collections of...

     (1913–2005)
  • Félicien Marceau
    Félicien Marceau
    Félicien Marceau is the pen name of Louis Carette a French novelist, playwright and essayist originally from Belgium. He was close to the Hussards right-wing literary movement, itself close to the monarchist .He received the Prix Goncourt for his book Creezy in 1969...

     (Louis Carette)(1913–...)
  • Romain Gary
    Romain Gary
    Romain Gary was a French diplomat, novelist, film director, World War II aviator. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt twice .- Early life :Gary was born in Vilnius under the name Roman Kacew...

     (Romain Kacew a/k/a Romain Gary a/k/a Emile Ajar) (1914–1980)
  • Béatrix Beck
    Béatrix Beck
    Béatrix Beck was a French writer from Belgian origin.She was born at Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland, the daughter of the poet Christian Beck. After several jobs, she became the secretary of André Gide, he encouraged her to write about her experiences: her mother's suicide, the war, her poverty, etc...

     (1914–...)
  • Marguerite Duras
    Marguerite Duras
    Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...

     (Marguerite Donnadieu) (1914–1996)
  • Roland Barthes
    Roland Barthes
    Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...

     (1915–1980)
  • Virgil Gheorghiu
    Virgil Gheorghiu
    Virgil Gheorghiu may refer to:*Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu, novelist*Virgil Gheorghiu , poet and pianist who was immortalised in the work of Geo Bogza...

     (1916–1992)
  • Jean-Louis Curtis
    Jean-Louis Curtis
    Jean-Louis Curtis , pseudonym of Louis Laffitte, was a French novelist best known for his second novel The Forests of the Night , which won France's highest literary award the Prix Goncourt in 1947. He has authored over 30 novels.Curtis was born in Orthez, Pyrénées-Atlantiques...

     (Louis Laffitte) (1917–1995)
  • Maurice Druon
    Maurice Druon
    Maurice Druon was a French novelist and a member of the Académie française.Born in Paris, France, Druon was the nephew of the writer Joseph Kessel, with whom he translated the Chant des Partisans, a French Resistance anthem of World War II, with music and words originally by Anna Marly.In 1948...

     (1918–...)
  • Alain Bosquet
    Alain Bosquet
    Alain Bosquet, born Anatole Bisk , was a French poet.-Life:In 1925, his family moved to Brussels and he studied at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, then at the Sorbonne....

     (Anatole Bisk) (1919–1998)
  • Jacques Laurent-Cely a/k/a Jacques Laurent or Cécil Saint-Laurent (1919–...)
  • Michel Déon
    Michel Déon
    Michel Déon is a French writer.With Antoine Blondin, Jacques Laurent and Roger Nimier, he belonged to the literary group of the Hussards. He is a novelist as well as a literary columnist....

     (1919–...)
  • Armand Toupet (1919–...)
  • Robert Pinget
    Robert Pinget
    Robert Pinget was a major avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers...

     (1919–1997)

1920-1929

  • Jean Dutourd
    Jean Dutourd
    Jean Gwenaël Dutourd was a French novelist. His mother died when he was seven years old. At the age of twenty, he was taken prisoner fifteen days after Germany's invasion of France in World War II...

     (1920-2011)
  • Mohammed Dib
    Mohammed Dib
    Mohammed Dib was an Algerian author. He wrote over 30 novels, as well as numerous short stories, poems, and children's literature in the French language. He is probably Algeria's most prolific and well-known writer...

     (1920–2003)
  • Boris Vian
    Boris Vian
    Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their...

     (1920–1959)
  • Françoise d'Eaubonne
    Françoise d'Eaubonne
    Françoise d'Eaubonne was a French feminist, who introduced the term ecofeminism in 1974....

     (1920–...)
  • Jean-Pierre Chabrol (1920–...)
  • Albert Memmi
    Albert Memmi
    Albert Memmi is a Tunisian Jewish writer and essayist who migrated to France.- Biography :Born in colonial Tunisia,from a Tunisian Jewish mother and a Tunisian-Italian Jewish father, he speaks Hebrew and Tunisian-Arabic...

     (1920–...)
  • Georges Brassens
    Georges Brassens
    Georges Brassens , 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981), was a French singer-songwriter and poet.Brassens was born in Sète, a town in southern France near Montpellier...

     (1921–1981)
  • Gérald Neveu
    Gérald Neveu
    Gérald Neveu was a French poet. Called by some "one of the gentlest poètes maudits" , he was born to Louis Neveu and Marthe Bonnaud in Marseille...

     (1921–1960)
  • Antoine Blondin
    Antoine Blondin
    Antoine Blondin was a French writer.He belonged to the literary group called the Hussards. He was also a sports columnist in L'Équipe. Blondin also wrote under the name Tenorio.-Biography:...

     (1922–1990)
  • Jean-Charles
    Jean-Charles
    Jean-Charles is a French masculine given name. It may refer to :* Jean Charles, Chevalier Folard , a French soldier and military author* Jean-Charles Alphand , a French engineer* Jean Charles Athanase Peltier...

     (1922–2003)
  • Jean-Claude Renard
    Jean-Claude Renard
    Jean-Claude Renard was a French poet. He was born in Toulon and died in Paris.-Life:Renard entered the world of poetry, publishing Juan in 1945, his first book...

     (1922–...)
  • Stefan Wul
    Stefan Wul
    Stefan Wul was the nom de plume of French science fiction writer Pierre Pairault . He was a dental surgeon, but science fiction was his real passion. Most of his books reflect that, showing a deep knowledge of scientific data...

     (1922–2003)
  • Alain Robbe-Grillet
    Alain Robbe-Grillet
    Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...

     (1922–2008)
  • Yves Bonnefoy
    Yves Bonnefoy
    Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....

     (1923–...)
  • Roger Foulon (1923–...)
  • Georges Perros
    Georges Perros
    Georges Perros was a French writer.He was awarded the Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud in 1973....

     (1923–1978)
  • Ousmane Sembène
    Ousmane Sembène
    Ousmane Sembène , often credited in the French style as Sembène Ousmane in articles and reference works, was a Senegalese film director, producer and writer...

     (1923–... )
  • André du Bouchet
    André du Bouchet
    André du Bouchet was a French poet.- Biography :Born in Paris, he lived in France until 1941, when his family left occupied Europe for the United States. He studied at Amherst College and then at Harvard University . After teaching for a year, he returned to France...

     (1924–2003)
  • Philippe Jaccottet
    Philippe Jaccottet
    Philippe Jaccottet is a poet and translator who publishes in French.After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived several years in Paris. In 1953, came to live in the town of Grignan in Provence...

     (1925–...)
  • Roger Laporte (1925–...)
  • Roger Nimier
    Roger Nimier
    -Life:He was born in 1925, and served in the French Army, specifically in the 2nd Hussard Regiment in the Second World War .He began to write quite early in his life...

     (1925–1962)
  • Jean d'Ormesson
    Jean d'Ormesson
    Count Jean Lefèvre d'Ormesson is a French novelist whose work mostly consists of partially or totally autobiographic novels.- Life :...

     (1925-...)
  • François Augiéras (1925–1971)
  • Alphonse Boudard
    Alphonse Boudard
    Alphonse Boudard is a French novelist and playwright. He won the 1977 Prix Renaudot for Les Combattants du petit bonheur....

     (1925–2000)
  • Roger Giroux
    Roger Giroux
    Roger Giroux was a French poet. Giroux's one book was awarded the Prix Max Jacob award. Translator of W.B. Yeats, Lawrence Durrell, and others. A sample of his poems is included in , edited by Paul Auster, and generally recognized as the best anthology of Modern French poetry in English...

     (1925–1973)
  • Frantz Fanon
    Frantz Fanon
    Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...

     (1925–1961)
  • Michel Foucault
    Michel Foucault
    Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

     (1926–1984)
  • Michel Butor
    Michel Butor
    -Life and work:Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Salonika, the United States, and Geneva...

     (1926–...)
  • Jacques Dupin
    Jacques Dupin
    Jacques Dupin is a French poet, art critic, and co-founder of the journal L'éphemère.A resident of Paris since 1944, he is director of publication at Galerie Maeght.- Jacques Dupin's poetry in English :...

     (1927–...)
  • Gisèle Halimi
    Gisèle Halimi
    Gisèle Halimi, born Zeiza Gisèle Élise Taïeb in 1927, is a French-Tunisian lawyer, feminist activist, and essayist.-Career:Born in La Goulette, to a Jewish mother and father, she was educated at a French lycée in Tunis, and then attended the University of Paris, graduating in law and philosophy...

     (1927–...)
  • François Nourissier
    François Nourissier
    François Nourissier was a French journalist and writer.Nourissier was the secretary-general of Éditions Denoël , editor of the review La Parisienne , and an adviser with the Éditions Grasset Paris publishing house .In 1970, he won the Prix Femina for his book La crève...

     (1927–...)
  • André Schwarz-Bart
    Andre Schwarz-Bart
    André Schwarz-Bart was a French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins....

     (1928–2006)
  • Kateb Yacine
    Kateb Yacine
    Kateb Yacine was an Algerian writer notable for his novels and plays, both in French and Algerian Arabic dialect, and his advocacy of the Algerian Berber cause.-Biography:...

     (1929–1989)
  • Nicolas Bouvier
    Nicolas Bouvier
    Nicolas Bouvier was a 20th-century Swiss traveller and writer as well as an iconographer and photographer.-Life:Bouvier was born at Grand-Lancy near Geneva, the youngest of three children...

     (1929–1998)

1930-1939

  • Françoise Mallet-Joris
    Françoise Mallet-Joris
    Françoise Mallet-Joris is the nom de plume of Françoise Lilar.She was born in Antwerp, the daughter of the writer Suzanne Lilar and the Belgian Minister of Justice and Minister of State Albert Lilar, and the sister of the 18th century art historian Marie Fredericq-Lilar...

     (1930–...)
  • Jacques Ehrmann
    Jacques Ehrmann
    Jacques Ehrmann was a French literary theorist and a faculty member of the Yale University French Department from 1961 until his death in 1972.-Biography:...

     (1931–1972)
  • Jack Thieuloy (1931–1996)
  • Fernando Arrabal
    Fernando Arrabal
    Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...

     (1932–...)
  • Mongo Beti
    Mongo Beti
    Alexandre Biyidi Awala , known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer.- Life :Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country...

     (1932–2001)
  • Hédi Bouraoui
    Hédi Bouraoui
    Hédi Bouraoui is a Tunisian/Canadian poet, novelist and academic, who regularly deals with themes involving the transcendence of cultural boundaries....

     (1932–...)
  • Claude Pujade-Renaud
    Claude Pujade-Renaud
    Claude Pujade-Renaud is a French writer, whose first novel Le Ventriloque appeared in 1978. Since that time she has published over twenty novels, short-story and poetry collections, as well as combined creative works with long-time partner Daniel Zimmermann...

     (1932-...)
  • Jacques Roubaud
    Jacques Roubaud
    Jacques Roubaud is a French poet and mathematician.Jacques Roubaud is a professor of poetry at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and he was a professor of Mathematics at University of Paris X...

     (1932–...)
  • Marcelin Pleynet
    Marcelin Pleynet
    Marcelin Pleynet was born in Lyon, France in 1933. Writer, essayist, poet, he was Managing Editor of the influential magazine Tel Quel from 1962 to 1982, and co-edits the journal L'Infini with Philippe Sollers. He was Professor of Aesthetics at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in...

     (1933–...)
  • Claude Esteban
    Claude Esteban
    Claude Esteban was a French poet.Author of a major poetic œuvre of this last half-century, Claude Esteban wrote numerous essays on art and poetry and was the French translator, inter alia, of Jorge Guillén, Octavio Paz, Borges, García Lorca, or again, Quevedo.-Biography:Of Spanish father and...

     (1935–2006)
  • Agota Kristof
    Agota Kristof
    Ágota Kristóf was a Hungarian writer, who lived in Switzerland and wrote in French. Kristof received the European prize for French literature for The Notebook . She won the 2001 Gottfried Keller Award in Switzerland and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2008.- Biography :Kristof...

     (1935–...)
  • Françoise Sagan
    Françoise Sagan
    Françoise Sagan – real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Hailed as "a charming little monster" by François Mauriac on the front page of Le Figaro, Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois...

     (Françoise Quoirez) (1935–2004)
  • Daniel Zimmermann
    Daniel Zimmermann
    Daniel Zimmermann is a German politician, founder of the PETO party and is the mayor of Monheim am Rhein since 21 October 2009. He is the youngest mayor in North Rhine-Westphalia.- Professional career :...

     (1935–2000)
  • Assia Djebar
    Assia Djebar
    Assia Djebar is the pen-name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen , an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa's pre-eminent and most influential writers...

     (1936–...)
  • Frankétienne
    Frankétienne
    Frankétienne is an author, poet, playwright, musician and painter. He has written in both French and Haitian creole...

     (1936–...)
  • Jean-Edern Hallier
    Jean-Edern Hallier
    Jean-Edern Hallier was a French author.- Overview :Hallier was the son of World War I French General André Hallier. Jean-Edern was born in 1936 and lost an eye during the siege of Budapest, where his father was on diplomatic posting...

     (1936–1997)
  • Georges Perec
    Georges Perec
    Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...

     (1936–1982)
  • Philippe Sollers
    Philippe Sollers
    Philippe Sollers is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde journal Tel Quel , published by Seuil, which ran until 1982...

     (1936–...)
  • Anne-Marie Albiach
    Anne-Marie Albiach
    Anne-Marie Albiach is a contemporary French poet and translator.-Overview:Anne-Marie Albiach's poetry is characterized by, among other things, an inventive use of spacing on the printed page...

     (1937–...)
  • Marc Alyn
    Marc Alyn
    Marc Alyn , is a French poet.-Life:He was mobilized to Algeria in 1957.He lived far from Paris, a farmhouse in Uzès, Gard....

     (1937–)
  • Pierre Billon
    Pierre Billon
    Pierre Billon, born in Geneva in 1937, is a québécois writer.-Novels:* L'ogre de Barbarie * La Chausse-Trappe * L'enfant du Cinquième Nord * Le Livre de Seul * L'ultime Alliance...

     (1937–...)
  • Andrée Brunin
    Andrée Brunin
    Andrée Brunin was a French poet Her output includes :*Fille du Vent, Poems - Nomad’s land, Paris, 2003.*La pensée, story for children....

     (1937–1993)
  • Hélène Cixous
    Hélène Cixous
    Hélène Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. She holds honorary degrees from Queen's University and the University of Alberta in Canada; University College Dublin in Ireland; the University of York and University College...

     (1937–...)
  • Abdelkebir Khatibi
    Abdelkebir Khatibi
    Abdelkebir Khatibi was a Moroccan literary critic, novelist and playwright. Affected in his late twenties by the rebellious spirit of 1960s counterculture, he challenged in his writings the social and political norms upon which the countries of the Maghreb region were constructed.-Career:A native...

     (1938–...)

1940-1949

  • Annie Ernaux
    Annie Ernaux
    Annie Ernaux is a French writer.She won the Prix Renaudot in 1984 for her book La Place, an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father and her experiences growing up in a small town in France, and her subsequent process of moving into adulthood and away from her...

     (1940–...)
  • J.M.G. Le Clézio (1940–...)
  • Maurice Thuilière (1940–...)
  • Emmanuel Hocquard
    Emmanuel Hocquard
    Emmanuel Hocquard is a French poet who grew up in Tangier, Morocco. He served as the editor of the small press Orange Export Ltd., and, with Claude Royet-Journoud, edited two anthologies of new American poets, 21+1: Poètes américains ď aujourďhui and 49+1...

     (1940–...)
  • Jean Daive
    Jean Daive
    Jean Daive is a poet and translator. He is the author of novels, collections of poetry and has translated work by Paul Celan and Robert Creeley among others....

     (1941–...)
  • Julia Kristeva
    Julia Kristeva
    Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...

     (1941–...)
  • Jean Marcel
    Jean Marcel
    Jean Marcel was the seventh Anglican Bishop of Madagascar from 1961 to 1969 when the diocese split into three. Marcel then became Bishop of Antananarivo until 1975....

     (1941–...)
  • François Weyergans
    François Weyergans
    François Weyergans is a Belgian writer and director. His father, Franz Weyergans, was a Belgian and also a writer, while his mother was from Avignon in France...

    (1941–...)
  • Josaphat-Robert Large
    Josaphat-Robert Large
    Josaphat-Robert Large is a Haitian-American poet, novelist and art critic. His novel Les terres entourées de larmes [Shore surrounded with tears] won the prestigious Prix littéraire des Caraïbes in 2003...

     (1942–...)
  • Yves Manglou
    Yves Manglou
    200px|right|thumb|Yves Manglou, [[Paris]] 2006.Yves Manglou is a Réunionese writer who writes in both French and Réunion Creole.-Biography:...

     (1943–...)
  • Tahar Ben Jelloun
    Tahar Ben Jelloun
    Tahar Ben Jelloun is a Moroccan poet and writer. The entirety of his work is written in French, although his first language is Arabic.-Life:...

     (1944–...)
  • Doumbi Fakoly
    Doumbi Fakoly
    -Biography:Born in 1944 in Kita, Mali, Doumbi Fakoly spent his childhood in Senegal. He went on to study in France, where he obtained a degree in banking...

     (1944–...)
  • Daniel Pennac
    Daniel Pennac
    Daniel Pennac is a French writer. He received the Prix Renaudot in 2007 for his essay Chagrin d'école.After studying in Nice he became a teacher...

     (1944–...)
  • Noëlle Châtelet
    Noëlle Châtelet
    Noëlle Châtelet , born 16 October 1944 in Meudon the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France, as Noëlle Jospin, is French writer and lecturer at the Paris Descartes University in the humanities...

     (1944-...)
  • Françoise Chandernagor
    Françoise Chandernagor
    Françoise Chandernagor is a French writer, born June 15, 1945. She is the daughter of André Chandernagor. She is a former student of the National School of Administration - École nationale d'administration, and she became a member of the Council of State in 1969.-Biography:In 1991, Françoise...

     (1945–...)
  • Tony Duvert
    Tony Duvert
    Tony Duvert was a French writer and philosopher. In the 1970s he achieved some renown, winning the Prix Medicis in 1973 for his novel Paysage de Fantaisie . Duvert's writings are notable both for their style and core themes: the celebration and defence of pedophilia, and criticism of modern...

     (1945–...)
  • Pierre Michon
    Pierre Michon
    Pierre Michon is a French writer. His first novel, Small lives , is widely regarded as a masterpiece in contemporary French literature. He won several prizes for Small lives, The Origin of the World and his body of work...

     (1945–...)
  • Gisèle Bienne
    Gisèle Bienne
    Gisèle Bienne is a French writer who has written many novels. She lives in Reims , where she conducts writing workshops after she has been literature teacher and painter. She has published more than a dozen novels and won two literary awards. She also writes for magazines...

     (1946-...)
  • Renaud Camus
    Renaud Camus
    -Biography:He was born in 1946 in Chamalières, Puy-de-Dôme, in the Auvergne region of France. He spent some time studying in England and traveling in the United States, particularly New York and California...

     (1946–...)
  • Élisabeth Vonarburg
    Élisabeth Vonarburg
    Élisabeth Vonarburg is a science fiction writer. She was born in Paris and has lived in Chicoutimi , Quebec, Canada since 1973....

     (1947–...)
  • René Frégni  (1947–...)
  • Jean-Pierre Poccioni
    Jean-Pierre Poccioni
    Jean-Pierre Poccioni is a French writer, whose first novel, Le Beau Désordre was published in 2000.His latest novel was published in January 2006, and is entitled La Maison du Faune.-References:...

    (1948–...)
  • Amin Maalouf
    Amin Maalouf
    Amin Maalouf , born 25 February 1949 in Beirut, is a Lebanese-born French author. Although his native language is Arabic, he writes in French, and his works have been translated into many languages. He received the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for his novel The Rock of Tanios...

     (1949–...)
  • Didier Daeninckx
    Didier Daeninckx
    Didier Daeninckx is a French author and left-wing politician, best known for his romans noirs. He frequently uses fictional settings to transport social critique; his writings are characterized by a sobering social realism...

     (1949–...)
  • Pierre Bergounioux
    Pierre Bergounioux
    Pierre Bergounioux is a French writer. He won the 1986 Prix Alain-Fournier for his second novel, Ce pas et le suivant...

     (1949–...)
  • Boualem Sansal
    Boualem Sansal
    Boualem Sansal is an internationally acclaimed Algerian author.Boualem Sansal was born in Algeria in 1949. Trained as an engineer with a doctorate in economics, he began writing novels at the age of 50 after retiring from his job as a high-ranking official in the Algerian government...

     (1949-...)

1950 to today

  • Bernard Bonnejean
    Bernard Bonnejean
    (born 10 June 1950 in Ernée (Mayenne), on June 10, 1950, is a French author, specialist of catholic French poetry of 19th and 20th centuries.-Youth:...

     (1950-...)
  • Jean-Paul Dubois
    Jean-Paul Dubois
    Jean-Paul Dubois is a French writer.He is the author of several novels and travel pieces, and reports for Le Nouvel Observateur. His latest novel, Une vie française, published in French in 2004 and in English in 2007, is a saga of the French baby boom generation, from the idealism of the 1960s to...

     (1950–...)
  • Moussa Konaté
    Moussa Konaté
    Moussa Konaté is a Malian writer, born in 1951 in Kita, Mali.A graduate in Humanities at Mali's Ecole Normale Supérieure in Bamako, he was a teacher for several years before turning to writing...

     (1951–...)
  • Salim Jay
    Salim Jay
    Salim Jay is a Moroccan novelist, essayist and literary critic. He was born in Paris from a Moroccan father and a French mother. He has written about 20 books, numerous essays and more than thousand newspaper articles....

      (1951–...)
  • Dan Franck
    Dan Franck
    Dan Franck is a French novelist.His novel La Séparation won the 1991 Prix Renaudot, and was made into a movie, La Séparation.-Works:*Apolline, Seuil, 1997, ISBN 9782020307451...

     (1952–...)
  • Charbel Tayah (1953–...)
  • Dany Laferrière
    Dany Laferrière
    Dany Laferrière is a francophone Haitian and Canadian novelist and journalist.Born in Port-au-Prince, Haïti, and raised in Petit Goâve, Laferrière worked as a journalist in Haïti before moving to Canada in 1976...

     (1953–...)
  • Françoise Bettencourt Meyers
    Françoise Bettencourt Meyers
    Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers is a French heiress and author of Bible commentaries and works on Jewish-Christian relations. The only daughter and thus under French law heiress of Liliane Bettencourt, Meyers was raised in a strictly Catholic household. However she married the Jewish grandson of a...

     (1953-...)
  • Gérard Caramaro (1953–...)
  • Nancy Huston
    Nancy Huston
    Nancy Louise Huston, OC is a Canadian-born novelist and essayist who writes primarily in French and translates her own works into English.-Biography:...

     (1953–...)
  • Patrick Chamoiseau
    Patrick Chamoiseau
    Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement.-Biography:Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to...

     (1953–...)
  • François Bon
    Francois Bon
    - Bibliography :* Sortie d'Usine, - Minuit, 1979.* Limite, - Minuit, 1985* Le Crime de Buzon, - Minuit, 1986* Un fait divers, - Minuit, 1994* La Folie Rabelais, essai - Minuit, 1990* Calvaire des chiens, - Minuit, 1990...

     (1953–...)
  • Paul Dirmeikis
    Paul Dirmeikis
    Paul Dirmeikis is a Francophone poet, composer, singer, and painter who lives in Brittany. He is of Lithuanian ancestry , and a member of the Lithuanian Composers Union....

     (1954–)
  • Tahar Djaout
    Tahar Djaout
    Tahar Djaout was an Algerian journalist, poet, and fiction writer. He was assassinated by the Armed Islamic Group because of his support of secularism and opposition to what he considered fanaticism. He was attacked on May 26, 1993, as he was leaving his home in Bainem, Algeria. He died on June 2,...

     (1954–1993)
  • Dai Sijie
    Dai Sijie
    Dai Sijie is a French author and filmmaker of Chinese ancestry.-Biography:Dai Sijie was born in China in 1954. Because he came from an educated middle-class family, the Maoist government sent him to a reeducation camp in rural Sichuan from 1971 to 1974, during the Cultural Revolution. After his...

     (1954–)
  • Pascale Roze
    Pascale Roze
    Pascale Roze is a French playwright, and novelist.After a literature degree, she worked for fifteen years with Gabriel Garran International French Theater.-Novels:...

     (1954–)
  • Didier Hallépée (1955-...)
  • Jean-Pierre Vallotton
    Jean-Pierre Vallotton
    Jean-Pierre Vallotton is a French-speaking Swiss poet, writer and artist.-Background:Jean-Pierre Vallotton was born in Geneva in 1955. He studied literature and drama....

     (1955-...)
  • Jean-Pierre Thiollet
    Jean-Pierre Thiollet
    Jean-Pierre Thiollet is a French writer and journalist. He usually lives in Paris and is the author of numerous books.Since 2007, he has been a member of the World Grand Family of Lebanon ....

     (1956–...)
  • Khal Torabully
    Khal Torabully
    Khal Torabully is a Mauritian and French poet, who has coined the concept of "coolitude." Born in Mauritius in 1956, in the capital city Port Louis, his father was a Trinidadian sailor and his mother was a descendant of migrants from India and Malaysia....

     (1956)
  • Hervé Le Tellier
    Hervé Le Tellier
    Hervé Le Tellier is a French writer and linguist, and a member of the international literary group Oulipo...

     (1957–...)
  • Youssef Rzouga
    Youssef Rzouga
    Youssef Rzouga is a Tunisian poet, born on March 21, 1957 in Mahdia, Tunisia. He began writing in 1967. His first published text was "Something called need," a short story in the magazine Radio et Télévision .- Studies:*Primary :...

     (1957–...)
  • Jean-Philippe Toussaint
    Jean-Philippe Toussaint
    Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a Belgian prose writer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir...

     (1957–...)
  • Azouz Begag
    Azouz Begag
    Azouz Begag, is a French writer, politician and researcher in economics and sociology at the CNRS. He was the delegate minister for equal opportunities of France in the government of French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin till 5 April 2007...

     (1957–...)
  • Michel Houellebecq
    Michel Houellebecq
    Michel Houellebecq , born Michel Thomas, 26 February 1958—or 1956 —on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French author, filmmaker and poet. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire;...

     (1958–...)
  • Marc-Édouard Nabe
    Marc-Édouard Nabe
    Marc-Édouard Nabe , whose real name is Alain Zannini, is a French writer. He is also a painter, and a jazz guitarist.-Biography:...

     (1958–...)
  • Denis Robert
    Denis Robert
    Denis Robert is a French freelance journalist and a writer. Robert formerly worked for Libération newspaper for 12 years....

     (1958–...)
  • Benjamin Sehene
    Benjamin Sehene
    Benjamin Sehene is a Rwandan author whose work primarily focuses on questions of identity and the events surrounding the Rwandan genocide. He has spent much of life in Canada and France....

     (1959–...)
  • Christine Angot
    Christine Angot
    Christine Angot is a French writer, novelist and playwright.-Life:Born Pierrette, Marie-Clotilde Schwartz in Châteauroux, Indre, she is perhaps best known for her 1999 novel L'Inceste which recounts an incestuous relationship with her father.It is a subject which appears in several of her...

     (1959–...)
  • Frédéric-Yves Jeannet
    Frédéric-Yves Jeannet
    Frédéric-Yves Jeannet is a writer and professor of French origin who emigrated to Mexico in his youth. He was born in Grenoble, France, in 1959 and left it in 1975. Jeannet earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in comparative literature at the University of Grenoble. He then lived in London until 1977,...

     (1959–...)
  • Jacques Bonjawo
    Jacques Bonjawo
    Jacques Bonjawo is a software engineer, an author and a columnist in the application of technology to sustainable development. Jacques is most noted for his work at Microsoft in 1997–2006 as senior program manager for the MSN Group...

     (1960–...)
  • Xavier Hanotte (1960–...)
  • Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
    Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
    Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is a French dramatist, novelist and fiction writer. His plays have been staged in over fifty countries all over the world.- Life :...

     (1960–...)
  • Simonetta Greggio
    Simonetta Greggio
    Simonetta Greggio is an Italian novelist who writes in French.- Biography :Born on 21 April 1961 in Padova, Italy, Simonetta Greggio moved to Paris, France, in 1981 and has been living there since. Before turning to literature, she contributed as a journalist to several magazines such as City,...

     (1961–...)
  • Bernard Werber
    Bernard Werber
    Bernard Werber is a French science fiction writer active since the 1990s.-Novels:His style of writing mixes different literary genres, notably the saga, the science fiction of the inter-war years, and tracts of philosophy.In most of his novels, Bernard Werber uses the same form of construction,...

     (1961–...)
  • Charles Dantzig
    Charles Dantzig
    - Early life and career :Charles Dantzig was born into a family of professors of medicine. He obtained the baccalauréate at the age of seventeen, but rather than following the family tradition or taking up his place to prepare the entrance exams for the Ecole Normale Supérieure, he decided to study...

     (1961–...)
  • Philippe Claudel
    Philippe Claudel
    Philippe Claudel , is a French writer and film director.Claudel was born in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, Meurthe-et-Moselle. In addition to his writing, Claudel is a Professor of Literature at the University of Nancy....

     (1962–...)
  • Beatrice Hammer
    Beatrice Hammer
    Beatrice Hammer is a French writer. She was born in Paris. Her work has not been translated yet into English.-Bibliography:* Camille, short story in Les Coupons de Magali et autres nouvelles, Sépia 1994...

     (1963–...)
  • Frédéric Lenormand (1964–...)
  • Patrick Lowie (1964–...)
  • Olivia Rosenthal (1965–...)
  • Ann Scott
    Ann Scott
    Ann Scott is a French novelist.She is regarded as a social realist for her novels, which paint detailed portraits of contemporary youth haunted by teenage boredom, drugs, materialism, status obsession and social trangression. Her second novel Superstars has given her a cult status in...

     (1965–...)
  • Jose Da Silveira (1965–...)
  • Françoise Nimal (1967–...)
  • Jonathan Littell
    Jonathan Littell
    Jonathan Littell is a bilingual writer living in Barcelona. He grew up in France and United States and is a dual citizen of both countries. After acquiring his bachelor degree he worked for a humanitarian organisation for nine years, leaving his job in 2001 in order to concentrate on writing...

     (1967–...)
  • Amélie Nothomb
    Amélie Nothomb
    Amélie Nothomb is a Belgian writer who writes in French.- Biography :Amélie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan to Belgian diplomats. She lived there until she was five years old, and then subsequently lived in China, New York, Bangladesh, Burma, Coventry and Laos...

     (1967–...)
  • Loïc Barrière (1967–...)
  • Hervé Caumont (1968–...)
  • Christophe Ferré (1968–...)
  • Virginie Despentes
    Virginie Despentes
    Virginie Despentes is a French writer, novelist and filmmaker.-Life:She settled in Lyon, where she worked multiple odd jobs; including maid, prostitute in "massage parlors" and peep shows, recorded store sales, and a freelance rock journalist and pornographic film critic.She moved to Paris.Her...

     (1969–...)
  • Louis Emond
    Louis Émond
    - Biography :Émond was born in Lévis, Quebec, Canada and earned his International Baccalaureate at the Petit Séminaire in Quebec City, where he studied under such teachers as Monique Ségal and Albert Dallard. At this time he discovered Noam Chomsky and wrote a thesis on the social satire in Les...

     (1969–...)
  • Christophe Honoré
    Christophe Honoré
    Christophe Honoré is a French writer and film director born in Carhaix, Finistère in 1970.After moving to Paris in 1995, he wrote articles in "Les Cahiers du Cinéma." He started writing soon-after. His 1996 book Tout contre Léo talks about HIV and is aimed at young adults; he made it into a movie...

     (1970–...)
  • Nicolas Ancion (1971-...)
  • Luis de Miranda
    Luis de Miranda
    Luis de Miranda is a man of letters, alternatively novelist, philosopher, editor, film director. Born in Portugal in 1971, Luis de Miranda lived in Paris since he was a child. Soon, he toured the world. Africa, Asia, and then America, after his degree at HEC in 1994...

     (1971-...)
  • Roland Michel Tremblay
    Roland Michel Tremblay
    Roland Michel Tremblay is a French Canadian author, poet, scriptwriter, development producer and science-fiction consultant. He has been living in London since 1995.- Biography :...

     (1972–...)
  • Yves Trottier (1973–...)
  • Tanguy Viel (1973–...)
  • Romain Sardou
    Romain Sardou
    Romain Sardou , is a French novelist born in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine. He is the son of the singer and songwriter Michel Sardou.-Biography:...

     (1974–...)
  • Guillaume Musso
    Guillaume Musso
    Guillaume Musso is one of the bestselling authors in France today.-Career:He was born in 1974 in Antibes , France and from his early childhood with reading books and plays, Guillaume Musso became convinced that one day, he too would write novels.After finishing high school in France, Guillaume...

     (1974-...)
  • Olivier Adam
    Olivier Adam
    Olivier Adam is a French writer. His first novel Je vais bien, ne t’en fais pas was made into a movie. He also writes youth books, among them La messe anniversaire. Adam won the 2004 Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for Passer l'hiver.-External links:...

     (1974-...)
  • Arno Bertina (1975–...)
  • Emily Tanimura (1979-...)


See also

  • French literature
    French literature
    French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...

  • Francophone literature
    Francophone literature
    Francophone literature is literature written in the French language. Most often the term is misused to refer only to literature from francophone countries outside France, but this category includes French Literature, or Literature of France, that is literature written by French authors...

  • Lists of French language poets, French novelists, French people, authors
  • Quebec literature
  • List of Quebec authors
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