famous french essays

22 Famous French Writers and their greatest works

• Post category: Facts and history / French Language
• Post author: Nassie Angadi

With language and a literary tradition at the heart of French culture , it’s no surprise that there are many famous French writers out there. The French have long considered that there is beauty in the written word, and that belief has birthed some of the most admired authors and literary figures in the world.

Unlike English, there are official rules to the French language . An institution called the Académie Française was created in 1635 and charged with the responsibility to define French language dictionary, grammar, and punctuation .

And given France’s tumultuous history over the centuries, there has been plenty of inspiration its writers. From philosophical writings , novels, plays and even science fiction, there is a bit of everything to please even the most discerning reader.

These French authors have been translated into dozens of languages, so I have linked to their bilingual and english editions of the books below. So let’s take a look at some of the most famous French writers of all time, shall we? Allons-y!

1. Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885)

One of France’s most famous writers has to be Victor Hugo. With a career spanning over 60 years, he wrote everything from poetry to satire, critical essays and historical odysseys.

His most popular works that have been translated into over 60 languages have to be Les Miserables and Hunchback of Notre Dame (which was not intended to be a children’s tale ). He was also renowned for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations (The Contemplations) and La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages).

But Victor Hugo did more than just write fictional novels. He was also a passionate supporter of republicanism after the Revolution, and served in politics as a deputy in the Assemblée Nationale , as well as a senator.

He gave several speeches to end poverty, as well as to establish universal suffrage (for women) and free education for all children. His advocacy in the 19th century to abolish the death penalty became renowned internationally. For his works and service to the French nation, he is buried in the Panthéon in Paris.

2. Alexandre Dumas (1802 – 1870)

From the Comte of Monte Cristo to the Three Muskateers , Alexandre Dumas is one of the most well-known authors in France.

His full name was Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, and he was born as the grandson of a French Marquis and an enslaved woman of Afro-Caribbean ancestry. Born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), his father was considered mixed-race and had to be legally freed.

Like his father, Alexandre used the name “Dumas” which was the name of his slave grandmother, Marie-Cessette Dumas.

Because his grandfather had been a Marquis and his father a famous general, Dumas had access to aristocratic circles and worked for King Louis Philippe, the last of the French Kings as well as being involved in state affairs with his friend Victor Hugo.

Beyond his work for the French government, he wrote many novels in a variety of genres. His novels became so popular that they were soon translated into English and other languages.

3. Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

Going by a single nom de plume (pen name) is Voltaire, whose real name was François-Marie Arouet. A prolific writer, he produced works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and even scientific expositions.

Among his most famous books is Letters to England and Candide . One of the key voices of the 1789 French Revolution , Voltaire was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. Voltaire

It was the “Age of Enlightenment”, with French writers like Voltaire were openly discussing concepts like personal happiness and civil liberties.

Voltaire produced more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets, producing this quantity of work while drinking 50-75 cups of coffee 50–72 a day. He died at 83, and is buried at the Pantheon .

4. Honoré de Balzac (1799 – 1850)

French writer Honoré de Balzac is most well known for his opus La Comédie Humaine . While he wrote plenty of other novels and plays, it is his observation of the human condition in la Comédie Humaine that really put him on the map.

Rather than a novel, it is a collection of short stories containing 91 finished works, including a variety of stories, novels, and essays.

It is the intrigue of the various aspects of life in France that makes for interesting reading, with Balzac tackling even topics considered “ unsuitable ” to provide real insights.

The stories cover a broad range of topics from money, power, women, and society, set in the period after the French Revolution .

Although Balzac was already a famous author at the time, the stories took a while to be translated into English, since it was considered improper for Victorian audiences in England.

5. George Sand (1804 – 1876)

One of the most popular female writers in France in her lifetime is Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, better known as George Sand.

Choosing to wear male attire in public, she was a huge advocate for women’s rights and the working class. She even started her own newspaper, and her political writings brought her much attention. (She also openly had many famous lovers, including musician Frederic Chopin and actress Marie Dorval.)

Her most famous books include Indiana , and Ce que disent les fleurs ( What the flowers say ), and her Intimate Journal .

6. Emile Zola (1840 – 1902)

French Novelist Émile Zola wrote many short stories, essays and books. However, his most famous work is probably a newspaper article called “ J’accuse “, meaning “I accuse”.

It was written in defense of a Jewish officer in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus who was falsely accused of being a spy. Anti-semitism was rampant, and Dreyfus was put on trial, court-martialled, and convicted without much evidence.

Émile Zola risked his career to write a passionate defence of Dreyfus, and the Dreyfus affair would deeply divide France. (The Dreyfus affair is still well-known today, it had such an impact on French culture.)

Eventually the truth came out, that he was framed and Zola was hailed as a hero for his passionate intervention. (Dreyfus too was later awarded the French Legion d’honneur .) You can read more about Dreyfus and other famous French people here.

Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902. His most famous works include Les Mystères de Marseille ( Mysteries of Marseille ), Thérèse Raquin , and Rougon-Macquar t.

7. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 – 1944)

The incontournable of French books always has to be Le Petit Prince . And the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is another one of the notable French writers honored at the Panthéon .

At first glance, le Petit Prince seems like a book for small children . However, once you start to read it, the layers of wisdom that the book doles out are worthy of reading for adults and kids alike.

Saint-Exupéry was a famed aviator before becoming a writer. He joined the Free France air force during World War II, and disappeared while on a reconnaissance mission from Corsica over the Mediterranean on 31 July 1944.

His body was never found. Many of his works were published posthumously by his family. Other popular works by Saint-Exupéry include Airman’s Odyssey and Wind, Sand & Stars .

These days the Petit Prince is one of the highest-selling books of all time in France.

8. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) 

French Writer Jean-Paul Sartre was philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and political activist.

Born in Paris, he was also the partner of another famous French writer-philosopher and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. He and Simone met in university, and lived in Paris under the German Reich occupation during World War II.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. Jean-Paul Sartre

A liberal with sympathies to the Left, his famous books include novel La Nausée (Nausea) and the Age of Reason . He also wrote extensively post-war about the working class and neglected minority groups, namely French Jews and black people.

He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature (which he initially attempted to refuse).

9. Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986)

French writer and female activist Simone de Beauvoir became famous for her writings on both feminist theory and feminist existentialism.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. Simone de Beauvoir

France would grant women the right to vote during her lifetime in 1946, due to the advocacy work of writers and philosophers like her.

Among her most famous books was the 1949 treatise  The Second Sex , a detailed analysis of women’s oppression and contemporary feminism, as well as The Coming of Age . She would win France’s top prize for writers, the Prix Goncourt in 1954.

She would live with Jean-Paul Sartre for much of her life, but they did not have children. They had an open relationship, and Beauvoir was known to be bisexual. They are buried together in the Cemetery of Montparnasse in Paris.

10. Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)

One of the most famous French writers, Albert Camus was born in French Algeria to Pieds Noirs parents, eventually studying philosophy at the University of Algiers.

By the time he made it to in Paris, the Germans had invaded France during World War II. Camus joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. Albert Camus

His most famous work is the Stranger which is still a best seller today. He was awarded the  1957 Nobel Prize in Literature  at the age of 44, at the time the second-youngest recipient in history.

With multiple marriages and affairs under his belt, he is attributed to the romantic quote : “This is love, giving it one’s all, sacrificing everything without hope of it being returned.”

11. Molière (1622 – 1673)

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin is better known by his stage name Molière, one of the greatest French writers the country has ever produced.

A playwright, actor, and poet , his works are regarded as an extraordinary contribution to the French language and world literature. His works include comedies, farces, tragi-comedies, and more.

His most famous plays and productions include The Misanthrope , Tartuffe , and The School for Wives and Learned Ladies .

The renowned Comédie Française theatre in Paris has performed more of his works than any other playwright in history.

12. Jules Verne (1828 – 1905)

If you enjoy science fiction, French novelist Jules Verne is your guy. You may have heard of a few of his titles like Journey to the Center of the Earth , 20000 Leagues Under the Seas: A World Tour Underwater , and of course Around the world in 80 days .

Capturing the imagination of young and old, his works have an extraordinary ability to transport you to another time and place. Even reading the books today, there is a sense of wonder at what could be possible.

In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous plays, short stories, autobiographies, poetry, and even songs. His work has been adapted for film and television, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, and video games.

13. Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922)

One of the most influential authors of the 20th century, Marcel Proust was born in the immediate aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war , a particularly painful period in French history .

As such, many of his writings are about large societal changes, particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes, as occurred in France during that period.

His most famous work is In Search of Lost Time which contains seven volumes totalling around 3,200 pages and features more than 2000 different characters.

Proust died before he was able to complete the drafts and proofs of the final volumes, and the last three books in the set were edited by his brother Robert and published posthumously.

14. Edmond de Goncourt (1822 – 1896) 

Working with his brother Jules, Edmond de Goncourt was a prolific writer, with many works such as Histoire de la Société Française pendant la Révolution  (History of French society during the Revolution) and Portraits Intimes du XVIIIe Siècle  (Intimate portraits of the 18th century).

After his brother Jules died, Edmond founded the Académie Goncourt in his honor, one of the most prestigious institutions in France today. With 10 judges, the Académie Goncourt awards every December the Prix Goncourt to writers who have produced works in the French language.

Edmond continued to produce works after Jules died, including La Fille Elisa , and Chérie.

15. Marquis de Sade (1740 – 1814)

One French author who is perhaps more famous than infamous is Donatien Alphonse François, the Marquis de Sade.

With a vast number of short stories, novels and anonymous tracts about his “libertine habits in the bedroom”, the Marquis de Sade was considered a public menace.

On July 14, 1789, when revolutionaries stormed into the fort at Bastille Saint-Antoine during the French revolution, there were only 7 prisoners there, among them the infamous Marquis de Sade. He had already been held there for over 10 years, without any specific charge.

In fact, a good majority of his works were written in prison. His writings continue to fascinate and repel even today. You can read his one of his most famous works 120 days here.

The Marquis would survive the revolution, but would return in and out of prison several times over the rest of his life.

16. André Malraux (1901 – 1976)

Malraux’s novel La Condition Humaine (Man’s Fate) won the Prix Goncourt in 1933.

During World War II, he joined the French army and later the Resistance. In 1944, he was captured by German secret service but managed to survive.

After the war, Malraux was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance and the Croix de guerre by the French government and the Distinguished Service Order by the British.

He was appointed by President Charles de Gaulle as information minister (1945–46) and later as France’s first cultural affairs minister (1959–1969). He continued to write however, with one of his popular books after the war being  Les Voix du Silence (The Voices of Silence) .

17. Marguerite Duras (1914 – 1996)

Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu, known as Marguerite Duras, has been one of France’s top 20th century writers with much international acclaim.

A novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker, her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her an Oscar nomination.

She was born in French Indochina (now Vietnam), when France occupied the country, and many of her works reflected her dual upbringing.

Her most famous books include L’Amant (The Lover) for which she received the Prix Goncourt, and Les Yeux Verts (Green Eyes) .

18. Charles Perrault (1628 – 1703)

You may be surprised to know that Puss in Boots, aka Chat Botté , is French. Written by famous French author  Charles Perrault in the 16th century, his other book titles include:

• Mother Goose
• Little Red Riding Hood
• Cinderella (adapted version from Grimm Brothers)
• Sleeping Beauty (adapted version from Grimm Brothers)

Charles Perrault worked as a secretary at the Château de Breteuil outside of Paris, where some of his most famous works were written.

19. Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786 – 1859)

Born in the age of the French Revolution , Marceline Desbordes-Valmore was considered one of the top poets of her time.

With rather dark and depressing themes, her poetry reflected her troubled life. Some of her most famous works include the classic poems:

• Les Roses de Saadi (1860; The roses of Saadi)
• Pauvres Fleurs (1839; “Poor Flowers”),
• Les Pleurs (1833; “The Tears”),
• Bouquets et prières (1843; “Bouquets and Prayers”)

She was also an actress and singer, as well as winning the Prix Lambert for literature and philosophy. Marceline is the only female writer included in the famous Les Poètes maudits anthology published by Paul Verlaine in 1884.

20. Nostradamus (1503 – 1566)

Notradamus may not be a writer in the traditional sense, but it was his book of prophecies that have him still recognized as a household name. Born in St. Remy de Provence , the legendary foreseer Nostradamus, was actually a medical doctor.

He was born into a Jewish family that converted due to religious tensions, and had studied to become a doctor in nearby Avignon and Montpellier . It was a good career choice that was quite critical as the plague was rampant in his time.

Given the fears of the era and his study of medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and the occult, he wrote his famous book “ Les Prophéties  (The Prophecies). His books and writings would bring him to the attention of French Queen Catherine de’ Medici , who became one of Nostradamus’s greatest admirers.

With his writing hinting at unnamed threats to the royal family , she summoned him to Paris to explain them and to draw up horoscopes for her children. She would go on to make him part of her entourage.

After his death, his rather vague predictions came to befall Catholic Queen Catherine. She would lose all her sons in short order, and France would fall into a civil and religious war between Catholics and Protestants.

Over 3 million French people are believed to have died in that period, making it one of the deadliest religious wars in Europe. And with that, Nostradamus’s reputation was sealed. You can watch a movie about his prophecies here.

21. Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914)

In the 19th century, French writer Frédéric Mistral became famous for his poem Mirèio (Mireille) published in 1859. Mirèio is a long poem in the Provençal Occitan language, consisting of twelve songs about the thwarted love of Vincent and Mireille.

He received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of the fresh originality and true inspiration of his poetic production, which faithfully reflects the natural scenery and native spirit of his people, and, in addition, his significant work as a Provençal philologist”.

With Mistral’s Félibrige movement, an association that promoted the Provençale language, it achieved great literary recognition and so became the most popular term for Occitan, used almost interchangeably.

22. Jacques Prévert (1900 – 1977)

Poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert wrote a number of screenplays, but it is his poetry that are still taught in French schools today.

Along with collaborations with the French artist Marc Chagall some of his most famous works include:

• Paroles  (Words) (1946), 
• Spectacle  (1951), 
• La Pluie et le beau temps  (Rain and Good Weather) (1955), 
• Histoires  (Stories) (1963), 
• Fatras  (1971),
• Choses et autres  (Things and Others) (1973). 

His poem Les feuilles mortes written in 1945 at the end of WWII, would go on to become an internationally renowned song, famous all over the world.

French renditions of Les Feuilles Mortes have been performed by Yves Montand and Édith Piaf, while the most famous English version was titled “Autumn Leaves”, and was sung by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

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Guide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne’s Essays

Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University

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Matthew Sharpe is part of an ARC funded project on modern reinventions of the ancient idea of "philosophy as a way of life", in which Montaigne is a central figure.

Deakin University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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When Michel de Montaigne retired to his family estate in 1572, aged 38, he tells us that he wanted to write his famous Essays as a distraction for his idle mind . He neither wanted nor expected people beyond his circle of friends to be too interested.

His Essays’ preface almost warns us off:

Reader, you have here an honest book; … in writing it, I have proposed to myself no other than a domestic and private end. I have had no consideration at all either to your service or to my glory … Thus, reader, I myself am the matter of my book: there’s no reason that you should employ your leisure upon so frivolous and vain a subject. Therefore farewell.

The ensuing, free-ranging essays, although steeped in classical poetry, history and philosophy, are unquestionably something new in the history of Western thought. They were almost scandalous for their day.

No one before Montaigne in the Western canon had thought to devote pages to subjects as diverse and seemingly insignificant as “Of Smells”, “Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes”, “Of Posting” (letters, that is), “Of Thumbs” or “Of Sleep” — let alone reflections on the unruliness of the male appendage , a subject which repeatedly concerned him.

French philosopher Jacques Rancière has recently argued that modernism began with the opening up of the mundane, private and ordinary to artistic treatment. Modern art no longer restricts its subject matters to classical myths, biblical tales, the battles and dealings of Princes and prelates.

If Rancière is right, it could be said that Montaigne’s 107 Essays, each between several hundred words and (in one case) several hundred pages, came close to inventing modernism in the late 16th century.

Montaigne frequently apologises for writing so much about himself. He is only a second rate politician and one-time Mayor of Bourdeaux, after all. With an almost Socratic irony , he tells us most about his own habits of writing in the essays titled “Of Presumption”, “Of Giving the Lie”, “Of Vanity”, and “Of Repentance”.

But the message of this latter essay is, quite simply, that non, je ne regrette rien , as a more recent French icon sang:

Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have lived it; I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future; and if I am not much deceived, I am the same within that I am without … I have seen the grass, the blossom, and the fruit, and now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally.

Montaigne’s persistence in assembling his extraordinary dossier of stories, arguments, asides and observations on nearly everything under the sun (from how to parley with an enemy to whether women should be so demure in matters of sex , has been celebrated by admirers in nearly every generation.

Within a decade of his death, his Essays had left their mark on Bacon and Shakespeare. He was a hero to the enlighteners Montesquieu and Diderot. Voltaire celebrated Montaigne - a man educated only by his own reading, his father and his childhood tutors – as “the least methodical of all philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable”. Nietzsche claimed that the very existence of Montaigne’s Essays added to the joy of living in this world.

More recently, Sarah Bakewell’s charming engagement with Montaigne, How to Live or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010) made the best-sellers’ lists. Even today’s initiatives in teaching philosophy in schools can look back to Montaigne (and his “ On the Education of Children ”) as a patron saint or sage .

So what are these Essays, which Montaigne protested were indistinguishable from their author? (“ My book and I go hand in hand together ”).

It’s a good question.

Anyone who tries to read the Essays systematically soon finds themselves overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of examples, anecdotes, digressions and curios Montaigne assembles for our delectation, often without more than the hint of a reason why.

To open the book is to venture into a world in which fortune consistently defies expectations; our senses are as uncertain as our understanding is prone to error; opposites turn out very often to be conjoined (“ the most universal quality is diversity ”); even vice can lead to virtue. Many titles seem to have no direct relation to their contents. Nearly everything our author says in one place is qualified, if not overturned, elsewhere.

Without pretending to untangle all of the knots of this “ book with a wild and desultory plan ”, let me tug here on a couple of Montaigne’s threads to invite and assist new readers to find their own way.

Philosophy (and writing) as a way of life

Some scholars argued that Montaigne began writing his essays as a want-to-be Stoic , hardening himself against the horrors of the French civil and religious wars , and his grief at the loss of his best friend Étienne de La Boétie through dysentery.

Certainly, for Montaigne, as for ancient thinkers led by his favourites, Plutarch and the Roman Stoic Seneca, philosophy was not solely about constructing theoretical systems, writing books and articles. It was what one more recent admirer of Montaigne has called “ a way of life ”.

Montaigne has little time for forms of pedantry that value learning as a means to insulate scholars from the world, rather than opening out onto it. He writes :

Either our reason mocks us or it ought to have no other aim but our contentment.

We are great fools . ‘He has passed over his life in idleness,’ we say: ‘I have done nothing today.’ What? have you not lived? that is not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious of all your occupations.

One feature of the Essays is, accordingly, Montaigne’s fascination with the daily doings of men like Socrates and Cato the Younger ; two of those figures revered amongst the ancients as wise men or “ sages ”.

Their wisdom, he suggests , was chiefly evident in the lives they led (neither wrote a thing). In particular, it was proven by the nobility each showed in facing their deaths. Socrates consented serenely to taking hemlock, having been sentenced unjustly to death by the Athenians. Cato stabbed himself to death after having meditated upon Socrates’ example , in order not to cede to Julius Caesar’s coup d’état .

To achieve such “philosophic” constancy, Montaigne saw, requires a good deal more than book learning . Indeed, everything about our passions and, above all, our imagination , speaks against achieving that perfect tranquillity the classical thinkers saw as the highest philosophical goal.

We discharge our hopes and fears, very often, on the wrong objects, Montaigne notes , in an observation that anticipates the thinking of Freud and modern psychology. Always, these emotions dwell on things we cannot presently change. Sometimes, they inhibit our ability to see and deal in a supple way with the changing demands of life.

Philosophy, in this classical view, involves a retraining of our ways of thinking, seeing and being in the world. Montaigne’s earlier essay “ To philosophise is to learn how to die ” is perhaps the clearest exemplar of his indebtedness to this ancient idea of philosophy.

Yet there is a strong sense in which all of the Essays are a form of what one 20th century author has dubbed “ self-writing ”: an ethical exercise to “strengthen and enlighten” Montaigne’s own judgement, as much as that of we readers:

And though nobody should read me, have I wasted time in entertaining myself so many idle hours in so pleasing and useful thoughts? … I have no more made my book than my book has made me: it is a book consubstantial with the author, of a peculiar design, a parcel of my life …

As for the seeming disorder of the product, and Montaigne’s frequent claims that he is playing the fool , this is arguably one more feature of the Essays that reflects his Socratic irony. Montaigne wants to leave us with some work to do and scope to find our own paths through the labyrinth of his thoughts, or alternatively, to bobble about on their diverting surfaces .

A free-thinking sceptic

Yet Montaigne’s Essays, for all of their classicism and their idiosyncracies, are rightly numbered as one of the founding texts of modern thought . Their author keeps his own prerogatives, even as he bows deferentially before the altars of ancient heroes like Socrates, Cato, Alexander the Great or the Theban general Epaminondas .

There is a good deal of the Christian, Augustinian legacy in Montaigne’s makeup. And of all the philosophers, he most frequently echoes ancient sceptics like Pyrrho or Carneades who argued that we can know almost nothing with certainty. This is especially true concerning the “ultimate questions” the Catholics and Huguenots of Montaigne’s day were bloodily contesting.

Writing in a time of cruel sectarian violence , Montaigne is unconvinced by the ageless claim that having a dogmatic faith is necessary or especially effective in assisting people to love their neighbours :

Between ourselves, I have ever observed supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners to be of singular accord …

This scepticism applies as much to the pagan ideal of a perfected philosophical sage as it does to theological speculations.

Socrates’ constancy before death, Montaigne concludes, was simply too demanding for most people, almost superhuman . As for Cato’s proud suicide, Montaigne takes liberty to doubt whether it was as much the product of Stoic tranquility, as of a singular turn of mind that could take pleasure in such extreme virtue .

Indeed when it comes to his essays “ Of Moderation ” or “ Of Virtue ”, Montaigne quietly breaks the ancient mold. Instead of celebrating the feats of the world’s Catos or Alexanders, here he lists example after example of people moved by their sense of transcendent self-righteousness to acts of murderous or suicidal excess.

Even virtue can become vicious, these essays imply, unless we know how to moderate our own presumptions.

Of cannibals and cruelties

If there is one form of argument Montaigne uses most often, it is the sceptical argument drawing on the disagreement amongst even the wisest authorities.

If human beings could know if, say, the soul was immortal, with or without the body, or dissolved when we die … then the wisest people would all have come to the same conclusions by now, the argument goes. Yet even the “most knowing” authorities disagree about such things, Montaigne delights in showing us .

The existence of such “ an infinite confusion ” of opinions and customs ceases to be the problem, for Montaigne. It points the way to a new kind of solution, and could in fact enlighten us.

Documenting such manifold differences between customs and opinions is, for him, an education in humility :

Manners and opinions contrary to mine do not so much displease as instruct me; nor so much make me proud as they humble me.

His essay “ Of Cannibals ” for instance, presents all of the different aspects of American Indian culture, as known to Montaigne through travellers’ reports then filtering back into Europe. For the most part, he finds these “savages’” society ethically equal, if not far superior, to that of war-torn France’s — a perspective that Voltaire and Rousseau would echo nearly 200 years later.

We are horrified at the prospect of eating our ancestors. Yet Montaigne imagines that from the Indians’ perspective, Western practices of cremating our deceased, or burying their bodies to be devoured by the worms must seem every bit as callous.

And while we are at it, Montaigne adds that consuming people after they are dead seems a good deal less cruel and inhumane than torturing folk we don’t even know are guilty of any crime whilst they are still alive …

A gay and sociable wisdom

“So what is left then?”, the reader might ask, as Montaigne undermines one presumption after another, and piles up exceptions like they had become the only rule.

A very great deal , is the answer. With metaphysics, theology, and the feats of godlike sages all under a “ suspension of judgment ”, we become witnesses as we read the Essays to a key document in the modern revaluation and valorization of everyday life.

There is, for instance, Montaigne’s scandalously demotic habit of interlacing words, stories and actions from his neighbours, the local peasants (and peasant women) with examples from the greats of Christian and pagan history. As he writes :

I have known in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred labourers, wiser and more happy than the rectors of the university, and whom I had much rather have resembled.

By the end of the Essays, Montaigne has begun openly to suggest that, if tranquillity, constancy, bravery, and honour are the goals the wise hold up for us, they can all be seen in much greater abundance amongst the salt of the earth than amongst the rich and famous:

I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: ‘tis all one … To enter a breach, conduct an embassy, govern a people, are actions of renown; to … laugh, sell, pay, love, hate, and gently and justly converse with our own families and with ourselves … not to give our selves the lie, that is rarer, more difficult and less remarkable …

And so we arrive with these last Essays at a sentiment better known today from another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of A Gay Science (1882) .

Montaigne’s closing essays repeat the avowal that: “ I love a gay and civil wisdom … .” But in contrast to his later Germanic admirer, the music here is less Wagner or Beethoven than it is Mozart (as it were), and Montaigne’s spirit much less agonised than gently serene.

It was Voltaire, again, who said that life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. Montaigne adopts and admires the comic perspective . As he writes in “Of Experience”:

It is not of much use to go upon stilts , for, when upon stilts, we must still walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are still perched on our own bums.

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Michel de Montaigne

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• Table Of Contents

Michel de Montaigne (born February 28, 1533, Château de Montaigne, near Bordeaux, France—died September 23, 1592, Château de Montaigne) was a French writer whose Essais ( Essays ) established a new literary form. In his Essays he wrote one of the most captivating and intimate self-portraits ever given, on a par with Augustine’s and Rousseau’s.

Living, as he did, in the second half of the 16th century, Montaigne bore witness to the decline of the intellectual optimism that had marked the Renaissance . The sense of immense human possibilities, stemming from the discoveries of the New World travelers, from the rediscovery of classical antiquity, and from the opening of scholarly horizons through the works of the humanists, was shattered in France when the advent of the Calvinistic Reformation was followed closely by religious persecution and by the Wars of Religion (1562–98). These conflicts, which tore the country asunder, were in fact political and civil as well as religious wars, marked by great excesses of fanaticism and cruelty. At once deeply critical of his time and deeply involved in its preoccupations and its struggles, Montaigne chose to write about himself—“I am myself the matter of my book,” he says in his opening address to the reader—in order to arrive at certain possible truths concerning man and the human condition, in a period of ideological strife and division when all possibility of truth seemed illusory and treacherous.

Born in the family domain of Château de Montaigne in southwestern France , Michel Eyquem spent most of his life at his château and in the city of Bordeaux , 30 miles to the west. The family fortune had been founded in commerce by Montaigne’s great-grandfather, who acquired the estate and the title of nobility. His grandfather and his father expanded their activities to the realm of public service and established the family in the noblesse de robe , the administrative nobility of France. Montaigne’s father, Pierre Eyquem, served as mayor of Bordeaux.

As a young child Montaigne was tutored at home according to his father’s ideas of pedagogy , which included the creation of a cosseted ambience of gentle encouragement and the exclusive use of Latin, still the international language of educated people. As a result the boy did not learn French until he was six years old. He continued his education at the College of Guyenne, where he found the strict discipline abhorrent and the instruction only moderately interesting, and eventually at the University of Toulouse , where he studied law. Following in the public-service tradition begun by his grandfather, he entered into the magistrature, becoming a member of the Board of Excise, the new tax court of Périgueux , and, when that body was dissolved in 1557, of the Parliament of Bordeaux, one of the eight regional parliaments that constituted the French Parliament, the highest national court of justice . There, at the age of 24, he made the acquaintance of Étienne de la Boétie, a meeting that was one of the most significant events in Montaigne’s life. Between the slightly older La Boétie (1530–63), an already distinguished civil servant, humanist scholar, and writer, and Montaigne an extraordinary friendship sprang up, based on a profound intellectual and emotional closeness and reciprocity . In his essay “On Friendship” Montaigne wrote in a very touching manner about his bond with La Boétie, which he called perfect and indivisible, vastly superior to all other human alliances. When La Boétie died of dysentery, he left a void in Montaigne’s life that no other being was ever able to fill, and it is likely that Montaigne started on his writing career, six years after La Boétie’s death, in order to fill the emptiness left by the loss of the irretrievable friend.

In 1565 Montaigne was married, acting less out of love than out of a sense of familial and social duty, to Françoise de la Chassaigne, the daughter of one of his colleagues at the Parliament of Bordeaux. He fathered six daughters, five of whom died in infancy, whereas the sixth, Léonore, survived him.

In 1569 Montaigne published his first book, a French translation of the 15th-century Natural Theology by the Spanish monk Raymond Sebond. He had undertaken the task at the request of his father, who, however, died in 1568, before its publication, leaving to his oldest son the title and the domain of Montaigne.

In 1570 Montaigne sold his seat in the Bordeaux Parliament, signifying his departure from public life. After taking care of the posthumous publication of La Boétie’s works, together with his own dedicatory letters, he retired in 1571 to the castle of Montaigne in order to devote his time to reading, meditating, and writing. His library, installed in the castle’s tower, became his refuge. It was in this round room, lined with a thousand books and decorated with Greek and Latin inscriptions, that Montaigne set out to put on paper his essais , that is, the probings and testings of his mind. He spent the years from 1571 to 1580 composing the first two books of the Essays , which comprise respectively 57 and 37 chapters of greatly varying lengths; they were published in Bordeaux in 1580.

Although most of these years were dedicated to writing, Montaigne had to supervise the running of his estate as well, and he was obliged to leave his retreat from time to time, not only to travel to the court in Paris but also to intervene as mediator in several episodes of the religious conflicts in his region and beyond. Both the Roman Catholic king Henry III and the Protestant king Henry of Navarre—who as Henry IV would become king of France and convert to Roman Catholicism —honoured and respected Montaigne, but extremists on both sides criticized and harassed him.

After the 1580 publication, eager for new experiences and profoundly disgusted by the state of affairs in France, Montaigne set out to travel, and in the course of 15 months he visited areas of France, Germany , Switzerland , Austria , and Italy . Curious by nature, interested in the smallest details of dailiness, geography, and regional idiosyncrasies, Montaigne was a born traveler. He kept a record of his trip, his Journal de voyage (not intended for publication and not published until 1774), which is rich in picturesque episodes, encounters, evocations, and descriptions.

While still in Italy, in the fall of 1581, Montaigne received the news that he had been elected to the office his father had held, that of mayor of Bordeaux . Reluctant to accept, because of the dismal political situation in France and because of ill health (he suffered from kidney stones , which had also plagued him on his trip), he nevertheless assumed the position at the request of Henry III and held it for two terms, until July 1585. While the beginning of his tenure was relatively tranquil, his second term was marked by an acceleration of hostilities between the warring factions, and Montaigne played a crucial role in preserving the equilibrium between the Catholic majority and the important Protestant League representation in Bordeaux. Toward the end of his term the plague broke out in Bordeaux, soon raging out of control and killing one-third of the population.

Montaigne resumed his literary work by embarking on the third book of the Essays . After having been interrupted again, by a renewed outbreak of the plague in the area that forced Montaigne and his family to seek refuge elsewhere, by military activity close to his estate, and by diplomatic duties, when Catherine de Médicis appealed to his abilities as a negotiator to mediate between herself and Henry of Navarre—a mission that turned out to be unsuccessful—Montaigne was able to finish the work in 1587.

The year 1588 was marked by both political and literary events. During a trip to Paris Montaigne was twice arrested and briefly imprisoned by members of the Protestant League because of his loyalty to Henry III. During the same trip he supervised the publication of the fifth edition of the Essays , the first to contain the 13 chapters of Book III, as well as Books I and II, enriched with many additions. He also met Marie de Gournay, an ardent and devoted young admirer of his writings. De Gournay, a writer herself, is mentioned in the Essays as Montaigne’s “covenant daughter” and was to become his literary executrix. After the assassination of Henry III in 1589, Montaigne helped to keep Bordeaux loyal to Henry IV. He spent the last years of his life at his château, continuing to read and to reflect and to work on the Essays , adding new passages, which signify not so much profound changes in his ideas as further explorations of his thought and experience. Different illnesses beset him during this period, and he died after an attack of quinsy , an inflammation of the tonsils , which had deprived him of speech. His death occurred while he was hearing mass in his room.

Poems & Poets

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire is one of the most compelling poets of the 19th century. While Baudelaire’s contemporary Victor Hugo is generally—and sometimes regretfully—acknowledged as the greatest of 19th-century French poets, Baudelaire excels in his unprecedented expression of a complex sensibility and of modern themes within structures of classical rigor and technical artistry. Baudelaire is distinctive in French literature also in that his skills as a prose writer virtually equal his ability as a poet. His body of work includes a novella, influential translations of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe , highly perceptive criticism of contemporary art, provocative journal entries, and critical essays on a variety of subjects. Baudelaire’s work has had a tremendous influence on modernism, and his relatively slim production of poetry in particular has had a significant impact on later poets. More than a talent of 19th-century France, Baudelaire is one of the major figures in the literary history of the world.

The extent of the influence of Baudelaire’s family background on his life and work has been the subject of some interest to critics. In his life-story there are classic ingredients for neurosis, and his adult life was shaped by a triangle of family relations that some believe explains his complicated psyche. Baudelaire’s father, François Baudelaire (1759–1827), came from a family of woodworkers, winegrowers, farm laborers, and craftsmen who had lived near the Argonne forest since the 17th century. He went to Paris on a scholarship and in the course of a long career there became a priest; worked as a tutor for the children of Count Antoine de Choiseul-Praslin, even composing a manual to teach Latin; resigned his priesthood during the Reign of Terror; married Rosalie Janin, a painter, and had a son, Alphonse Baudelaire (1805–1862); earned a living as a painter; and from the age of thirty-eight until retirement worked his way up the ranks of the civil service.

François Baudelaire was 60 when he married the 26-year-old Caroline Dufayis (1793–1871) in 1819; Charles was their only child, born in Paris on April 9, 1821. Caroline was an orphan: her mother, who came from a family of solicitors from the same part of France as the Baudelaires, died in England, where she had emigrated for unknown reasons; little is known about Caroline’s father except that his name was Charles Dufayis and that he was supposed to have died in July 1795 at Quiberon Bay in southern Brittany when Revolutionary forces put down a peasant revolt aided by émigrés. It is not known whether or not the difference in his parents’ ages affected their son, but Baudelaire was just six when his father died, so he had no opportunity to know his father well. The death of François Baudelaire, though, set the scene for several major dramas in Baudelaire’s life: his inheritance at 21 of a respectable fortune; the establishment of a board of guardians that was to control Baudelaire’s financial fortunes for most of his adult life; and the remarriage of his mother to Jacques Aupick, a man with whom Baudelaire could not get along.

Aupick (1779?–1857), like Caroline Dufayis, was an orphan. His father was an Irishman who died in the military service in France; his mother, who might or might not have been his father’s legal wife, died shortly afterward. The young Aupick made his way successfully in the military: with no real family advantages, he was a general by the end of his life, and he had served as the head of the École Polytechnique (Polytechnic School) in Paris, as ambassador to Constantinople as well as to Spain, and as a senator. Caroline Dufayis Baudelaire met Aupick at the beginning of 1828, a year into her widowhood, and they were married rather precipitously on November 8, 1828, probably because of the stillborn child born a month later. Aupick was transferred to Lyon in December 1831, and in January 1836 he was transferred back to Paris, where he stayed until 1848, when he was sent as a diplomat to Constantinople.

It is understandable that Baudelaire might be jealous of his mother’s new husband, as he was deeply attached to his mother both materially and emotionally. Their close relationship was of enduring significance, for during the course of his life he borrowed from his mother an estimated total of 20,473 francs and much of what is known of his later life comes from his extended correspondence with her. Although quite possibly Baudelaire’s attachment to his mother did lead to his resentment and dislike of his stepfather, it is interesting to note that he did not manifest resentment early on. As a schoolboy in Lyons from 1832 to 1836 Baudelaire’s letters to his parents were mostly affectionate and he referred to Aupick as his father. Easy relations within the family persisted through Baudelaire’s high-school years at Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where Colonel Aupick had been transferred. Far from being “maudit” (cursed) in the tradition of his later legend, Baudelaire was actually a prize student of whom both parents were proud. Even when he was expelled from Louis-le-Grand in 1839 for refusing to give up a note passed him by a classmate, stepfather and stepson appeared to be on good terms.

Baudelaire began referring to his stepfather as “the General” (Aupick had been promoted in 1839) in 1841, around the time his family contrived to send the young man on a voyage to the Indian Ocean. After passing the “bac,” or baccalauréat (high-school degree), in 1839, several months after his expulsion from the lycée, Baudelaire spent two years in the Latin Quarter pursuing a literary career and, of particular concern to Aupick, accumulating debts. To save Baudelaire from his debts, a family council was called in which it was decided to send him on a long voyage in June of 1841, paid for from his future inheritance (the parents later agreed to pay for it themselves as a gesture of goodwill). Baudelaire did not want to go, and in fact he jumped ship at the Ile Bourbon, returning to Paris in February of 1842. If the stiff forms of address in his letters of this time are any indication, Baudelaire resented his family’s intervention in his way of life and held his stepfather responsible for it.

Familial censure only became more institutionalized. By June of 1844 Baudelaire had spent nearly half of the capital of the 99,568 francs he had inherited two years before. The family decided that it was necessary to seek a conseil judiciaire (legal adviser) to protect the capital from Baudelaire, and on September 21, 1844 the court made Narcisse Désirée Ancelle, a lawyer, legally responsible for managing Baudelaire’s fortune and for paying him his “allowance.” The sum paid him was enough for a single young man to live on comfortably, but Baudelaire had expensive tastes and he was bitter about this intervention for the rest of his life. Relations among family members soured. Baudelaire could no longer bear to be around “the General” and there were long periods of time when Mme Aupick was not permitted to see her son. For the next 15 years Baudelaire’s letters to his mother are laced with reproach, affection, and requests for money, and it was only after her husband’s death—in 1857, the year of the publication of Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil)—that relations between mother and son began to improve.

Financial constraint, alienation, and complex emotions defined Baudelaire’s life, and it is against this backdrop of complicated family relations that some of the best poetry in the French language was written. Though Baudelaire’s interest in verse was manifest as early as his days in the lycée, his public emergence as a poet was slow and complicated by many sideline activities through the early 1850s.

Baudelaire began making literary connections as soon as he passed the bac, at the same time that he was amassing debts. From 1839 to 1841, while he was living in the Latin Quarter, he became associated with the École Normande (Norman School), a group of student-poets centered around Gustave Levavasseur, Philippe de Chennevières, and Ernest Prarond . None of these people became major poets, but they were involved in Baudelaire’s first ventures with poetry. Prarond claims to have heard Baudelaire recite as early as 1842 some of the poems that were later published in Les Fleurs du mal . Baudelaire considered participating in a collective publication with Levavasseur, Prarond, and another person named Dozon. He withdrew his contribution, however, because Levavasseur wanted to correct the “idiosyncrasies” in his work. Baudelaire was never without literary acquaintances. His professional social activity continued throughout his life, and in the course of his literary career he became acquainted with writers such as Victor Hugo,  Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and Théophile Gautier . As his rejection of Levavasseur’s corrections suggested, though, Baudelaire—like the speakers in his poetry—was always an individual within the crowd.

Baudelaire’s first publications of poetry were probably disguised, for reasons known only to himself. 11 poems published between 1844 and 1847 in L’Artiste under the name of Privat d’Anglemont—another friend in Baudelaire’s literary circle—have been attributed to Baudelaire, and in fact nine of these poems have been included in the definitive Pléiade edition of Baudelaire’s collected works published 1975–1979. The first poem published under Baudelaire’s own name appeared in L’Artiste on May 25, 1845; Baudelaire probably wrote the sonnet “A Une Dame Créole” (To a Creole Lady), which celebrates the “pale” and “hot” coloring of the lovely Mme Autard de Bragard, on his trip to the Indian Ocean. The poem is not a prodigious showing for someone who was already establishing a reputation for himself in Parisian circles as a poet, and Baudelaire’s next official publication of verse did not take place until a full six years later, in 1851.

In De quelques écrivains nouveaux (On Some New Writers, 1852) Prarond described Baudelaire as a poet who had achieved a certain reputation without having published a verse. Although the statement was not technically accurate in 1852, it illustrates a facet of Baudelaire’s reputation. Even though he had no record of solid achievements, Baudelaire, with his compelling personality, had the ability to impress others, and he was already deliberately cultivating his image with eccentric stories designed to shock and test his acquaintances. For example, he liked to recite to friends his poem “Nightmare,” which features a man who witnesses the rape of his mistress by an entire army.

Early in his career Baudelaire’s reputation was more solidly based on his nonpoetic publications. In 1847 he published his only novella, La Fanfarlo , an autobiographically based work that features a tortured hero named Samuel Cramer. He wrote a handful of essays and reviews for various journals, notably Le Corsaire Satan ; these works—including Le Musée classique du bazar Bonne-Nouvelle (The Classical Museum of the Bonne-Nouvelle Bazaar) and Comment on paie ses dettes quand on du génie (How to Pay Your Debts When You’re a Genius)—were collected in Curiosités esthétiques (Esthetic Curiosities, 1868) as well as L’Art romantique (Romantic Art, 1868), the second and third volumes in the posthumously published Oeuvres complètes (Complete Works, 1868–1873). Baudelaire also wrote two of the Salons that contribute to his reputation as a discerning, sometimes prophetic, and often amusing critic. Although Salon de 1845 (1845) went unnoticed by critics, the next year his Salon de 1846 made a good impression on a small circle.

Although he does not develop an aesthetic theory in Salon de 1845 , Baudelaire does launch his idea that heroism can exist in life’s ordinary details. The essay notably displays a particularly charming feature of Baudelaire’s critical writing: the sharp and colorful illustration of points. The works of one painter, for example, are witheringly dismissed: “chaque année les ramène avec leurs mêmes désespérantes perfections” (each year brings them back with the same depressing perfections); another painter’s works, writes Baudelaire, recall the pictures of travel brochures and evoke a China “où le vent lui-même, dit H. Heine, prend un son comique en passant par les clochettes;—et où la nature et l’homme ne peuvent pas se regarder sans rire” (where the wind itself, says H. Heine, sounds comical as it blows through bells; and where nature and man cannot look at each other without laughing).

In the important Salon de 1846 Baudelaire critiques particular artists and in a more general way lays the groundwork for the ideas about art that he continued to develop in his “Salon de 1859,” first published in Revue française in June and July of that year, and up until his essay “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” (The Painter of Modern Life), which appeared in Le Figaro in November and December of 1863. As Baudelaire defines it in Salon de 1846 , art represents an ideal for Baudelaire: “L’art est un bien infiniment précieux, un breuvage rafraîchissant et réchauffant, qui rétablit l’estomac et l’esprit dans l’équilibre naturel de l’idéal” (Art is an infinitely precious thing, a warming and refreshing drink which reestablishes stomach and spirit in the natural equilibrium of the ideal). Although art leads to an abstraction, “l’idéal,” the references to stomach and drink indicate that for Baudelaire the ideal is built on concrete particulars. Indeed, as he goes on to explain in Salon de 1846 “Ainsi l’idéal n’est pas cette chose vague, ce rêve ennuyeux et impalpable qui nage au plafond des académies; un idéal, c’est l’individu redressé par l’individu, rconstruit et rendu par le pinceau ou le ciseau à l’éclatante vérité de son harmonie native” (Thus the ideal is not the vague thing, that boring and intangible dream which swims on the ceilings of academies; an ideal is the individual taken up by the individual, reconstructed and returned by brush or scissors to the brilliant truth of its native harmony).

At the time he wrote Salon de 1846 Baudelaire believed that Romanticism represented the ideal, and he presents the painter Eugène Delacroix as the best artist in that tradition. Baudelaire, though, also articulates principles that later took him beyond Romanticism to a more radical view of art. He propounds that beauty must contain the absolute and the particular, the eternal and the transitory, and in a section of Salon de 1846 titled “De l’Héroïsme de la Vie Moderne,” (The Heroism of Modern Life) he elaborates that the “particulier” can be found in contemporary and ordinary urban life: “Le spectacle de la vie élégante et des milliers d’existences flottantes qui circulent dans les souterrains d’une grande ville,—criminels et filles entretenues,—la Gazette des Tribuneaux et le Moniteur nous prouvent que nous n’avons qu’à ouvrir les yeux pour connaître notre héroïsme” (The spectacle of elegant life and of the thousands of existences which float in the underground of a big city—criminals and kept women—the Gazette des Tribuneaux and the Moniteur prove that we have only to open our eyes in order to recognize our heroism). Modern life as inspiration for art is an idea that Baudelaire develops in “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” with reference to the artist Constantin Guys. As Baudelaire observes in 1846, Delacroix works in the grand tradition, and a new tradition has not yet come into being.

Despite several halfhearted attempts to indulge his parents’ desire for his settled employment, throughout the 1840s Baudelaire was committed to his vocation as a poet, and as an artist he did his best to absorb the “spectacle” of Parisian life by living the life of a bohemian and a dandy. After the naming of the conseil judiciaire he affirmed a new identity by changing his name to Baudelaire-Dufayis, adding his mother’s maiden name to his father’s family name (this gesture lasted until the Revolution of 1848). He was particular about his dress, and virtually every contemporary description of him describes his changing hairstyles, from flowing locks to a shaved head to short, clipped hair. Early in the decade he took up with Jeanne Duval, the mixed-race mistress with whom he had a long and complicated affair; in the late 1840s he met Marie Daubrun, the second inspiration for the three love cycles of his poetry. He had already had a bout with gonorrhea by this time and had picked up syphilis, the disease that was probably the cause of his death. Baudelaire attempted suicide once, on June 30, 1845. He cultivated an interest in art and painting, which fueled his continued accumulation of debts—he was a generally unlucky but enthusiastic collector. He began a pattern of moving from hotel to hotel to escape creditors and was well acquainted with the seamy side of Paris, a familiarity that is evident in his poems.

The year 1848 marked the beginning of a strange period in Baudelaire’s life, one that does not quite fit with his life as a dandy, and which he himself later labeled “Mon ivresse de 1848” (My frenzy in 1848) in his Journaux intimes (Intimate Journals, 1909). Baudelaire—the product of a bourgeois household, the elitist poet of refined and elegant dress, the man who in the 1850s embraced Count Joseph de Maistre, an ultra-royalist aristocrat, and who had already expressed admiration for the aristocratic views of Edgar Allan Poe—participated in the French Revolution of 1848 that lead to the overthrow of the constitutional monarchy.

As Richard Burton documents extensively in Baudelaire and the Second Republic: Writing and Revolution (1988), Baudelaire did have strong revolutionary sympathies during this period. He was influenced by thinkers such as François Marie Charles Fourier, Félicité Lamennais, and Emanuel Swedenborg. His dedication of Salon de 1846 to the “bourgeois” may well have been intended as ironic. Baudelaire wrote a positive and approving preface for Pierre Dupont’s Chant des ouvriers (Song of the Workers, 1851), which praises the working man. He sought out Pierre-Joseph Prudhon, one of the great writers and thinkers of the 1848 revolution. With Champfleury, a journalist, novelist, and theoretician of the realist movement, he started a short-lived revolutionary newspaper after the provisional government was established. Most dramatically, he physically participated in the revolutions of February and June, actually fighting on a barricade and, according to some contemporaries’ accounts, apparently shouting, “Il faut aller fusiller le général Aupick” (We must go shoot General Aupick).

Although a school of criticism has grown up in which Baudelaire is labeled a revolutionary, it would be a mistake to reduce the life and thought of this complex man to political dogma. Baudelaire was undeniably fervent, but this fervor must be seen in the spirit of the times: the 19th-century Romantic leaned toward social justice because of the ideal of universal harmony but was not driven by the same impulse that fires the Marxist egalitarian. It is also possible, given Baudelaire’s relationship with his stepfather and his famous cry on the barricades, that at least part of his zeal was motivated by personal feelings. Furthermore, even during this heady period Baudelaire never lost his critical acumen and spirit of contradiction. He rose repeatedly during speeches for the May 4 elections to interrupt idealistic speakers with pointed, embarrassing questions. In Mon coeur mis à nu et Fusées; journaux intimes (My Heart Laid Bare and Fusées; Intimate Journals, 1909) he elaborates on the “ivresse de 1848”: “De quelle nature était cette ivresse? Goût de la vengeance. Plaisir naturel de la démolition (What was the nature of this drunkenness? A desire for vengeance. A natural pleasure in destruction).

After Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état in 1851, Baudelaire ceased all political activity. To the extent that he considered politics in his later years, his outlook was anti-egalitarian and anti-activist—reminiscent of the aristrocratic conservatism represented by Poe and de Maistre, in other words: “There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy. ... A monarchy or a republic based upon democracy are equally absurd and feeble.” For the most part, though, Baudelaire’s Intimate Journals reveal his relative lack of interest in politics, his disillusionment with mankind and all of its institutions, and his ultimate faith in the classless aristocracy of the “Dandy.”

After a long period of incubation, of familial reproaches that he had wasted his life, and of a reputation based on potential, a few publications, and force of personality, Baudelaire came into his own as a literary personage in the 1850s. On 9 April 1851 eleven poems were published in the Messager de l’Assemblée under the title “Les Limbes” (Limbo); these poems were later included in Les Fleurs du mal . In March and April 1852 Baudelaire’s first major study of Poe was published in Revue de Paris . In “Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages” (Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and His Works) Baudelaire notes views that were probably influenced by de Maistre as well as brought out by Poe: belief in original sin; faith in the imagination, which Baudelaire called “la reine des facultés” (the queen of faculties); approval of the cult of Beauty and of poetry for its own sake; and hatred for progress and nature.

In 1854 and 1855 Baudelaire’s first translations of Poe’s writings were published in Le Pays . A meticulous translator, Baudelaire was known to hunt down English-speaking sailors for maritime vocabulary. His translations of Poe culminated in Histoires extraordinaires (1856; Tales of Mystery and Imagination), which included “Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages” as a preface; Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires (1856; New Tales of Mystery and Imagination); Aventures d’Arthur Gordon Pym (1858; originally published as The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym , 1838); Eureka (1863; originally published 1848); and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses (1865; originally published as Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque , 1840).

Also in 1855 the Revue des deux mondes published eighteen poems with the title of Les Fleurs du mal . Two of Baudelaire’s prose poems were published for the first time that same year in a festschrift, “Hommage à C. F. Denecourt.” The festschrift publication is particularly interesting because the prose poems were published alongside two poems in verse, so that “Crépuscule du Soir” (Dusk) appeared in verse and in prose.

In June of 1857 the first edition of Les Fleurs du mal was published by the fine letter press of Auguste Poulet-Malassis. Although Baudelaire considered publishing Les Fleurs du mal with the large printing house of Michel Lévy, which published his translations of Poe, he chose the smaller press of Poulet-Malassis out of a concern for quality. A tyrannical author, Baudelaire took rooms near the offices of his publishers so that he could better supervise the placement of every comma. The press was solicitous of Baudelaire’s corrections, and Poulet-Malassis became a devoted friend: he lent Baudelaire large sums of money though he himself eventually went bankrupt and to debtor’s prison for his own debts; he tended to Baudelaire during his last days in Brussels, though the writer had signed over Poulet-Malassis’s legal rights on some works to the publisher Hetzel; and when on his deathbed Baudelaire chose Lévy to publish his Oeuvres complètes , Poulet-Malassis loyally rallied to the cause, ceding his legally exclusive rights to Baudelaire’s works and doing what he could to help produce a satisfactory edition.

About one month after Les Fleurs du mal went on sale in July 1857, a report was drawn up by the Sûreté Publique (Public Safety) section of the Ministry of the Interior stating that the collection was in contempt of the laws that safeguard religion and morality. Thirteen poems were singled out and put on trial. In contrast with the last time he went to court, when he acquiesced to the imposition of a conseil judiciaire , Baudelaire fought this battle to the last. The proceeding betrays some of the misunderstandings that have infected views of his poetry ever since.

To intercede with the government on his behalf Baudelaire made the unfortunate choice of Aglaé Sabatier, “la Présidente,” a woman to whom he had been sending anonymous and admiring poems since 1852. The third muse for the trilogy of love cycles in Les Fleurs du mal , “Apollonie” (as she was also known) was without great political influence, and her dubious social standing probably did not lend credibility to Baudelaire’s claims for morality. Baudelaire’s defense at the trial was threefold: that he had presented vice in such a way as to render it repellent to the reader; that if the poems are read as part of the larger collection, in a certain order, their moral context is revealed; and that his predecessors—Alfred de Musset, Pierre-Jean Béranger, George Sand, Honoré de Balzac—had written far more scandalously and gotten away with it. Baudelaire’s lawyer unwisely emphasized the last point, which was easily dismissed: that others have gotten away with transgression does not justify one’s own. Six of the poems were condemned—the ban on them was not lifted until after World War II, on 31 May 1949—and both Baudelaire and his editors were fined.

Though the trial was an ordeal and certainly did not help improve the poet’s relations with his mother (General Aupick was dead by this time), the trial was not ultimately detrimental to Baudelaire. The condemned poems were excised, and the book went back on sale. Baudelaire subsequently achieved a certain notoriety, for better and for worse. For the better, Les Fleurs du mal got good reviews from critics that counted. Emile Deschamps, a founding father of 1830s Romanticism, published a poem in praise of the collection in Le Présent . Gustave Flaubert, who had endured a similar trial for Madame Bovary (1857), wrote to Baudelaire on 13 July 1858 that “Vous avez trouvé moyen de rajeunir le romantisme. Vous ne ressemblez à personne (ce qui est la première de toutes les qualités). ... Vous êtes résistant comme le marbre et pénétrant comme un brouillard d’Angleterre” (You have found a way to inject new life into Romanticism. You are unlike anyone else [which is the most important quality]. ... You are as resistant as marble and as penetrating as an English fog). On 30 August 1887 Hugo wrote to Baudelaire that his flowers of evil were as “radiant” and “dazzling” as stars. In contrast, the influential Sainte-Beuve maintained a significant silence. There were many negative reviews by lesser critics, but none that affected Baudelaire’s reputation.

For the worse, Baudelaire’s legend as a poète maudit (cursed poet) exploded at this time, and Baudelaire, as always, contributed to this reputation by shocking people with elaborate eccentricities. He invited people over to see riding breeches supposedly cut from his father’s hide, for example, or in the middle of a conversation casually asked a friend, “Wouldn’t it be agreeable to take a bath with me?” It is difficult to sort out which stories about Baudelaire are true and which are fictive—later on someone apparently thought that Baudelaire had actually gotten unreasonably angry with a poor window-glazier, misconstruing the prose poem “Le Mauvais Vitrier” (The Bad Glazier) as reality. Baudelaire’s legend as a poète maudit obscured his profound complexity, and Charles Asselineau’s preface to Charles Baudelaire, sa vie et son oeuvre (Charles Baudelaire, His Life and Work, 1869), the first biography of the poet, only sealed his notorious image by passing on the more infamous anecdotes.

Another effect of the condemnation of Les Fleurs du mal is that the excision of six poems probably prompted Baudelaire to write the new and wonderful poems published in the collection’s second edition of 1861. After the trial he experienced a surge of creative activity. In Baudelaire in 1859 (1988) Burton posits that this rebirth of energy had to do with a reconciliation with his mother. General Aupick had died in April of 1857, and in 1858 Baudelaire switched from the formal vous to the more intimate tu in addressing his mother. He wrote several of the important poems in the second edition—including “Le Voyage” (The Voyage) and “La Chevelure” (The Head of Hair)—in 1859, during a long stay at Honfleur in the “Maison Joujou” (Playhouse) of his mother. Whatever the reason for this literary activity, Baudelaire wrote thirty-five new poems between 1857 and 1861, adding “Tableaux Parisiens” to the already existing sections of Les Fleurs du mal and creating more or less the definitive version of the collection.

Baudelaire’s only collection of verse is composed of six sections: “Spleen et Idéal” (Spleen and the Ideal), “Tableaux Parisiens” (Parisian Tableaus), “Le Vin” (Wine), “Fleurs du mal” (Flowers of Evil), “Révolte” (Revolt), and “La Mort” (Death). In the trial of his poems Baudelaire had argued that there was an “architecture” that organized the meaning of his work, and this organizing principle has been the subject of debate among critics. There is certainly a progression from “Au lecteur” (To the Reader), the poem that serves as the frontispiece, to “Le Voyage,” the final poem.

“Au lecteur” invites the reader into the collection by portraying regretful yet irresistible corruption and ennui while forcing the reader into complicity with its well-known conclusion: “—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!” (Hypocritical reader, my mirror-image, my brother!). Intervening poems explore various facets of the poet’s experience, many of which represent struggles with what Blaise Pascal called the “gouffre” (the abyss). “Le Voyage” surveys the disappointed hopes of speakers who have traveled far and wide only to find what “Au lecteur” had promised, “Une oasis d’horreur dans un désert d’ennui” (An oasis of horror in a desert of tedium). The final cry of this poem, “Nous voulons ... / Plonger ... / Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau ” (We want ... / To plunge ... / To the bottom of the Unknown in order to find something new ), is addressed to death and is ambiguous: it either launches the collection’s journey on a new course from that set in “Au lecteur,” thus possibly concluding Les Fleurs du mal on a note of optimism, or it ends the poem’s quest in death. In either case, there is clearly a movement toward closure, and perhaps resolution, in Les Fleurs du mal . Reading the poems by following too rigorous a system would do injustice to them, however. Although there is a general sense of progression in Les Fleurs du mal , individual works do not always fit the pattern assigned to their part in the collection.

In similar fashion, though Baudelaire’s legend glossed him as the satanic poet of ennui, sordid details, and forbidden sensuality, in fact his poetry treats a variety of themes with a range of perspectives. He does deal with topics that fueled his scandalous reputation. As “Au lecteur” promised, the collection is dominated by the poet’s Catholic sense of original sin. “Le Mauvais Moine” (The Bad Monk), in the section “Spleen et Idéal,” describes the poet as a “mauvais cénobite” (a bad monk) who is trapped in the “odious” grave of his soul. Redemption, given this situation, appears hopeless: “‘ moine fainéant! Quand saurai-je donc faire / Du spectacle vivant de ma triste misère / Le travail de mes mains et l’amour de mes yeux? (O lazy monk! When will I ever know how to turn / the living spectacle of my sad misery / into the work of my hands and love of my eyes?) Many poems echo this expression of futility for man’s spiritual condition, especially in “Spleen et Idéal” and notably in the four “Spleen” poems (LXXV, LXXVI, LXXVII, LXXVIII) within that section. While some poems end without hope, however—“Spleen LXXVIII” concludes with “atrocious” Anxiety staking the poet’s skull with a black flag—others betray the desire to break out of imprisonment in sin. “Le Mauvais Moine” concludes by expressing that wish (“When will I ever know how ... ?”), though it is in the tenuous form of a question.

For Baudelaire, the love of Beauty and sensual love are two specific examples of man’s capacity for original sin. In Les Fleurs du mal Beauty is a compelling but often terrible phenomenon described in terms of hard, lifeless matter. Even the woman of “Le Serpent qui danse” (The Snake Which Dances), a poem about movement, has eyes that are “deux bijoux froids où se mêle / L’or avec le fer” (two cold jewels where / Gold mixes with iron), and Beauty of “La Beauté” (Beauty) is like “un rêve de pierre” (a dream of stone) that inspires love “éternel et muet ainsi que la matière” (as eternal and mute as matter). The power of this inhuman Beauty is terrible. “La Beauté” reduces the poet to a “docile” lover who is virtually chained to his idol. “Hymne à la Beauté” (Hymn to Beauty) concludes with the same helpless devotion to Beauty’s powers of distraction and more explicitly articulates Beauty’s dual nature: her look is “infernal et divin” (infernal and divine), and the poet is so addicted that he does not care whether She comes from Heaven, Hell, or both.

Baudelaire does not just treat Beauty as an abstract phenomenon; he also writes about individual women. Baudelaire’s three love cycles reflect his experiences with three different women—Duval, Daubrun, and Mme Sabatier—and discussions of his love poems are often organized around the poems associated with each woman. It is not always clear, however, which poems are associated with whom.

Jeanne Duval was a mixed-race person and a sometime actress who, according to Baudelaire, did not understand and in fact undermined his poetry and whose attraction was powerfully physical. Baudelaire met Duval in the early 1840s and lived with her periodically, but by the late 1840s he was writing to his mother that life with her had become a duty and a torment. Nonetheless, it was not until 1856 that they broke up; the rupture was at her instigation, and even afterward Baudelaire continued to support her financially: as usual, his was not the conventional response to a situation.

Baudelaire’s relations with Marie Daubrun were less extended. She was a blonde, Rubenesque actress who seems never seriously to have reciprocated Baudelaire’s fascination for her. Baudelaire had met her in the late 1840s or early 1850s but probably did not become intimately involved with her until around 1854. Their sporadic connection ended when Marie left Baudelaire to go back to Théodore de Banville.

Apollonie Sabatier represented a different sort of attraction from that of Jeanne and Marie. “La Présidente” had been a model and the mistress of various men, one of whom left her a stipend that secured her independence. Her position as an independent woman who had a history with men placed her in the demimonde, the “half-world” that is neither part of “le monde,” the world of social acceptability and prominence, nor part of the underworld of prostitutes. She was much admired as a tasteful, witty, intelligent woman, and her social evenings were attended by artists such as Théophile Gautier, Maxime Du Camp, Ernest Feydeau, and Flaubert. Baudelaire’s feelings for Mme Sabatier started as admiration from afar: he sent her anonymous letters accompanied by poems. Eventually he revealed his identity to her. When she finally responded to him, however, he dropped her with a letter in which he tells her that her capitulation, whether it was physical or emotional, had turned her from a Goddess into “a mere woman.” Despite the direct stares of Nadar’s famous photographs, Baudelaire’s was a complex personality. On the one hand he experienced animal love and a sense of duty with Jeanne; on the other hand he felt platonic love for Mme Sabatier and yet he betrayed her. His relations with women were far from entirely pleasant.

Baudelaire’s complicated experiences with these women and with others undoubtedly shaped his poetry about them. Some readers view Baudelaire as a mere sensualist and in some poems he certainly does celebrate the sensuality of women, of scent, and of sensation, but it is important to note that his poetic descriptions of women are multidimensional. Although there are extremely sensual poems, such as “Parfum Exotique” (Exotic Perfume), “La Chevelure” (The Head of Hair), and “L’Invitation au Voyage” (Invitation to a Voyage), Baudelaire also wrote poems, such as those dedicated to Beauty, in which a woman is admired as a hopelessly unattainable object of art—” Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne” (I Adore You as the Vaulted Night Is High), for example, or “Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés” (With Her Undulating and Pearly Garments).

Indeed, contrary to the stereotype of Baudelaire as a lustful idolater, in many of his sensual poems he alchemizes the physical elements of the woman into an ethereal substance. The ultimate importance of “la chevelure” is as a source of memories, and in “Parfum Exotique” the initial scent of the woman’s breast becomes the exotic perfume of an imaginary island. When Baudelaire idolizes the woman as a form of art, similarly, by the end of most poems the woman’s body is conspicuous by its removal. In “Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne” the speaker tells the woman that he loves her “d’autant plus, belle, que tu me fuis” (all the more, beautiful one, when you flee me). The image of “la froide majesté d’une femme stérile” (the cold majesty of a sterile woman) in “Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés” does not invite embraces.

For Baudelaire, as for the English metaphysical poets, the human struggle starts with the flesh but ultimately takes place on the metaphysical plane. Woman, on this level, represents good or evil. Some poems portray the woman as demonic, in the tradition of “Hymne à la Beauté.” In “Sed non Satiata” (But she is Not Satisfied), the speaker cries to the woman: “‘ démon sans pitié! verse-moi moins de flamme” (O pitiless demon! Throw me less fire). “Le Vampire” (The Vampire) is about the symbiosis of the vampire woman and the enslaved poet. Other poems—these are usually the ones associated with Mme Sabatier—represent the woman as a redemptive angel against a somber background. The play between light and dark in these poems ranges from the simple to the complex. In “Reversibilité” (Reversibility) there is a simple counterpoint between the “Ange plein de bonheur, de joie et de lumières” (Angel full of happiness, of joy, and of lights) and the tortured speaker. A more complex interplay between light and dark occurs in “Aube Spirituelle” (Spiritual Dawn) when the monstrance-like memory of the woman shines against a backdrop of the sun drowning in its congealing blood. Such complexity is again evident in “Confession,” when the “aimable et douce femme” (amiable and sweet woman) confesses her “horrible” lack of faith in humanity.

Behind Baudelaire’s struggles with sin and ennui is an articulated awareness of Satan, notably in the section “Révolte.” “Le Reniement de Saint Pierre” (St. Peter’s Denial) concludes with the speaker congratulating Peter for denying Jesus. In “Abel et Caïn” the narrative voice urges Cain to ascend to heaven and throw God to earth. “Les Litanies de Satan” (The Litanies of Satan) is addressed to Satan and has the refrain “‘ Satan, prends pitié de ma triste misère!” (O Satan, have pity on my sad misery!). These are strong poems, understandably shocking to the readers of his day, but Baudelaire’s struggles with evil do not ally him with Satan. In his poetry Baudelaire represents himself as trapped and cries out in a despair that suggests his awareness of sin as a burden. Baudelaire is not a diabolic preacher; with C. S. Lewis, he would point out that Satan is part of the Christian cosmology.

Baudelaire’s “Doctrine of Correspondences” suggests a belief of sorts in a pattern for the world and in relationships between the physical world and a spiritual one. This view, probably influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg and viewed as an antecedent to symbolism, is presented in the poem “Correspondances.” Nature is presented as a “temple” whose living pillars speak to man and whose “forest of symbols” (forêt de symboles) observe him. Baudelaire writes that “Les parfums, les couleurs, et les sons se répondent” (Perfumes, colors, and sounds interact with each other) like echoes in a “ténébreuse et profonde unité” (dark and deep unity). Although he does not include a direct expression of faith in God or gods in the poem, Baudelaire’s profoundly mystical belief in the world’s fundamental unity is clear. “Correspondances” epitomizes Baudelaire’s complicated spirituality.

Indeed, the subject of Baudelaire’s faith has been much debated. The references to God and to Satan in his poems, letters, and intimate journals have been counted; the validity of his last rites has been weighed; his confession of faith to Nadar has been examined. Most critics agree that Baudelaire’s preoccupations are fundamentally Christian but that in Les Fleurs du mal he fails to embrace entirely Jesus Christ and his power of redemption. Debates about Baudelaire’s Christianity have not resolved the matter, though, nor is a label for Baudelaire’s faith necessarily desirable for reading his poetry. Les Fleurs du mal is best read on its own terms, with a respect for its complexity. The constant thrust of the collection is to impart to the reader an awareness of tension between the physically real and the spiritually ideal, of a hopeless but ever-renewed aspiration toward the infinite from an existence mired in sin on earth. This thrust is evident in poems in which the speaker bemoans enslavement to the soul’s “gouffre” (abyss) or to Beauty’s fascinations, in which he cries out to Satan in rage, in which he delves into the sensual to escape the physical world, and in which he articulates a feeble hope in love’s redemptive capacity and the possibility of unity.

Baudelaire’s ambiguous relationship with the material world and his desire for another world are evident in his poems about the city of Paris. While some critics, notably Edward Kaplan, have argued that “Tableaux Parisiens,” the section added to the edition of 1861, shows a “conversion to the real world as it exists,” critics such as F. W. Leakey have pointed out that in these poems Baudelaire treats the city the way he treats the female body in “Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne,” that is, by moving away from it as a physical presence. “Paysage” (Landscape) invokes concrete details of Paris—”Les tuyaux, les clochers, ces mâts de la cité” (the pipes, the bells, the masts of the city)—but the poem concludes with the poet behind closed shutters, his head on his desk, resolving to make “de mes pensers brûlants une tiède atmosphère” (a warm atmosphere from my burning thoughts).

In “Le Soleil” (The Sun) the poet walks the streets of Paris, but he appears to see the city as a literary text rather than on its physical terms. He goes “Flairant dans tous les coins les hasards de la rime, / Trébuchant sur les mots comme sur les pavés” (Seeking out the hazards of rhyme in all corners / Stumbling on words as on cobblestones). “Le Cygne” (The Swan) is a magnificent poem that records the changes wrought in Paris by the Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Although he accumulates concrete details, Baudelaire again removes himself from the physical presence he is recording by recasting what he sees: “Je ne vois qu’en esprit tout ce camp de baraques . . .” (I see all these barracks ... only in spirit) and “tout pour moi devient allégorie” (everything becomes an allegory for me). Baudelaire’s reputation as the father of modern poetry about cities is largely based on the “Tableaux Parisiens,” which describe the streets of Paris in such gritty detail; the importance of these street scenes for the poet, though, is that he usually plunges into them with the desire to transcend them.

Baudelaire’s theory of correspondences and his introduction of such topics as the city and the ugly side of man’s nature to poetry in verse are responsible for the modern quality of Les Fleurs du mal . Baudelaire also deals with a variety of themes in the Romantic tradition, however, including solitude; the mal de siècle , which in Baudelaire’s terms becomes ennui; the special plight of the poet; introspection; yearnings for the infinite; and romance. Furthermore, Baudelaire’s prosody is traditional: his alexandrines are no more loosened than those of the Romantics, and he uses a wide variety of classical forms.

Even in his treatment of Romantic themes, however, Baudelaire is radical for his time. He imagines solitude not as a state of nature but as it happens in cities, presenting it in counterpoint to city crowds. The person who experiences ennui, as opposed to mal de siècle , is mercilessly self-aware and is troubled by original sin and a divided self. For Baudelaire the poet is endowed with special powers but is also a clumsy albatross (“L’Albatros”) or slothful sinner (“Le Mauvais Moine”). No longer mournful meditation in picturesque settings, introspection turns ugly with Baudelaire, a guilty pleasure to be squeezed like “une vieille orange” (an old orange), as Baudelaire asserts in “Au Lecteur.” The infinite is no longer the divine perceived in stars; it is found in the expansiveness of scents, in the imagination, in poetry, in cold-hearted Beauty, in the desire to escape.

To traditional forms and traditional themes Baudelaire brought imagery and situations that had never before existed in French poetry. “Une Charogne” (A Cadaver) provides an excellent example of how Baudelaire uses Romantic and even classical themes to go beyond them. The poet takes a walk with his beloved and concludes that, although time passes, his poetry will immortalize her. Unlike Pierre de Ronsard’s poem on that classical theme, “Quand tu seras bien vielle” (When You Are Very Old), however, Baudelaire’s meditation is prompted by a human cadaver whose guts spill across the page, the poem graphically detailing the flies, vermin, and stink. The speaker instructs his beloved that when she, too, is a rotting corpse, she should tell the vermin—who will eat her with kisses—that “j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine / De mes amours décomposés!” (I have maintained the form and divine essence / Of my decomposed loves!). Just as he exploits grotesque physical details only to extract from them an “essence divine,” so Baudelaire uses poetic convention while transforming it.

Similarly, Baudelaire’s use and mastery of traditional technique revolutionized French poetry by so clearly representing a unique sensibility. In “Le Cygne,” a poem detailing the poet’s thoughts as he walks through a changing Paris, Baudelaire sensitively communicates modern anxiety and a modern sense of displacement. The poem begins with an abrupt exclamation, “Andromaque, je pense à vous!” (Andromache, I am thinking of you!). A series of repetitions compounds the initial sense of urgency. The frequent recurrence of the verb je pense à (I am thinking about), though, also indicates the meditative nature of the poem; the repetition of words such as là (there)—along with a myriad of sharp descriptions—show that meditation interacts with the speaker’s close observations. Syntax broken across stanzas conveys the reach of the poet’s thoughts and observations as well as a sense of breathless haste.

The speaker returns to the same thoughts—notably, a swan escaped from a zoo and Andromache, the wife of the Trojan hero Hector—and the use of exclamation points is heavy: he is obsessed and slightly frantic. The gist of the speaker’s meditations is that he is haunted by absences: by Paris as it is no longer, by the swan who has lost his native soil, by Andromache’s losses. Those absences are present in this poem by virtue of Baudelaire’s prosody. Andromache’s fall into destitution is represented in the space caused by the enjambment between stanzas: “ … et puis [je pense] à vous / Andromaque, des bras d’un grand époux tombée” (And I think of you, / Andromache, fallen from the arms of a great husband). The lament of all who have suffered losses is emphasized by an enjambment that forces a quick draw of breath right before the end of the sentence and that accents the finality of “jamais” (never) at the beginning of the next sentence:

“Je pense . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

À quiconque a perdu ce qui ne se retrouve

Jamais, jamais!”

(I think . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

Of whomever has lost that which can

Never, never be found again!).

In Les Fleurs du mal traditional prosody and themes combine with novel thoughts and inspiration to create works of supreme originality. Although there were not many reviews of the second edition of Les Fleurs du mal and not all of those published were favorable, Baudelaire became an established poet with its publication. Saint-Beuve—though he never did review Les Fleurs du mal —ranked him grudgingly among the leaders of a new generation of poets as he remarked that poets coming along seemed to be in the style of Hugo, Gautier, Banville, and “even Baudelaire.” Younger poets started to dedicate poems to Baudelaire. Charles Asselineau in Charles Baudelaire: Sa vie et son oeuvre (1869) describes Baudelaire as accepted and blossoming with success after 1861. On the strength of that success, in fact, Baudelaire attempted an application to the Académie Française in 1861, seeking—many thought ironically—the place of Henri Lacordaire, a Roman Catholic priest. The taint of the trial and of his reputation was too strong, though, and Baudelaire thought it prudent to let his candidacy drop before he met with certain failure.

In the 1860s Baudelaire diversified from poetry in verse to literary activity in several different spheres. He wrote Les Paradis artificiels, Opium et Haschisch (The Artificial Paradise, Opium and Hashish, 1860), in which he resumes the interest in drugs that he had first explored in 1851 with Du Vin et du haschisch (On Wine and Hashish), an article published in Le Messager del’Assemblée . He also wrote seven articles for Jacques Crépet’s Les Poètes Français (French Poets, 1862), including pieces on Hugo, Gautier, and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. These essays were published later along with others in Curiosités esthétiques . The note on Baudelaire in Crépet’s volume, written by Gautier, was fairly positive. This anthology established contact between Baudelaire and his first major biographer, Crépet.

Baudelaire also continued with essay projects on topics of miscellaneous artistic interest, for example, the expression of his admiration for Wagner in 1861, Richard Wagner et “Tannhäuser” à Paris , and a valedictory tribute to Delacroix in 1863. The most significant of these essays was his definitive article on modern art. Around 1859 Baudelaire met the sketch artist Constantin Guys and began writing “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” (The Painter of Modern Life). This essay, ultimately published in Le Figaro in 1863, brings to fruition his ideas about “l’héroïsme de la vie moderne” (the heroism of modern life) first expressed in Salon de 1845 and Salon de 1846 . Where in the Salon de 1846 Baudelaire discusses the duality of art in general terms, in “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” that duality specifically defines art’s modernity: “La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié est l’éternel et l’immuable” (Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, half of art, the other half of which is eternal and immutable). Art is composed of the eternal and the contingent; modernity—which can occur in every historic era—is a function of finite particulars “qui sera, si l’on veut, tour à tour ou tout ensemble, l’époque, la mode, la morale, la passion” (which, if you like, will be one by one or simultaneously the era, fashion, morals, passion). Baudelaire illustrates these principles by discussing in detail the interests and techniques of “CG,” his designation for the artist who wished to remain anonymous, from his brush stroke to his Crimean War drawings for the Illustrated London News .

Central to Baudelaire’s estimation of Guys is that Guys is not an artist but is, rather, a man of the world. For Baudelaire, a broad interest in the world as opposed to the restricted perspective that he associates with most “artistes” is crucial to interesting art. Along with this line of thought Baudelaire elaborates his notion of the dandy, who is not only the elegant dresser of usual associations but also a man of the world who lives according to the highest aesthetic principles. Baudelaire also develops his ideas about “la foule,” the crowd, which is the solitary artist’s domain “as water is for the fish.” He devotes an entire section to the aspects of modern life that the true artist must absorb: military life, the dandy, cars, women, prostitutes, and even makeup.

In that last section, “Eloge du Maquillage” (In Praise of Makeup), Baudelaire makes explicit two more concepts that are important to his ethos. First, true to the metaphysical import of flesh already described in his poetry, Baudelaire makes it clear that for him there is a spiritual dimension to physical rituals: he speaks of “la haute spiritualité de la toilette” (the high spirituality of the toilet) and states that fashion must be considered “un symptôme du goût de l’idéal” (a symptom of a taste for the ideal). Second, as a corollary to the importance he attaches to fashion, makeup, and the codes of the dandy, Baudelaire touches on his unromantic distaste for the natural. Everything beautiful is beautiful by calculation, he opines. Art is necessary to correct the natural state of man, which on the physical level is unattractive and on the spiritual level is a state of original sin. By the early 1860s Baudelaire had found a model for his ideals in the person of Guys, and he gave full expression to his artistic aesthetic in “Le Peintre de la vie moderne.”

Baudelaire continued with scattered publications of poetry in the 1860s. In 1862 he published 20 prose poems in La Presse . This landmark year marks a shift in his creative endeavors from poetry in verse to poetry in prose: thereafter most of his creative publications are prose poems. Baudelaire managed to write only fifty of the one hundred prose poems he had projected. These poems were posthumously collected in 1869 as Petits poèmes en prose (Little Poems in Prose) and published with Les Paradis artificiels ; later they were published by the better known title Le Spleen de Paris, petits poèmes en prose (The Spleen of Paris, Little Poems in Prose, 1917). Le Spleen de Paris is, as Baudelaire would say, a “singular” assemblage of works that represents an extremely ambitious literary project. In his correspondence he refers to the prose poems as a “pendant” (a completion of) to Les Fleurs du mal . He explains in what senses Le Spleen de Paris completes Les Fleurs du mal when he articulates his ambitions for the prose poems in “A Arsène Houssaye,” a letter that became the preface to the collection. Houssaye was the editor of L’Artiste and La Presse , which published some of the prose poems individually.

In “A Arsène Houssaye” Baudelaire is careful to point out that the main predecessor for the genre of prose poetry was Aloysius Bertrand’s Gaspard de la Nuit (Gaspard of the Night, 1842), a relatively little-known work about gothic scenes in Paris. Bertrand did not label his short pieces “prose poems,” though: Baudelaire is the first poet to make a radical break with the form of verse by identifying nonmetrical compositions as poetry. Baudelaire offered a tantalizing statement about his goals for the new form: “Quel est celui de nous qui n’a pas, dans ses jours d’ambition, rêvé le miracle d’une prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s’adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience?” (Who among us has not, in his days of ambition, dreamed the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm or rhyme, supple and agile enough to adapt to the lyrical movements of the soul, to the undulations of daydreams, to the leaps of consciousness?).

Having mastered the forms of traditional verse, Baudelaire wanted to do nothing less than create a new language. Unlike Bertrand’s “picturesque” topics, Baudelaire associates his new language with the modern topic of the city. In “A Arsène Houssaye” he states that the ideal that obsesses him is born “surtout de la fréquentation des villes énormes, ... du croisement de leurs innombrables rapports” (especially from frequenting large cities, ... from the interconnection of their innumerable points of relationship). In contrast with the “architecture” of Les Fleurs du mal , these interconnections are presented without order. The work has “ni queue ni tête, puisque tout, au contraire, y est à la fois tête et queue, alternativement et réciproquement” (neither tail nor head because, on the contrary, everything is at once head and tail, alternately and reciprocally). Le Spleen de Paris is modern in that it represents a break with traditional form, is about urban life, and is consciously without order.

It is worth noting that in his preface Baudelaire refers to the form of the work as “prose lyrique.” He does not in the collection refer to the works as poems in prose, and the title, Le Spleen de Paris, petits poèmes en prose was chosen after Baudelaire’s death by editors and critics. It is true that critics chose this title from titles that Baudelaire considered in his correspondence, and that in his correspondence Baudelaire most often refers to his endeavours as “poèmes en prose.” Among the most significant challenges posed by Le Spleen de Paris , though, are the questions surrounding its form: is this poetry? Did Baudelaire succeed in his ambition to forge a new poetic language? In her classic tome on prose poetry Le Poème en prose du Baudelaire jusqu’à nos jours (The Prose Poem from Baudelaire to the Present, 1959) Suzanne Bernard defined the important characteristics of the genre: “l’unité, la gratuité, la brièveté (unity, gratuitousness, and brevity). Most critics have tended to discuss the themes of the poems rather than their form, however, accepting poetry in Baudelaire’s wake as an attitude rather than a set of rules. This collection, which has been growing in popularity among critics, still contains much to be explored.

Baudelaire’s poems in prose are short anecdotes, bitter satires, and reveries about unusual topics, including dogs, mud, aged tumblers, windows, widows, and poor people standing outside fancy eating establishments. Several critics, notably Pierre Emmanuel, have noted that there is more compassion in these works than in Baudelaire’s poetry in verse. This compassion can take strange forms—the speaker of “Les Yeux des pauvres” (The Eyes of the Poor) is so moved by a family of poor people that he hates the companion he had loved for her lack of sympathy. “Assommons les Pauvres” (Let’s Knock Out the Poor) concludes with the speaker sharing his purse with a beggar, but it is after having beaten him like “cooks who want to tenderize a steak.”

It is true, though, that whereas Baudelaire most often offers visions of beauty in Les Fleurs du mal , he commonly and sympathetically treats the poor in Le Spleen de Paris . In fact, the speaker in “Mademoiselle Bistouri” concludes by praying to God—as opposed to the devil—to have pity on crazy people. Furthermore, while many of the prose poems are about ugliness, they often accept and possibly even transcend ugliness. “Un cheval de race” (A Thoroughbred) is about a woman well past her prime who is “bien laide” (very ugly) but “délicieuse pourtant” (nonetheless beautiful). In “Perte d’auréole” (The Lost Halo) the speaker loses his “halo” in the mud, but concludes that he is better off without it and that the halo is actually much better suited to “some bad poet.”

While the speaker in the poems of Les Fleurs du mal sought escape, in the prose poem “Déjà!” Baudelaire describes a speaker who had escaped on a boat that then returned to shore. At first he alone among the passengers is regretful, but in the last paragraph of the poem he celebrates “la terre avec ses bruits, ses passions, ses commodités, ses fêtes;” (earth with its sounds, its passions, its conveniences, its celebrations). As with Les Fleurs du mal , it would be a mistake to pigeonhole the poems in this collection, which unlike his first has no headings. There are some harsh, disturbing poems in Le Spleen de Paris —“Le Gâteau” (The Cake), for example, which is about a fratricidal war between two natives over a piece of cake. As critics have noticed from the very beginning, however, the prose poems address banalities and travails of life quite differently from Les Fleurs du mal .

It is not coincidental that Baudelaire’s departure from traditional form and his exploring new themes occurred in chronological conjunction with “Le Peintre de la vie moderne.” Certainly, Baudelaire’s break with traditional notions of poetry had a far-reaching effect on subsequent poetry, from Arthur Rimbaud ’s Les Illuminations (1886) to modernist experimentation with form. In fact, Henri Peyre, an eminent scholar of French poetry, argues in Connaissance de Baudelaire (1951) that Le Spleen de Paris has had a greater influence on poetry than Les Fleurs du mal . This conclusion is surprising because it is only relatively recently that Baudelaire’s prose poetry has attracted critical attention, but few critics have disagreed with Peyre. Le Spleen de Paris undoubtedly has had a significant influence on modern poetry.

During the period in which he was seriously exploring prose poetry, Baudelaire experienced a series of financial disasters. He had sold his writings to Poulet-Malassis, who had gone bankrupt in 1862. La Presse stopped publishing his poetry in prose. He had signed over to Michel Lévy sole ownership for his translations of Poe for 2,000 francs, so he lost a regular income; furthermore, he could not get Lacroix and Verboeckhoven, another printing house based in Brussels, interested in his work. These circumstances led Baudelaire to travel to Brussels, where he hoped to earn money with a lecture series and to make contact with Victor Hugo’s publisher, Lacroix et Verboeckhoven.

Baudelaire arrived in Brussels on April 24, 1864 and checked into the Hotel du Grand Miroir, where he stayed, enduring a miserable sojourn, until his stroke in 1866. His lecture series was a failure: he got less money for the lectures than he was expecting, and though his first lecture got a good review, the rest were described by those who attended as disasters because of Baudelaire’s stage fright. Baudelaire describes his last attempt to lecture in excruciating terms: there were three enormous drawing rooms, lit with chandeliers and candelabras, decorated with superb paintings, a “profusion” of cake and wine—and all for 10 or 12 people. He did not even bother to deliver the entire talk. In addition to the disappointment of the lecture series, Baudelaire did not make contact with Lacroix, who never accepted his invitations. Also, Baudelaire found the culture and climate of Belgium stifling, so stifling that while there he began writing a vitriolic indictment of the country titled “Pauvre Belgique!,” which was pubblished in Oeuvres posthumes et correspondances inédites (1887).

Despite his unhappy situation, Baudelaire stayed on in Belgium, perhaps because he was hoping for a satirical book to come out of the stay, perhaps because he did not want to return to France without something to show for the trip, or perhaps because he could not pay his hotel bill. His time in Belgium was not in fact wasted: Poulet-Malassis had emigrated there to escape creditors in France, and with his help Baudelaire published Les Épaves (The Wreckage, 1866), in which he assembled the condemned poems and other pieces left out of the French edition of Les Fleurs du mal . Baudelaire also became acquainted with Mme Hugo, even becoming a regular visitor at her home, and made contacts with local artists, notably with the engraver Félicien Rops.

While visiting the Rops family, Baudelaire collapsed during a trip to the Eglise Saint-Loup on March 15, 1866. Baudelaire’s health had been deteriorating for some time. There was no effective cure for syphilis in his day, and so although he thought he was cured of it in the early 1840s, his disease erupted in 1849, and again in the spring of 1861. In letters from January 1862 he describes recurrent and distressing symptoms. The doctors never mentioned syphilis in connection with his final illness, but it seems very likely that the cerebral hemorrhage of March 15 was caused by the debilitating effects of the disease.

The Rops took Baudelaire back to Brussels, and by March 31 paralysis had set in. He was transported to the Clinique Saint-Jean et Sainte Elisabeth on April 3. By April 4, Baudelaire was incapable of speaking coherently. Madame Aupick arrived in Brussels on April 14 and returned with Baudelaire to Paris at the end of June. Baudelaire was eventually moved into a hydrotherapeutic establishment, and it was there that he died on August 31, 1867.

The terrible irony of Baudelaire’s story is that this supremely articulate man spent the last 17 months of his life reduced to incoherent monosyllables. This aphasic state was special torture for him because he seemed to understand what was going on around him but was unable to express himself. A particularly sad example of this situation touches on the publication of Baudelaire’s complete works. He had wanted to find a publisher for them before his stroke, and his friends organized themselves to bring about what had become a last wish. Baudelaire conveyed with signs that he wanted Lévy as publisher, and this request was arranged. Ever the perfectionist, Baudelaire wanted to oversee the production of the manuscript. He knew, however, that he was in no condition to do so. In the hopes that he would eventually recover, Baudelaire used a calendar and a book published by Lévy to indicate that he wanted the process to wait until March 31. This date came with no improvement in Baudelaire’s health, and his collected works had to be prepared without his supervision; the seven-volume Oeuvres complètes (Complete Works) were not published until after his death, between 1868 and 1873. Biographies were also quickly available: Asselineau’s anecdotal Charles Baudelaire, sa vie et son oeuvre was published two years after the poet’s death; the first scholarly biography of Baudelaire was written by Jacques Crépet in 1887 and completed by his son Eugène in 1907: Baudelaire. Étude biographique revue et complétée par Jacques Crépet .

Baudelaire had achieved an important reputation in the literary world by the time of his death; writers such as  Stéphane Mallarmé ,  Paul Verlaine , and Rimbaud openly sang his praises. In his correspondence Rimbaud called him a “génie, un voyant” (genius, a visionary). In articles written for the journal L’Art in November and December 1865 Verlaine credited Baudelaire with writing poetry about modern man. Mallarmé celebrated Baudelaire in essays and took up many of his themes (Poe, escape from the physical world, and desire for the infinite). Baudelaire’s influence has carried over into the 20th century and to other countries in the work of such writers as Pierre-Jean Jouve, Pierre Emmanuel, and T.S. Eliot .

Though Baudelaire was accepted as a poet during his lifetime, his status with 19th-century critics was tenuous. Of 1500 books, 700 copies of Crépet’s biographical study remained in 1892. Lurid articles that exaggerated Baudelaire’s legendary eccentricities attended his death. Important scholars such as Ferdinand Brunetière and Gustave Lanson remained relatively ignorant of Baudelaire’s achievements.

Toward the end of the 19th century small magazines began to perceive Baudelaire’s work more clearly and to free him of the myth of decadence that had grown up around him. Baudelaire’s importance was not fully recognized by the world of criticism until the 20th century, though. In 1926 Paul Valéry’s “Situation de Baudelaire” (The Situation of Baudelaire) was published as an introduction to Les Fleurs du mal ; in 1927 Marcel Proust published the influential “A propos de Baudelaire” (On the Subject of Baudelaire). These essays and others brought about a renaissance for Baudelaire’s fortunes in France, and by World War II his work was regularly anthologized and used in schools.

Baudelaire’s writings have also come to be greatly appreciated abroad, notably in England, where he was introduced by the critic Arthur Symons  and where the American poet Eliot subsequently introduced him to American and English modernist poetry. Baudelaire is now an important figure in the literary canon. Critical articles and books about him abound; the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire Studies at Vanderbilt University is devoted to recording all major publications on the author and his work. In the 1980s and 1990s the prose poems seem to have become a particularly appealing topic for scholars of Baudelaire.

Baudelaire’s poetry has gone beyond what was once selective appreciation on the one hand and widespread notoriety on the other to general acclaim. Unlike Hugo, who cultivated his relationship with the public, Baudelaire in his career set himself apart by cultivating an eccentric image, by living an unconventional life, by writing poetry in verse that used Romantic topoi to upset them, and by launching a new form. While he did seek recognition, Baudelaire and his poetry are defined by their distinct individuality.

In Mon coeur mis à nu , Baudelaire described a dynamic—“De la vaporisation et de la centralisation du moi. Tout est là.” (The dispersion and the focusing of the self: those two movements are of the essence)—that strongly characterizes his life as well as his work. Willing to outrage public opinion and yet desirous of popular acclaim, he spoke penetratingly on the human condition. From Baudelaire’s personal, dark ruminations come epiphanies that illuminate even the 20th century. His poetry is read for those moments when, as Baudelaire wrote in his notebook, “la profonder de la vie se révèle tout entière dans le spectacle, si ordinaire qu’il soit, qu’on a sous les yeux. Il en devient le symbole” (the depth of life reveals itself in all its profundity in whatever one is looking at, however ordinary that spectacle might be. That vision becomes the symbol of life’s depth).

Montaigne on Death and the Art of Living

By maria popova.

In one of his 107 such exploratory essays, titled “That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die,” Montaigne turns to mortality — the subject of one of this year’s best psychology and philosophy books — and points to the understanding of death as a prerequisite for the understanding of life, for the very art of living .

Montaigne examines our conflicted relationship with dying:

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct. […] The end of our race is death; ’tis the necessary object of our aim, which, if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step without a fit of ague? The remedy the vulgar use is not to think on’t; but from what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness? They must bridle the ass by the tail: ‘Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro,’ [‘Who in his folly seeks to advance backwards’ — Lucretius, iv. 474] ’tis no wonder if he be often trapped in the pitfall. They affright people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as it were the name of the devil. And because the making a man’s will is in reference to dying, not a man will be persuaded to take a pen in hand to that purpose, till the physician has passed sentence upon and totally given him over, and then betwixt and terror, God knows in how fit a condition of understanding he is to do it. The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death sounded so harshly to their ears and seemed so ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing such a one is dead, said, ‘Such a one has lived,’ or ‘Such a one has ceased to live’ … provided there was any mention of life in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of consolation. … I make account to live, at least, as many more. In the meantime, to trouble a man’s self with the thought of a thing so far off were folly. But what? Young and old die upon the same terms; no one departs out of life otherwise than if he had but just before entered into it; neither is any man so old and decrepit, who, having heard of Methuselah, does not think he has yet twenty good years to come. Fool that thou art! who has assured unto thee the term of life? Thou dependest upon physicians’ tales: rather consult effects and experience. According to the common course of things, ’tis long since that thou hast lived by extraordinary favour; thou hast already outlived the ordinary term of life. And that it is so, reckon up thy acquaintance, how many more have died before they arrived at thy age than have attained unto it; and of those who have ennobled their lives by their renown, take but an account, and I dare lay a wager thou wilt find more who have died before than after five-and-thirty years of age. … How many several ways has death to surprise us?

Rather than indulging the fear of death, Montaigne calls for dissipating it by facing it head-on, with awareness and attention — an approach common in Eastern spirituality:

[L]et us learn bravely to stand our ground, and fight him. And to begin to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take a way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, ‘Well, and what if it had been death itself?’ and, thereupon, let us encourage and fortify ourselves. Let us evermore, amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remembrance of our frail condition before our eyes, never suffering ourselves to be so far transported with our delights, but that we have some intervals of reflecting upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of ours tends to death, and with how many dangers it threatens it. The Egyptians were wont to do after this manner, who in the height of their feasting and mirth, caused a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into the room to serve for a memento to their guests: ‘Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur, hora.’ ‘Think each day when past is thy last; the next day, as unexpected, will be the more welcome.’ — [Hor., Ep., i. 4, 13.] Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve. There is nothing evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that the privation of life is no evil: to know, how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint. Paulus Emilius answered him whom the miserable King of Macedon, his prisoner, sent to entreat him that he would not lead him in his triumph, ‘Let him make that request to himself.’ — [ Plutarch, Life of Paulus Aemilius, c. 17; Cicero, Tusc., v. 40. ] In truth, in all things, if nature do not help a little, it is very hard for art and industry to perform anything to purpose. I am in my own nature not melancholic, but meditative; and there is nothing I have more continually entertained myself withal than imaginations of death, even in the most wanton time of my age.

One of Montaigne’s most timeless and timeliest points strikes at the heart of our present productivity-culture, reminding us that the whole of life is contained in our inner life , not in the checklist of our accomplishments:

We should always, as near as we can, be booted and spurred, and ready to go, and, above all things, take care, at that time, to have no business with any one but one’s self: — ‘Quid brevi fortes jaculamur avo Multa?’ [‘Why for so short a life tease ourselves with so many projects?’ — Hor., Od., ii. 16, 17.]

He presages the “real artists ship” mantra Steve Job made famous five centuries later:

A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the finishing, or, at least, with no such passionate desire to see it brought to perfection. We are born to action: ‘Quum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus.’ [‘When I shall die, let it be doing that I had designed.’ — Ovid, Amor., ii. 10, 36.] I would always have a man to be doing, and, as much as in him lies, to extend and spin out the offices of life; and then let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my gardens not being finished.

The essence of his argument is the idea that learning to die is essential for learning to live:

If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with a comment, of the various deaths of men: he who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. […] Peradventure, some one may object, that the pain and terror of dying so infinitely exceed all manner of imagination, that the best fencer will be quite out of his play when it comes to the push. Let them say what they will: to premeditate is doubtless a very great advantage; and besides, is it nothing to go so far, at least, without disturbance or alteration? Moreover, Nature herself assists and encourages us: if the death be sudden and violent, we have not leisure to fear; if otherwise, I perceive that as I engage further in my disease, I naturally enter into a certain loathing and disdain of life. I find I have much more ado to digest this resolution of dying, when I am well in health, than when languishing of a fever; and by how much I have less to do with the commodities of life, by reason that I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, by so much I look upon death with less terror. Which makes me hope, that the further I remove from the first, and the nearer I approach to the latter, I shall the more easily exchange the one for the other.

With a philosophical lens fringing on quantum physics, Montaigne reminds us of the fundamental bias of the arrow of time as we experience it:

Not only the argument of reason invites us to it — for why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented? — but, also, seeing we are threatened by so many sorts of death, is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all, than once to undergo one of them? … What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble ourselves about taking the only step that is to deliver us from all trouble! As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our death is the death of all things included. And therefore to lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago. … Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.

He returns — poignantly, poetically — to the meaning of life :

All the whole time you live, you purloin from life and live at the expense of life itself. The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death. You are in death, whilst you are in life, because you still are after death, when you are no more alive; or, if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life, but dying all the while you live; and death handles the dying much more rudely than the dead, and more sensibly and essentially. If you have made your profit of life, you have had enough of it; go your way satisfied.

Half a millennium before Carl Sagan, Montaigne channels the sentiment at the heart of Pale Blue Dot :

Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil as you make it.’ And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity.

He paints death as the ultimate equalizer:

Give place to others, as others have given place to you. Equality is the soul of equity. Who can complain of being comprehended in the same destiny, wherein all are involved?

The heart of Montaigne’s case falls somewhere between John Cage’s Zen philosophy and the canine state of being-in-the-moment :

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life.

He concludes with an admonition about the solipsistic superficiality of death’s ritualization:

I believe, in truth, that it is those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set it out, that more terrify us than the thing itself; a new, quite contrary way of living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children; the visits of astounded and afflicted friends; the attendance of pale and blubbering servants; a dark room, set round with burning tapers; our beds environed with physicians and divines; in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror round about us; we seem dead and buried already. … Happy is the death that deprives us of leisure for preparing such ceremonials.

Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays is now in the public domain and is available as a free download in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg .

Public domain illustrations via Flickr Commons

— Published December 12, 2012 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/12/12/montaigne-on-death-and-the-art-of-living/ —

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17 Most Famous French Writers Of All Time

Want to learn more about French authors who impacted the French art and literary world? This post will give you a list of the most famous French writers !

Over the years, France has produced some great writers and some of the finest works in the literary world.

French literature and, as an extension, European literature have gained a lot from the novels, plays, books, and publications produced by these notable literary figures.

And to give you a glimpse of who these noteworthy people are, I have compiled a list of 17 famous French writers of all time.

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Though I am just writing about 17, there are so many more great French authors, novelists, and writers who could not be included as I would have to write a book myself on them otherwise. But for now, I will just be focusing on the 17 best French writers of all time.

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Famous French Writers

The famous writers of France listed below have works ranging from comedy to history to science fiction to romanticism, and even tragedy and satires.

Each known for a particular genre, I am sure you will find an author who you resonate with below.

1. Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885)

Victor Hugo is one of the most famous writers of France, with a career spanning over six decades.

He gained worldwide fame for his novels, Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862) which is one of the famous books set in Paris but was also known for his poem collections like Les Contemplations (1856) and La Légende des siècles (1859).

He wrote a lot about romanticism which can be read in his dramatic works, Cromwell (1827) and Hernani (1830), while also being a passionate supporter of republicanism.

His work was so popular that many of his French poems and books inspired popular music both during his life and after that.

Besides being a great writer, author, and French poet , Victor also got involved in politics and served as a deputy in the French National Assembly and as a senator where he heavily campaigned for the removal of the death sentence.

Due to his great work and the influence he had on French art and social affairs, he was given the honor of being buried at the Panthéon in Paris along with other luminaries.

Related post: Famous French Love Songs You’ll Enjoy

2. Émile Zola (1840-1902)

When naming famous French novelists, Émile Zola’s name is usually somewhere at the top.

Known for his naturalism, a type of extreme realism with the idea that the environment determines human character, Émile has novels and plays supporting his thought process.

Besides being a novelist, he was also a journalist and playwright writing several short stories, especially at the beginning of his career.

His most famous literary work is a 20-volume series called Les Rougon-Macquart, out of which the 9 th novel, Nana , is the most famous.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice, in 1901 and 1902.

3. Jules Verne (1828-1905)

Jules Verne is one of those famous French authors who gained popularity around the world as well.

His literary journey started with him writing plays while studying in law school, but his science fiction works like Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) are what made him so famous till date. They even earned him the title of “father of science fiction.”

His work was even translated into English and later adapted into movies that did very well too.

In fact, he is the 2 nd most translated author in the world after Agatha Christie and just 1 spot ahead of William Shakespeare .

4. Voltaire (1694-1778)

François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name Voltaire , knew he wanted to be a writer ever since he finished school, and he stayed true to his dream hence becoming one of the best French writers there lived during his time.

He published works in numerous formats – be it plays, novels, essays, poems, or scientific expositions. His most famous novels are   Zadig  (1747) and  Candide  (1759).

Apart from this, he was a leading figure of the French Age of Enlightenment and also a critic of French nobility and the Roman Catholic Church, which made him pursue voluntary exile in Britain, fearing imprisonment in France.

He also heavily criticized slavery and advocated for freedom of speech and a state that is separate from religion.

Just like Victor Hugo, Voltaire is another luminary whose remains are in the Panthéon.

To date, he remains one of the most famous French people in the literary world.

5. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

One of the founders of realism in French literature, Honoré de Balzac, was considered a great French writer of his time.

His 1 st successful publication was a novel called Les Chouans (1829). 4 years later, he published his 1 st bestseller, Eugénie Grandet (1833), and 2 years after that, in 1835 came Le Père Goriot , and Le Lys Dans la Vallée.

But he is best known for his magnum opus, La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy), which comprised of 91 interlinked novels and short stories, and was published between 1829 and 1847. Unfortunately, it remained unfinished at the time of his death.

Related post: The Best French Songs of all Time

6. Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)

One of the most famous writers in France is Alexandre Dumas! He started his writing career as a playwright, gaining fame for his play, Henri III et sa cour .

He then began writing novels, his most famous ones being Compte of Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo) and the Three Musketeers .

Dumas, whose real name was Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie published over 100,000 pages in his lifetime.

Apart from this, his achievements include being one of the most widely read French authors and an author whose works have been adapted into nearly 200 films.

7. George Sand (1804-1876)

George Sand was a pen name used by one of the greatest female French authors, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin.

Another author who is known for romanticism, Sand, got attention right from her 1 st novel, Indiana (1832) but is known for her other works like La Petite Fadette , Rose et Blanche, and Ce Que Disent Les Fleurs , as well.

Her personal life was pretty controversial since she would dress as a man to get into places that didn’t allow women, smoked in public, and had numerous lovers, one of them being composer Frédéric Chopin.

Today, her life and works are celebrated in Musée de la Vie Romantique which is one of the free museums in Paris and you can also find her statue in Luxembourg Gardens.

8. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

One of the best French writers and philosophers of the 20 th century, Jean-Paul Sartre, was also a playwright, screenwriter, and political activist.

He played an important role in the philosophy of phenomenology and existentialism and was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964.

His famous works include La Nausée (Nausea) (1938), Being and Nothingness (1943), Age of Reason (1945), and Existentialism and Humanism (1946). He wrote quite a lot about the French working class and neglected minority groups.

Related post: Best Songs About Paris

9. Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

Having started writing at a tender age, Marcel is regarded as one of the most influential authors of the 20 th century.

He wrote in the journal Le Mensuel before starting to write an autobiographical novel titled Jean Santeuil , which he, unfortunately, could not finish due to his untimely death.

But he does have Du côté de chez Swann (The Way by Swann’s) (1913) and À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower) (1918) to count as his published works.

His most famous and monumental work, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), a series containing 7 volumes was originally meant to have 10 but was also left unfinished.

The last 3 books in the series were left before Proust passed away due to pneumonia. They were then edited and posthumously published by his brother, Robert Proust.

10. Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)

The 3 rd writer on this list to be honored at the Panthéon is Antoine, known for his novella, Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) (1943), which might seem like a children’s book, but upon reading it, you will discover its depth and wisdom, making it worth a read even if you’re an adult.

He was a laureate of many of France’s highest literary awards on top of winning the United States National Book Award.

On a personal level, Antoine was an aviator before he started writing and had joined the Free France air force at the start of World War II.

He disappeared on a recon mission in 1944, and his body was never found. He was later presumed dead.

11. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

Charles Baudelaire is one of those underrated yet great French writers whose potential and worth you only realize when you read his essays and poems.

Charles’ best work was a book that contained nearly all of his poems, titled Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil). But it wasn’t published until many years after he wrote it.

In fact, the 3 rd edition of the series was posthumously published with 14 previously unpublished poems.

Charles is believed to have coined the term “modernity” through this series which paved the way for modernist movements.

On top of this, he holds the title of being one of the first translators of the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Related post: Best Books about France

12. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

Photo by Nadar / Gallica Digital Library   via Wki Commons

Gustave’s first novel was titled November and took him 5 years to complete. But his literary career began with his 1 st publication in a review called Le Colibri .

Among his literary works, his most famous one is titled Madame Bovary (1856), which was taken to court for obscenity but gained fame because of it.

The novel is said to be a great work of fiction and was later adapted into an opera. Gustave was widely regarded as one of the most famous French novelists, particularly for his realism in French literature.

13. Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Photo by UKBERRI.NET /Flickr

French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus was the 2 nd youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, at the age of 44, making him one of the great French writers of his time.

His best-known publication is a novella titled L’Étranger (The Stranger) (1942). Apart from this, his other famous works include La Peste (The Plague) (1947) and La Chute (The Fall) (1956).

Le Premier Homme (The First Man) was his last work, an unfinished final novel that Camus was working on before he died in a car accident in 1960 at the age of 46. His daughter, Catherine Camus, later published the book in 1994.

14. Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

Simone de Beauvoir was a female activist and one of the most famous writers of France for her writings on feminist theory and feminist existentialism.

Her activism and advocacy of female rights contributed to France granting women the right to vote in 1946.

Simone’s literary works were also based on feminism, like the Second Sex (1949), which spoke of the oppression of women, and La Vieillesse (The Coming of Age) (1970).

Apart from these, she also published She Came to Stay (1943), a fictional account of her open relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Mandarins (1954), for which she won the Prix Goncourt , the most prestigious literary prize in France making her one of the most famous French women in the literary world.

15. Molière (1622-1673)

Molière, a pen name adopted by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, was regarded as one of the best French writers to be produced by France.

He donned many hats — that of a playwright, poet, and even an actor . His works have been acknowledged as a great contribution to the French language and literature.

His to-go genre was comedy and tragi-comedy, so much so that he is believed to be the creator of modern French comedy.

Some of his famous plays include L’École des femmes (The School for Wives) (1662), Tartuffe ou L’Imposteur (Tartuffe) (1664), Le Misanthrope ou L’Atrabilaire amoureux (The Misanthrope) (1666) and L’Avare (The Miser) (1668) which are performed, among others, at Comédie-Française , a renowned theatre in Paris.

16. Charles Perrault (1628-1703)

Charles Perrault is not only regarded as one of the most famous writers in France but his popularity is spread far and wide.

You may or may not have heard of him, but you would have definitely heard of his famous works, which include  Puss in Boots  (le Chat Botté),  Little Red Riding Hood ,  Cinderella , and  Sleeping Beauty , which were included in his collection  Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals  or  Tales of Mother Goose .

Charles did not anticipate that these folk/fairy tales would gain as much popularity as they did or even be relevant for countless generations succeeding his.

17. Marguerite Duras (1914-1996)

French screenwriter, playwright, novelist, and film director, Marguerite Duras, a pseudonym for her birth name Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu, might have been Vietnamese by birth but is recognized among the great French writers of the 20 th century.

Marguerite gained international fame for her script of the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959), earning her an Oscar nomination.

Her other famous work is L’Amant or The Lover (1984), an autobiographical novel that earned her a Prix Goncourt in the same year. The book was later adapted into a widely acclaimed film with the same English title in 1992.

Final Thoughts on the Best Writers from France

Being a country that celebrates art and literature, there is no shortage of French famous authors to write about.

However, I hope that this list of the best writers from France inspires you to not only read some of their greatest works but also try to learn more about how they influenced societies.

Which French writers resonated with you the most and whose work can’t you stop reading? Do let me know in the comments below.

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12 Best French Authors You Need To Read

If you want to expand your literary horizons, why not look at some of the best French authors? Read on to learn more.

Paris was a hotbed for writing during the 19th and 20th centuries. Numerous French writers left their mark on French literature. For example, Voltaire served as an inspiration for multiple generations of writers. Each French novelist of the time developed a unique style, filling the world with a rich diversity of French literature.

The literary realism and naturalism movements in France impacted English writing, and many famous French writers left their marks on the United States as well. From Les Miserables to The Little Prince, the French language is undoubtedly a beautiful vehicle for writing. Take a look at some of the top French authors below, and consider picking up a few of their short stories, novels, or works of science fiction.

1. Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885

2. albert camus, 1913 – 1960, 3. antoine de saint-exupery, 1900 – 1944, 4. marcel proust, 1871 – 1922, 5. emile zola, 1840 – 1902, 6. alexandre dumas, 1802 – 1870, 7. jules verne, 1828 – 1905, 8. george sand, 1804 – 1876, 9. simone de beauvoir, 1908 – 1986, 10. jean-paul sartre, 1905 – 1980, 11. voltaire, 1694 – 1778, 12. honore de balzac, 1799 – 1850, best french authors ranked.

Without a doubt, one of the most famous French authors is Victor Hugo. He wrote for more than six decades, and he published everything from critical essays to historical odysseys and from satire to poetry.

His most famous novels have been translated into more than 60 languages. Two of his marquee works include The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables. Both have been adapted for plays and the big screen. At the same time, his literary collection is vast, his writing style exquisite, and his storytelling unparalleled. As a result, he served as an inspiration to multiple generations of writers.

During his time, he was also a passionate supporter of the revolution and played a role in fighting to end poverty following the fall of Napoleon. As a result, he became a symbol of not only the French Revolution but also the French nation. If you enjoyed our round-up of the best French authors, we have many more articles on the best authors from around the globe. You might want to explore our list of the best Hungarian authors . Or use the search bar at the top right of the page to search for authors in a country or region you are interested in.

• Used Book in Good Condition
• Victor Hugo (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 1042 Pages - 09/26/2012 (Publication Date) - Simon & Brown (Publisher)

Even though Albert Camus lived a short life, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest French writers who ever lived. He was born in French Algeria, and his parents were Pieds Noirs. He also studied philosophy at the University of Algiers.

He eventually moved to Paris. When Nazi Germany invaded France during World War II, he joined the French Resistance. Camus served as the editor-in-chief of a newspaper called Combat, which was outlawed by Vichy France, the puppet state of Nazi Germany following the surrender of France. Despite the surrender of France, Albert Camus never gave up hope, and he said that freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957, when he was only 44 years old. His most famous work is titled The Stranger, and it is still a best-seller to this day.

• Vintage, A nice option for a Book Lover
• It comes with proper packaging
• Ideal for Gifting
• Albert Camus (Author)

It is difficult to write about the greatest French authors without mentioning the author of Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery. Even though the story might seem like a book for small children at first, it is obvious that there are numerous ideas and themes that even adults would appreciate.

Before becoming a writer, Saint-Exupery served in the Free French Air Force during WWII. Unfortunately, he disappeared while on a mission in 1944 and was never seen again. As a result, many of his works were published by his family after his death. In addition to his work on The Little Prince, some of his other popular novels are Airman’s Odyssey and Wind, Sand, and Stars.

• Hardcover Book
• Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de (Author)
• 96 Pages - 09/04/2001 (Publication Date) - Clarion Books (Publisher)

Marcel Proust is widely considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. He was born following the Franco-Prussian War, and France was going through many societal changes. As a result, many of his novels focus on the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the working class.

One of his most famous novels was In Search of Lost Time, which is also one of his longest works. Looking for more best authors from around the globe? You might be interested in our round-up of the best Moroccan authors .

• Proust, Marcel (Author)
• 4211 Pages - 06/03/2003 (Publication Date) - Modern Library (Publisher)

Emile Zola was one of the most prolific writers in French history. He wrote books, essays, and short stories. As a prominent essayist, one of his famous articles appeared in a local newspaper and was titled J’accuse, which means I accuse.

This famous article came to the defense of a Jewish officer in the French army. He was defending Alfred Dreyfus, who was accused of espionage. Even though the charges were false, anti-Semitism was a significant issue in France at the time. Despite a lack of evidence, he was put on trial and convicted. The truth eventually came out, and Dreyfus was given a medal, while Zola was hailed as a hero.

In addition to the famous newspaper article, some of his most popular works include The Mysteries of Marseilles, Therese Raquin, and Rougon-Macquart. He was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prizes in Literature, awarded in 1901 and 1902.

• Zola, Emile (Author)
• 320 Pages - 04/14/2008 (Publication Date) - MONDIAL (Publisher)

Any list of the greatest French authors has to include Alexander Dumas. He was incredibly influential during the 19th century, and many of his works are still read today. Alexandre Dumas was a pen name, and his actual name was Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie.

Because of his upbringing, he had access to aristocratic circles. He also worked for King Louis Philippe, the last king of France. He published multiple significant works, including The Three Musketeers and the Comte of Monte Cristo. He also worked for the French government, so he published writing in various genres, which is a testament to his literary talents.

• Alexandre Dumas père (Author)
• 1276 Pages - 05/27/2003 (Publication Date) - Penguin Classics (Publisher)

If you are interested in works of science fiction, then Jules Verne is undoubtedly a writer you should read. You have probably heard of several of his books already. Some of his most famous stories include Around the World in 80 Days, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas: A World Tour Underwater, and The Journey to the Center of the Earth.

A unique writer, his works have captured the imagination of multiple generations of people of all ages. You will immediately be transported to another place and time when you read his stories. Even as you read his works today, you will probably end up wondering what the future might hold.

In addition to his work as a storyteller, he also wrote autobiographies, songs, and poetry. Several of his novels have even been adapted for the big screen.

• Jules Verne (Author)
• 256 Pages - 12/30/1998 (Publication Date) - Wordsworth Editions Ltd (Publisher)

George Sand is one of the most popular female writers in France. George Sand is a pen name, and her actual name was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin. She even took this to the extreme, wearing male attire in public.

Even though she had to adopt the persona of a man to get her work published, she was a powerful advocate for women’s rights and the working class. She also commissioned her own newspaper to amplify the message of her writings, and much of her work inspired others. Of note, she was one of Frederic Chopin’s lovers, who was one of the most famous composers of all time. One of her most famous works was Indiana.

• Sand, George (Author)
• French (Publication Language)
• 416 Pages - 11/05/1984 (Publication Date) - Schoenhofs Foreign Books (Publisher)

Simone de Beauvoir was a prominent female activist and French writer. She was known for her thoughts on feminist existentialism and feminist theory. She famously said that one is not born but rather becomes a woman.

Fortunately, her work paid off, as France gave women the right to vote in 1946, right in the middle of her life. One of her most famous works was a treatise called The Second Sex , which was published in 1949. The book took a detailed look at the history of oppression women faced in France. She also spent a lot of her life living with another prominent French writer, Jean-Paul Sartre.

• De Beauvoir, Simone (Author)
• 832 Pages - 05/03/2011 (Publication Date) - Vintage (Publisher)

Jean-Paul Sartre was a famous French writer, playwright, and philosopher. In addition to his work as a writer, he also made movies. He was born in Paris and met another prominent French writer, Simone de Beauvoir, in college. He and Simone lived together during the days of Vichy France, which was the puppet state following the surrender of France to Germany during World War Two.

Jean-Paul Sartre sympathized with liberal ideals, and many of his works reflect that. His most famous works include the Age of Reason and Nausee, which means nausea. He also wrote about the plight of the working class and minorities who were neglected in France, particularly those of African descent and Jewish people. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964.

• Sartre, Jean-Paul (Author)
• 416 Pages - 07/07/1992 (Publication Date) - Vintage (Publisher)

Voltaire is the nom de plume, or pen name, of Francois Marie Arouet. He was one of the most prolific writers of the 18th century, and he wrote essays, biographies, novels, plays, poems, and even scientific reports. He is widely revered as one of the greatest writers of all time and is credited with setting the stage for Romantic and Victorian eras writers.

In addition, Voltaire was a prominent advocate of civil liberties, famously saying that you should judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. He was one of the leading voices of the French Revolution, which took place in 1789, and two of his most famous works were Letters to England and Candide.

• Voltaire (Author)
• 84 Pages - 12/04/2020 (Publication Date) - CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (Publisher)

Honore de Balzac is frequently overlooked on the list of greatest French writers, but he was also one of the most prolific. One of his most famous publications is La Comedie Humaine . A collection of short stories with more than 90 essays, novels, and tales. The stories in this prolific work talk about society, women, power, money, and numerous other issues that arose during the French Revolution.

If you want to learn more about the famous Honore de Balzac, you can find La Comedie Humaine on Amazon .

• De Balzac, Honore (Author)
• 396 Pages - 04/01/2005 (Publication Date) - Kessinger Publishing (Publisher)

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25 Most Famous French Authors

Alexandre Dumas. Photo by Rouibi Dhia Eddine Nadjm. Wikimedia Commons

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1. victor hugo, 2. honoré de balzac.

Honoré de Balzac. Photo by Filo gèn’. Wikimedia Commons

3. Émile Zola

Émile Zola. Photo by Nadar. Wikimedia Commons

4. Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust. Photo by Otto Wegener. Wikimedia Commons

5. George Sand

George Sand. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

6. Voltaire

7. albert camus, 8. gustave flaubert, 9. jean-paul, 10. antoine de saint exupery, 11. guy de maupassant.

Guy de Maupassant. Photo by Nadar. Wikimedia Commons

12. Alexandre Dumas

13. simone de beauvoir.

Simone de Beauvoir. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

14. Molière

Molière. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

15. Jules Verne

Jules Verne. Photo by Étienne Carjat. Wikimedia Commons

16. Jacques Prévert

Jacques Prévert. Photo by Adolf Hoffmeister. Wikimedia Commons

17. Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

18. Charles Perrault

A portrait of Charles Perrault. Photo by Charles Le Brun. Wikimedia Commons

19. Marguerite Duras

20. colette, 21. guillaume musso, 22. édouard louis, 23. katherine pancol, 24. olivier guez, 25. gilles legardinier.

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8 short biographies of celebrated french writers.

• Dan Forsythe
• June 8, 2022

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French writers are a vital ingredient in the nation’s rich cultural heritage. Adding colour and controversy, a long list of celebrated scribes helped shape the national character. Some remain beloved today, in and outside France.

We’ve picked out 8 literary greats from across French history. All French icons, all staggeringly influential. All with an intriguing biography.

Victor Hugo

A handful of French writers built a lasting legacy. Victor Hugo is, perhaps, the finest example.

The author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862) was inspired by the contemporary Romantic movement. Born in 1802, by the time Romanticism’s heyday was over (around 1850), he was one of its leading lights.

A restless genius, Victor Hugo’s prolific output over a 60 plus year career spanned everything from satire to funeral orations. He even found time to sketch over 4,000 drawings. Yet it was his writing which earned him acclaim.

Alongside his two best-known books, Hugo was a feted poet, responsible for ambitious collections like La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages; 1859) that sought to articulate the human condition.

The son of a Napoleonic general, Hugo’s political beliefs shifted markedly left over his lifetime. A campaigner for social justice, he would later oppose the ascension of Napoleon III, leading to his temporary exile in Brussels.

Despite holding radical views for the day, after several thwarted applications, he was accepted into the Académie Française, the august body charged with safeguarding the French language. The nation’s leading man of letters used his growing stature to campaign for change: opposing the death penalty and slavery while supporting universal suffrage and press freedoms.

A rational and tireless voice for progress, Hugo was elected to the National Assembly at critical junctures in French history. First in 1848 against the backdrop of the February Revolution ( Révolution de Février ), then in 1870 after returning from exile when Napoleon III was deposed.

By 1870, he was so popular that there was talk of him replacing Napoleon III. His own notes suggest he was inclined to accept this fanciful honour. Yet despite his exalted status, he failed to get re-elected to the National Assembly and Hugo spent the remainder of his life fighting for social and political progress in the Third Republic as a political outsider.

In a life touched by personal tragedy (only one of his five children survived him), his later years were characterised by illness. Yet by the time he reached his 80 th birthday, he was able to witness parades through Paris in his honour that passed directly under his bedroom window.

His death in 1885, aged 83, was met with national mourning and, against his own wishes, Hugo was honoured with a state funeral. He was laid to rest in France’s monument to heroes, the Panthéon. Interred alongside two other revered French writers, Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola, Victor Hugo is still considered a giant of French literature.

Did you know? You can visit Victor Hugo’s home in Paris, lovingly restored to how it was when he lived.

Jules Verne

A contemporary of Victor Hugo, Jules Verne was not a political campaigner. But his influence on French culture and international literature is probably bigger, and his novels have been translated into more languages than any other French writer.

The author of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (20,000 Leagues under the sea; 1870) and Voyage au Centre de la Terre (Journey to the centre of the Earth; 1864) as part of his ‘ Voyages Extraordinaires ’ (Extraordinary Journeys) series, he has been hailed the ‘father of science fiction’. Adding other illustrious works like Around the world in 80 days and The Mysterious Island to his body of works, he is one of the French writers whose works are still read by schoolchildren today.

Despite, or because of, his commercial success, Verne was never fully recognised by his literary peers. He failed to win a seat in the Académie Française. And there was a prevailing view that his works did not add anything substantial, unlike the French writers Victor Hugo or Émile Zola, for example.

By his death in 1905 (aged 77), he reportedly regretted not playing a more prominent role in French literary discourse. Yet in the years that followed, his star only grew brighter.

Verne’s works gained newfound respect and legions of fans outside France. ‘Serious’ French writers started to recognise the quality of his writing matched his talent for storytelling. He gained such a fervent posthumous following that he inspired an informal cult that would create the Société Jules Verne, an academic society for scholars of his writing.

Today, Jules Verne’s influence can be spotted across France. From theme park rides to the steampunk aesthetics at Les Machines de l’Île in Nantes, his birthplace. His works are the cornerstone of science-fiction. Countless luminaries, from cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin to philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, cite him as their inspiration.   

One of the most respected French writers of all time, Jules Verne’s novels continue to inspire French writers and Hollywood producers today.  

Alexandre Dumas

If any French writer can match the international acclaim of Jules Verne, it is Alexandre Dumas. Author of Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers; 1844) and the enduringly popular Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo; 1844-46), Dumas is another French icon who rests in the national monument to French legends, the Panthéon.

Real name Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, Alexandre was the son of a slave and a French general. His unusual upbringing in (modern-day) Haiti did not stop him from quickly joining the elite in France when he moved there aged 14.

A high achiever from a young age, Dumas followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the army, rising to the rank of General by the age of 31. The first person of Afro-Antilles heritage to achieve the status.

By then, Diderot had already made his name amongst French writers. At 27 years old, his first play Henry III and His Courts was well-received. He followed up just a year later with another respected play, Christine .

Balancing writing with a part in the political machinations of the day — he participated in the coup that removed Charles X from the French throne — Dumas’ books sold well. Often translated into English, he experienced commercial success. Yet a bon viveur who had numerous affairs, he spent what he earned and lived like a penniless artist for much of his life.

In 1844, he finished the two novels he is remembered for today, the Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Partly inspired by his military and political experiences in the doomed Second Empire, they are still cherished globally today.

Adding noted works like La Reine Margot (The Queen Margot), Le Prince des voleurs ( Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves), and El Hombre de La Mascara de Hierro (The man in the iron mask) to a colossal repertoire, Dumas’s novels have reportedly been turned into over 200 movies.

On the bicentenary of his birth in 2002, Alexandre Dumas received the highest honour France can bestow when his ashes were moved to the Panthéon, thus confirming his status as one of the finest French writers.

Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot is remembered as one of the respected Enlightenment figures in France who co-created and edited the seminal Encyclopédie .

Encyclopédie was a mammoth undertaking, drawing together myriad enlightenment thinkers, including Voltaire and Rousseau, from across the intellectual sphere. Mathematicians, historians, natural historians, economists and more contributed 71,818 articles to the 28 volumes of work.

Diderot was an encyclopédiste (contributor), but his primary role was chief editor. Working with mathematician and philosopher Jean le Rond d’Alembert, he helped pull the sprawling work together. It was not the first encyclopedia (the Romans had that covered), but its depth and scope were immense.

Aiming to bring all the world’s knowledge into one collection of written works, Encyclopédie was both a product of the Age of Enlightenment and a vehicle to bring those ideas to a wider audience. It was groundbreaking, controversial, and audacious. In short, it was a hugely important work that etched Diderot’s name in French history.

Diderot did not emerge from nowhere. He was a philosophical writer and playwright for many years before. But he gained little recognition amongst French writers of the day and had to scrape a living, only realising financial security after Encyclopédie was finished. In his later years, his main income came from working as chief librarian for Russian empress Catherine the Great.

Some novels, Les bijoux indiscrets (the indiscrete jewels), were published anonymously to dodge censorship in pre-revolutionary France. While many of his works were published posthumously, like his novels La promenade du sceptique (The sceptic’s walk) and Jacques the Fatalist .  

Diderot passed away in 1784, aged 70, just 5 years before the revolution. While many of his written works are considered of minor importance, he will always be remembered as one of the French writers who brought Enlightenment ideas to the masses and paved the way for change.

Honoré de Balzac

Among the many pioneering nineteenth century French writers, Honoré de Balzac is best remembered for his use of fiction to detail the state of the nation. Writing in the post-Napoleonic era, his finest works are collected within La Comédie Humaine (The human comedy; 1829-48), a highly-personal sequence of novels.

Renowned for its rare observational honesty, La Comédie Humaine follows a colourful tapestry of relatable characters. It encompassed 91 finished pieces, from essays to novels.

Helping birth the idea of fictional novels, Balzac was a sensation in his day. One of the rare French writers of that period to dodge political controversy, he is credited with influencing writers like Charles Dickens and Gustave Flaubert.

Born in 1799, ill health and misfortune dogged Balzac’s life. Yet those experiences, including failed careers in law and politics, helped inform his writing, adding a layer of realism rarely seen by French writers before.

Today, you can visit Balzac’s tomb in the celebrity-filled Père Lachaise Cemetery, where he is remembered as one of the French writers who truly shook up the literary world.

George Sand

Still stirring controversy today, George Sand (real name: Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin) is the only woman on this list of venerable French writers.

Beloved by peers during her day — her friends included Balzac and Gustave Flaubert — she is partly remembered for her flamboyant lifestyle. A voice for women’s rights, she caused scandals in her day by wearing male attire, smoking in public, and having extra-marital lover affairs, most famously with Frédéric Chopin.

Illustrating how she remains a figure of controversy, a plan to have her remains reinterred in the Panthéon was shelved in 2003. The move was claimed to be a token gesture for feminism that managed to upset both ends of the political spectrum.

Today, Sand’s remains are still buried in the small family plot in her home village of Nohant, Indre. Her home is a museum . In Paris, the Musée de la Vie Romantique (Museum of Romantic Life) also contains a collection of her momentoes, displayed in the home where she once entertained peers like Charles Dickens and Franz Liszt.

(Are you interested in discovering new French museums? Check out our guide to 12 of the most extraordinary French museums ).

Influenced by the contemporary romantic school, Sand was a prolific author of novels. Her rustic novels series, including La Mare au diable (The Devil’s Pool; 1846) and La Petite Fadette (The little Fadette; 1849) were incredibly popular in their day, with her books outselling Balzac and Victor Hugo. She even found time to write a collection of children’s stories for her own grandchildren, Contes d’une grand’mère (Tales of a grandmother; 1873).

George Sand’s life was lived in technicolour. She stands out amongst French writers: not just for her early feminism and the scandals that lit up Parisian salons, but because she was a writer of renown. Influencing writers from South America to Russia (Fyodor Dostoevsky was a huge fan), she remains one of the most famous French writers ever.

No list of French writers can ignore Molière, aka Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. A legendary playwright and favourite of the Bourbon monarchy, his works transformed the nature of comedy.

Writing at a time when the French language was being codified, it has been said that today the French speak the ‘ language of Molière ’. Immeasurably influential on drama, comedy, and the written word, he is a scribe who is often hailed the greatest of all French writers.

His most admired works covered tragedy and farce yet were nearly all comedies. They include L’École des femmes (The School for Wives; 1662), the critically adored Le Misanthrope , and his most praised and controversial play, Tartuffe ou L’Imposteur (Tartuffe, or The Imposter; 1664).

Patronised by royalty, Molière the wordsmith and dramatist had an eye for tragi-comedy. His influence is undimmed long after he died in 1673, aged just 51. Living his entire life in Paris, his bones were eventually moved to the illustrious Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, to rest among distinguished company.  

Marcel Proust

Another of the exalted names to reside at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Marcel Proust is one of the twentieth century’s peerless French writers. A novelist and essayist, he is best known for the monumental seven volume series À la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time; 1913-27).

Born in 1871 in Auteuil, Proust learned his craft writing for literary magazines and reviews. Aged 38, Proust started writing his magnum opus. Thousands of characters and personal recollections were interwoven into a timeless novel charting a young man’s path through life. At the heart of his prose is a wry analytical style that was considered fresh and unique.

Plagued by ill health brought on by asthma, Proust died aged 51, and three volumes of his work were completed and published posthumously. À la recherche du temps perdu was hailed an instant masterpiece, with Graham Greene pronouncing Proust the “ greatest novelist of the 20 th century ”.

From Molière to Proust, eminent French writers have been inspiring, informing, and entertaining for centuries. Worthy names are missing, but there is no question that all the French writers on our list rank among the greatest of all time.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Claude monet (1840–1926).

The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau Forest

Claude Monet

Garden at Sainte-Adresse

Regatta at Sainte-Adresse

La Grenouillère

Camille Monet (1847–1879) on a Garden Bench

The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil

Edouard Manet

Poppy Fields near Argenteuil

The Parc Monceau

View of Vétheuil

The Manneporte near Etretat

Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun)

The Four Trees

Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (Sunlight)

Water Lilies

Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies

The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog)

Laura Auricchio Department of Art & Design Studies, Parsons The New School for Design

October 2004

Claude Monet was a key figure in the Impressionist movement that transformed French painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. Throughout his long career, Monet consistently depicted the landscape and leisure activities of Paris and its environs as well as the Normandy coast. He led the way to twentieth-century modernism by developing a unique style that strove to capture on canvas the very act of perceiving nature.

Raised in Normandy, Monet was introduced to plein-air painting by Eugène Boudin ( 2003.20.2 ), known for paintings of the resorts that dotted the region’s Channel coast, and subsequently studied informally with the Dutch landscapist Johan Jongkind (1819–1891). When he was twenty-two, Monet joined the Paris studio of the academic history painter Charles Gleyre. His classmates included Auguste Renoir , Frédéric Bazille, and other future Impressionists. Monet enjoyed limited success in these early years, with a handful of landscapes, seascapes, and portraits accepted for exhibition at the annual Salons of the 1860s. Yet rejection of many of his more ambitious works, notably the large-scale Women in the Garden (1866; Musée d’Orsay, Paris ), inspired Monet to join with Edgar Degas , Édouard Manet , Camille Pissarro, Renoir, and others in establishing an independent exhibition in 1874. Impression, Sunrise (1873; Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris), one of Monet’s contributions to this exhibition, drew particular scorn for the unfinished appearance of its loose handling and indistinct forms. Yet the artists saw the criticism as a badge of honor, and subsequently called themselves “Impressionists” after the painting’s title, even though the name was first used derisively.

Monet found subjects in his immediate surroundings, as he painted the people and places he knew best. His first wife, Camille ( 2002.62.1 ), and his second wife, Alice, frequently served as models. His landscapes chart journeys around the north of France ( 31.67.11 ) and to London, where he escaped the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Returning to France, Monet moved first to Argenteuil, just fifteen minutes from Paris by train, then west to Vétheuil, Poissy, and finally to the more rural Giverny in 1883. His homes and gardens became gathering places for friends, including Manet and Renoir , who often painted alongside their host ( 1976.201.14 ). Yet Monet’s paintings cast a surprisingly objective eye on these scenes, which include few signs of domestic relations.

Following in the path of the Barbizon painters , who had set up their easels in the Fontainebleau Forest ( 64.210 ) earlier in the century, Monet adopted and extended their commitment to close observation and naturalistic representation. Whereas the Barbizon artists painted only preliminary sketches en plein air , Monet often worked directly on large-scale canvases out of doors, then reworked and completed them in his studio. His quest to capture nature more accurately also prompted him to reject European conventions governing composition, color, and perspective. Influenced by Japanese woodblock prints , Monet’s asymmetrical arrangements of forms emphasized their two-dimensional surfaces by eliminating linear perspective and abandoning three-dimensional modeling. He brought a vibrant brightness to his works by using unmediated colors, adding a range of tones to his shadows, and preparing canvases with light-colored primers instead of the dark grounds used in traditional landscape paintings.

Monet’s interest in recording perceptual processes reached its apogee in his series paintings (e.g., Haystacks [1891], Poplars [1892], Rouen Cathedral [1894]) that dominate his output in the 1890s. In each series, Monet painted the same site again and again, recording how its appearance changed with the time of day. Light and shadow seem as substantial as stone in his Rouen Cathedral ( 30.95.250 ) series. Monet reports that he rented a room across from the cathedral’s western facade in 1892 and 1893, where he kept multiple canvases in process and moved from one to the next as the light shifted. In 1894, he reworked the canvases to their finished states.

In the 1910s and 1920s, Monet focused almost exclusively on the picturesque water-lily pond ( 1983.532 ) that he created on his property at Giverny. His final series depicts the pond in a set of mural-sized canvases where abstract renderings of plant and water emerge from broad strokes of color and intricately built-up textures. Shortly after Monet died (a wealthy and well-respected man at the age of eighty-six), the French government installed his last water-lily series in specially constructed galleries at the Orangerie in Paris, where they remain today.

Auricchio, Laura. “Claude Monet (1840–1926).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cmon/hd_cmon.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

House, John. Monet: Nature into Art . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

Tucker, Paul Hayes. Claude Monet: Life and Art . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Additional Essays by Laura Auricchio

• Auricchio, Laura. “ The Transformation of Landscape Painting in France .” (October 2004)
• Auricchio, Laura. “ Eighteenth-Century Women Painters in France .” (October 2004)
• Auricchio, Laura. “ The Nabis and Decorative Painting .” (October 2004)

Related Essays

• American Impressionism
• Edgar Degas (1834–1917): Painting and Drawing
• Édouard Manet (1832–1883)
• Impressionism: Art and Modernity
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• Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
• Auguste Rodin (1840–1917)
• The Barbizon School: French Painters of Nature
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• James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)
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• The Salon and the Royal Academy in the Nineteenth Century
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List of Rulers

• List of Rulers of Europe
• France, 1800–1900 A.D.
• France, 1900 A.D.–present
• 19th Century A.D.
• Arboreal Landscape
• Architecture
• Barbizon School
• Floral Motif
• Impressionism
• Oil on Canvas
• Preparatory Study
• Printmaking
• School of Fontainebleau

Artist or Maker

• Boudin, Eugène
• Degas, Edgar
• Jongkind, Johan Barthold
• Manet, Édouard
• Monet, Claude
• Pissarro, Camille
• Renoir, Auguste

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Famous Essayists from France

List of notable or famous essayists from France, with bios and photos, including the top essayists born in France and even some popular essayists who immigrated to France. If you're trying to find out the names of famous French essayists then this list is the perfect resource for you. These essayists are among the most prominent in their field, and information about each well-known essayist from France is included when available.

Marcel Proust and André Gide are a great starting point for your to rank your favorites on this list

This historic essayists from France list can help answer the questions "Who are some French essayists of note?" and "Who are the most famous essayists from France?" These prominent essayists of France may or may not be currently alive, but what they all have in common is that they're all respected French essayists.

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• Public domain
• Age : Dec. at 81 (1869-1951)
• Birthplace : Paris, France

Carlos Alvarado-Larroucau

• Birthplace : San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina

Charles de Saint-Évremond

• Age : Dec. at 90 (1613-1703)
• Birthplace : Coutances, France

Christian Bobin

• Birthplace : Le Creusot, France

Dominique Barbéris

• Birthplace : Cameroon

• GNU Free Documentation License

Francis Ponge

• Age : Dec. at 89 (1899-1988)
• Birthplace : Montpellier, France

10 Most Famous Novels In French Literature

Vulgar Latin , spoken form of non-Classical Latin, gave rise to the Romance group of languages which include French. Before 1200 CE, almost all French literature was composed as verse and was communicated orally to its public. The 11th-century epic poem La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland) is regarded as the oldest surviving major work of French literature . The earliest novel on our list is Voltaire’s Candide which was published in 1759. French Romantic writers of the early 19th century wrote several popular and acclaimed novels. These include Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and the adventure novels of Alexandre Dumas . Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is considered as a masterpiece of Realism that established the Realist movement in the European scene with its publication in 1856. The best known French novels of the 20th century include In Search of Lost Time; The Little Prince; and The Stranger . Here are the 10 most famous French novels by renowned writers.

The most famous French writer of his day, Emile Zola is perhaps the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism. Naturalism is a literary movement that began in the late 19th century which is a type of extreme realism and focuses on the idea that environment determines and governs human character. As a novelist, Zola is best known for his 20-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. His most famous novel, Nana, is the 9th installation of the series. Published in book form in February 1880, it was a runaway success with its first edition of 55,000 copies being sold out in a single day. The novel tells the story of its titular character, Nana Coupeau, rising from a streetwalker to a high-class prostitute during the last three years of the French Second Empire. The character Nana was inspired by Valtesse de La Bigne, a French courtesan who had a succession of rich lovers.

#9 In Search of Lost Time

Primarily due to this masterpiece, Marcel Proust is regarded as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. He began working on it in 1909 and it was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. The last three volumes were published posthumously and edited by his brother. The novel is about the recollections of the narrator of his childhood and experiences into adulthood in late 19th century and early 20th century aristocratic France. In Search of Lost Time is famous for its exploration of involuntary memory, a sub-component of memory that occurs when cues encountered in everyday life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort. The novel is considered by many critics to be the definitive modern novel and it had a profound effect on 20th century literature. English writer Somerset Maugham called In Search of Lost Time the “greatest fiction to date”.

François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name Voltaire, is regarded as one of the greatest French writers. He was prolific, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories and scientific expositions. His most famous novel, Candide, follows the story of its titular character as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. It is a picaresque novel, that is a work that depicts a roguish but “appealing hero”, usually of low social class. Candide is characterized by its tone as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast-moving plot. Though it was a best-seller, the novel was denounced by both secular and religious authorities as it openly derides government and the church alike. It was banned in February 1759. Nonetheless, it sold 20,000 to 30,000 copies by the end of the year in over 20 editions. Candide is the most widely read of Voltaire’s many works; and it is considered one of the great achievements of Western literature.

#7 The Three Musketeers

Swashbuckler is a genre of European adventure literature that focuses on a heroic protagonist who is skilled in swordplay, acrobatics, guile and chivalrous ideals. The Three Musketeers belongs to the swashbuckler genre which has chivalrous swordsmen who fight for justice. The novel follows the adventures of a young man named d’Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris. There he meets three of the most formidable musketeers of the age – Athos, Porthos and Aramis. The four then become entangled in one of the great conspiracies in monarchist France. Alexandre Dumas is one of the most widely read French authors and The Three Musketeers is one of his best known works. It has been adapted into numerous films, television series, theater, video games and more.

#6 The Stranger

Albert Camus is a Nobel Prize winning French author who rose to fame after the Second World War and is regarded as perhaps the greatest French novelist of the 20th century. The Stranger is his most famous work. Its protagonist is an indifferent French Algerian named Meursault. The novel is famous for its first lines: “Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.” The novella is divided into two parts: presenting Meursault’s first-person narrative view before and after he kills an Arab man. The Stranger is regarded as one of the greatest works of 20th-century literature. In 1999, Paris newspaper Le Monde ranked it as number one on its 100 Books of the Century. It has been adapted into two films: Lo Straniero (1967) (Italian) by Luchino Visconti and Yazgı (2001, Fate) (Turkish) by Zeki Demirkubuz.

#5 The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a French writer who was also a journalist and a pioneering aviator. As a novelist, he is best known as the author of this novella. The Little Prince sold an estimated 140 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 301 languages and dialects. This makes it one of the best-selling and most translated books ever published. The novella begins with the plane of its narrator being crashed in the Sahara desert. Here he meets a young boy who is nicknamed “the little prince”. This boy then recounts the story of his life to the narrator. The novella addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love and loss. Among other things, it has been adapted into films, plays and TV series. In 1999, Paris newspaper Le Monde ranked it as number four on its 100 Books of the Century.

#4 The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Victor Hugo has been described as “the most powerful mind of the Romantic movement”. While in France Victor Hugo is more famous as one of the greatest French poets, outside France he is best known as the author of the novels Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). A historical novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is set in Paris in 1482 during the reign of Louis XI. The story centers on Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral; and his unrequited love for the beautiful dancer La Esmeralda. The defining characteristic of Quasimodo is his physical monstrosity and the primary focus of the novel is what it means to be perceived as a monster. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is regarded as one of the greatest works in French literature and it has been adapted several times for the stage and screen.

#3 Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert is widely regarded as the leading exponent of literary realism in French literature. Madame Bovary, the work for which Flaubert is most known, took five years to complete. It was first serialized in the literary magazine Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856. Public prosecutors attacked it for obscenity and the resulting trial made the novel famous. Madame Bovary became a bestseller in April 1857 when it was published in two volumes. It tells the story of its titular character who craves for romance, wealth and passion which eludes her in her dull married life. The novel transforms the commonplace story of adultery into an enduring work of profound humanity. Now established as one of the greatest novels, Madame Bovary is described as a “perfect” work of fiction. It is considered as a masterpiece of realism that established the realist movement on the European scene.

#2 The Count of Monte Cristo

The most famous novel of one of the greatest novelists in the genre of adventure, The Count of Monte Cristo has been “translated into virtually all modern languages and has never been out of print in most of them.” The novel follows the life of its protagonist Edmond Dantes, who is falsely accused of treason, arrested and imprisoned without trial, just before he can marry his fiancee Mercedes. The novel then focuses on his quest for vengeance against those who conspired to destroy him. According to literary critic George Saintsbury, The Count of Monte Cristo is “said to have been at its first appearance, and for some time subsequently, the most popular book in Europe.” While contemporary critic Luc Sante calls it “a fixture of Western civilization’s literature, as inescapable and immediately identifiable as Mickey Mouse, Noah’s flood and the story of Little Red Riding Hood.”

#1 Les Miserables

The most famous work of perhaps the greatest French novelist, Les Miserables was an instant popular success and was quickly translated into several languages. Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters. The most prominent of them is Jean Valjean, who is imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. Other major characters include Javert, a fanatic police inspector in pursuit to recapture Valjean; Fantine, a beautiful working class woman; and Cosette, her illegitimate daughter. Since its original publication, Les Miserables has been the subject of a large number of adaptations in numerous types of media, such as books, films, musicals, plays and games. It continues to enjoy popularity and is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels in European literature.

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26 Most Famous French People In History

By: Author Dan Forsythe

Posted on Published: March 14, 2022  - Last updated: May 12, 2024

Who are the most famous French in history?

When you think of famous French people in history, the following come to mind: Napoleon Bonaparte (famous military leader), Joan of Arc (famous French heroine), and Louis XIV (known as France’s most famous king). This article will cover the best known French people throughout history ranging from military leaders, artists, scientists, authors and athletes.

1. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821)

Napoleon Bonaparte was a political and military leader that rose to prominence during the period of the French Revolution. Napoleon was born in Corsica, soon after the annexation of the island. Upon serving in the French army, he quickly rose in the ranks.

He was the First Consul (de factor leader) of the French Republic for five years prior to his reign as Emperor when his coronation took place at the Notre-Dame Cathedral. After a long series of successful military campaigns, he lived to the age of 21 before passing away in Saint Helena.

2. Coco Chanel (1883 – 1971)

Coco Chanel (born Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel) was a highly reputable businesswoman and fashion designer, known for founding the world renowned Chanel brand . During the era that occurred after World War I , Chanel was credited with popularizing a casual, sporty chic as the standard of style for women.

Serving as a prolific creator, Chanel managed to replace the corseted silhouette that preceded her time with designs that were less time consuming to remove and put on, less expensive, and more comfortable without sacrificing the elegance. She was born in Saumer, Maine-et-Loire prior to spending most of her life in Paris.

3. Louis XIV (1638 – 1715)

The King of France from 1643 until his passing in 1715, Louis XIV’ s (also known as the Sun King or Louis the Great) reign was the longest recorded of any monarch in the history of a sovereign nation. His model of France symbolized Europe’s age of absolutism, as he surrounded himself with a vast array of important political, cultural, and military people.

Louis XIV, like his predecessors, continued to work on establishing a centralized state that eliminated feudalism that remained in various parts of France. Consequently, he was able to pacify the aristocrats. Born in the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he ruled the country of France from his majestic palace in Versailles.

4) Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793)

Marie Antoinette (born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna) was the last queen of France and wife of Louis XVI before the French Revolution . Marie Antoinette was of Austrian origins and was suspected to have favored Austria, one of France’s biggest enemies at that time.

Known for her lavish spending, rumored promiscuity and alleged illegitimate children, Marie Antoinette was imprisoned and killed by guillotine when the French monarchy fell in 1793.

5. Charles de Gaulle (1890 – 1970)

Charles de Gaulle was a statesmen and army officer responsible for leading the French people against the regime of Nazi Germany during World War II , and the chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic that worked to restore democracy in the country.

At the behest of the then President of the Council of Ministers, he was convinced to come out of retirement and, in rewriting the Constitution, was responsible for founding the Fifth Republic upon approval via referendum. Later that year, he was elected as the President of France. Born in Lille, his life took him to many destinations. However, he passed away in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.

6. Claude Monet (1840 – 1926)

Claude Monet was an innovative painter known for establishing the impressionist genre, an artistic approach observed as modernism’s precursor, particularly in his methods of painting nature on perception alone. Across his career, he was considered the most prolific and consistent practitioner of this philosophy.

Born in Paris, France, Monet grew up in in Le Havre, Normandy which served as the key point for his interest in the outdoors. Extremely successful and frequently exhibited in his lifetime for which he spent most of residing in Giverny, his legacy is a source of inspiration for many aspiring artists.

7. Marie Curie (1867 – 1934)

Marie Curie was a chemist and physicist known as a pioneer in the field of research for radioactivity. The first woman to ever be awarded a Nobel Prize in a co-win with her husband, she was also the first woman to ever become a professor for the University of Paris.

Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland, a location that was, at the time, a place that belonged to the Russian Empire. Her greatest achievement lay in the discovery of the elements radium and polonium with techniques invented for the isolation of radioactive isotopes. Upon living to the age of 66, she passed away in Passy, France.

8. Joan of Arc (1412 – 1431)

The self-proclaimed “Joan the Maiden” born in Domremy, Duchy of Bar in the Kingdom of France, Joan of Arc is considered an outstanding French heroine for her pivotal efforts in the Hundred Years’ War , specifically during the Lancastrian phase which repelled the efforts of the English to conquer France. Furthermore, she was christened as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

Captured just a year after the war effort, she was burned to death and labeled by English collaborators as a heretic. Her passing occurred in Rouen, Normandy, a territory under the rule of the English at the time.

This post explores a list of movies about Joan of Arc .

9. Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885)

With a literary career spanned over 60 years, Victor Hugo was an influential poet, essayist, dramatist, novelist, and playwright of the Romantic movement. His work was abundant in a wide array of genres including lyrics, epics, epigrams, history, political speeches, diaries, satires, and novels, to name several.

The two most notable works in the history of his writing include 1862’s Les Miserables and 1831’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame . Born in Bescancon, France and was initially a royalist, his views altered over time and he became a support of republicanism; campaigning for many social causes including the removal of capital punishment.

10. Edith Piaf (1915 – 1963)

A stunning performer noted as the national singer of France and a renowned international star, the music of Edith Piaf was mostly autobiographical, implementing torch ballads and realistic songs above sorrow, love, and loss. Two of Piaf’s most famous songs included La Vie en Rose and Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien .

Born in Paris, many of her best songs include 1940’s “The Accordionist”, 1949’s “ Hymne a l’amor “, and 1951’s “ Padam, padam …”. Unfortunately much of her life remains unknown. While popular belief states that she was born in Rue de Belleville, her birth certificate states that she was born at the Hopital Tenon, located in Paris’s 20 arrondissement. She lived to the age of 47 before passing away in Plascassier, a sector of Grasse.

This post explores Edith Piaf’s most famous song s.

11. Gustave Eiffel (1832 – 1923)

A civil engineer best known for the Eiffel Tower named after him, Gustave Eiffel developed various bridges across the railway network of France, most notably the Garabit viaduct . After he retired from engineering, he focused on researching aerodynamics and meteorology, with significant contributions in each of the fields.

Design plans for the Eiffel Tower were constructed by his company and for the purposes of the 1889 Universal Exposition that took place in Paris. He also contributed to the design of New York’s Statue of Liberty. Born in Cote d’Or, he lived a very long life, passing away as late as 91 in Paris.

12. Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

During the French Enlightenment , Francois-Marie Arouet ( nom de plume Voltaire ) was a writer, philosopher, and historian best known for criticisms aimed at the Roman Catholic Church and Christianity in general, along with serving as an advocate for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the separation of state and church.

A prolific and versatile writer, Voltaire produced works in almost every form, including plays, novels, poems, essays, scientific exploitations, and histories. In total, his writing spanned over 2,000 pamphlets, books, and letters. Similar to Gustave Eiffel, Voltaire lived a long life that mostly took place in Paris.

13. Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 – 1944)

A laureate of several of the highest literary awards in France in addition to being a recipient of the United States National Book award, Antoine de Saint-Exupery is mostly remembered for his composure of lyrical aviation such as Night Flight and Wind, Sand, and Stars. Moreover, his best work lay in the novel known as The Little Price .

Prior to World War II, Antoine served as a commercial pilot. When the conflict began, he then joined the French Air Force until the French-German armistice. Upon his demobilization from the Air Force, he moved to the United States in an effort to pursue the federal government to fight against Nazi Germany. Living a short life that originated in Lyon, he passed away at sea in the Mediterranean in occupied French territory at the age of 44.

14. Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)

Claude Debussy was composer often observed as the first in the impressionist category, despite his rejection of such a term. He stands among the most influential of his kind across the span of the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Born into a modest family with little involvement in popular culture, Debussy demonstrated enough talent to be admitted to the most prestigious musical college in France, the Conservatoire de Paris , where he spent much of his life. Although he originally studied piano, his vocation was found in innovative composition. While it took many years to develop his distinct style, he achieved international recognition for his opera, Pellas et Melisande.

15. Brigitte Bardot (1934 – )

Born and raised in Paris, Brigite Bardot is a former model, singer, and actress who became a prominent animal rights activist. Her portrayals of sexually emancipated characters living lifestyles of hedonism gained her favor as one of the most famous sex symbols of the early 1960s.

Aspiring to become a ballerina early in her life, her acting career began to sprung in 1952. She caught the attention of intellectuals in France for her 1957 role in the film And God Created Woman . Described as a chief locomotive in the history of women, she was considered the most liberated of her kind in post-war France.

16. René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

The inventor of analytic geometry, René Descartes was a masterful scientist, philosopher, and mathematician lay Catholic, whose work managed to link the fields of algebra. Much of his working life was spent in the Dutch Republic, and his modern philosophical efforts were rooted in Aristotelianism.

Despite this, he differed from prior schools of thought on several matters. Firstly, he notably rejected the notion of corporeal substance splitting into form and matter. Next, he rejected the appeals of nature or divinity as final ends when attempting to explain natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists that God’s creation has absolute freedom.

17. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980)

A key figure in the development of existentialist philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre was also a literary critic, political activist, screenwriter, playwright, biographer, and novelist who led much of the Marxist ideologies.

Nearly all of his work has some influence on sociology, post-colonial theory, critical theory, and literary studies. For literature alone, he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize despite attempts to refuse it. Much of what dominated the themes of his work lay within his open relationship with a fellow philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who together challenged the social and cultural assumptions of their upbringings.

18. Alfred Dreyfus (1859 – 1935)

Alfred Dreyfus was an artillery officer who was trialed and convicted for treason in 1894. With a Jewish ancestry, his story became one of the most polarizing and controversial dramas in the modern history of France, with the incident known as the Dreyfus Affair . Interestingly, it concluded with his exoneration.

He was inspired to join the military after witnessing his family uprooted in the war against Germany, receiving training at the elite Polytechnique school of Paris. He was subsequently commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the French army. Later, he was made captain. His case remains a notable example of anti-Semitism and miscarriage of justice.

19. Zinedine Zidane (1972 – )

Zinedine Zidane is a former professional footballers who served as a midfield attacker and is one of the more recent coaches of Real Madrid, a Spanish club. Considered one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, Zidane demonstrated elegance for his ability to control the ball as a playmaker.

Born in Marseille, France, he began his career in Cannes prior to establishing himself as one of the greatest players in the Ligue 1 at Bordeux. For his achievements in Spain, he was awarded several trophies, including the UEFA Champions League and a La Liga title, scoring a left-foot volleyed winner that is considered one of the best goals in the history of the competition.

20. Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)

Albert Camus was 1822 – 1895 a journalist, author, and philosopher who became the second youngest recipient to ever be awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in French Algeria, Camus’s ideologies focused on anarcho-syndicalism and moralism. Like others, he partook in organizations that sought for an integration of Europe.

His views are observed to have contribute to the rise of absurdism, a body of thought defined by the conflict to seek meaning in life and inherent value and an inability to discover them with certainty. Works include The Rebel , The Stranger , the Myth of Sisyphus , and The Plague .

21. Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895)

Louis Pasteur was microbiologist and chemist best known for uncovering the principles behind the innovative techniques of vaccination, pasteurization, and fermentation. These remarkable breakthroughs in research led to the understanding of the preventions of diseases as well as their causes which established the foundations of public health, along with hygiene and modern medicine.

Born in Dole, Pasteur is regarded as one of the leading developers of modern bacteriology, with his works credited to saving countless lives through the developments of vaccines for anthrax and rabies. For his time, he lived a long time, passing away at 72 in Marnes-la-Coquette.

22. Jacques Cousteau (1910 – 1997)

Jacques Cousteau was an explorer, naval officer, filmmaker, and conservationist, whos research primarily focused on marine biology. He is known for co-developing the Aqua-Lung , the very first self-contained, open-circuit apparatus that allowed one to breathe underwater, now called a scuba.

Furthermore, his pioneering efforts in marine conservation led to the him serving as part of the Academie Francaise, and his film known as the Silent World won a Palme d’Or in 1956 at the Cannes Film Festival. Prior to Michael Moore, he was the only person to win this award for a film in the documentary category. Born in Saint-Andre-de-Cubzac, he lived to the age of 87 before passing away in Paris.

23. Maximilien Robespierre (1758 – 1794)

Maximilien Robespierre was a statesmen and lawyer who was the most influential figure of the French Revolution , comparable only to Napoleon I. As a member of the Jacobin Club and Constituent Assembly, he championed the idea of universal manhood suffrage along with the total abolition of slavery and clergy celibacy.

Elected as a public accuser, he was an outspoken advocate for the male citizenry who did not possess a political voice, for their unrestricted admissions to public offices and the National Guard, for the right to bear arms and the right to petition. He campaigned for an indivisible France, with equality before the law, and a chief defender of direct democracy. Born in Arras, he was executed by guillotine in ceremonial fashion in Paris.

24. Catherine Deneuve (1943 – )

Catherine Deneuve is an actress, model, and singer. Born in Paris, she is considered one of the greatest French actresses of all time. Deneuve gained international recognition for her portrayal of aloof, mysterious, icy beauties in a number of performances, succeeding Mireille Mathieu as the official face of the country’s national symbol of liberty.

Nominated 14 times for the Cesar Award, she secured victories for performances in The Last Metro along with Indochine .

25. Charlemagne (747 – 814)

Living as part of the Carolingian Dynasty, Charlemagne was the King of Franks, the King of Lombards, and Rome’s first Holy Emperor. He succeeded in uniting most of central and western Europe, and was canonized by Antipope Paschal III. Today, the Catholic Church considers him beatified, a progressive step towards sainthood.

Also commonly referred to as the Father of Europe, he united the majority of the western continent for the first time since the Roman Empire’s classical era, consolidating parts of Europe that had never been under the rule of the Franks or Romans. Unfortunately, he was not viewed in his esteem by the Eastern Orthodox Church as a result of his support of the filioque.

26. Andre The Giant (1946 – 1993)

A professional actor and wrestler, Andre The Giant (born André René Roussimoff) lived to be over seven feet tall as a byproduct of gigantism from the excess growth hormone known as acromegaly. Famously, his career achievements and physical stature led him to being referred as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”.

Born in Coulommiers and dying in France, Roussimoff was signed into the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWE) by the renowned Vincent J. McMahon as a special attraction across the United States and Japan.

More posts by Dan Forsythe

Related lessons:

• 12 most famous French kings
• List of the 8 most recent French presidents
• Top French songs
• Famous French female singers
• Famous French fashion models
• Most famous French actresses
• Most famous French writers of all time

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Dan Forsythe

A politics and history graduate with a technical writing background and based in France, Dan writes amazing articles for all things French. An insatiable traveler, Dan has crisscrossed France, Europe, and beyond. When he’s not hiking or falling down historical rabbit holes, Dan sips tea and writes technical pieces or blog posts about travel, history, and life in his adopted home.

See all posts by Dan Forsythe