Curated category
French male dramatists and playwrights
- Voltaire"This is no time to make new enemies." Those words are attributed to Voltaire on his deathbed, when a priest urged him to renounce Satan.
- Jules VerneJules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare.
- MolièreMolière collapsed on stage on the 17th of February 1673, mid-performance, coughing and haemorrhaging blood. He was playing Argan, a hypochondriac obsessed…
- Gustave FlaubertSometimes Gustave Flaubert spent a full week finishing a single page. He worked in sullen solitude, never satisfied with what he had composed.
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, and he refused it. He said a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an…
- Denis DiderotDenis Diderot was born on the 5th of October 1713 in Langres, Champagne, the son of a cutler named Didier Diderot. He died on the 31st of July 1784, having…
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo died on the 22nd of May 1885, at 50 Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. He was 83 years old, and he died of pneumonia.
- Alexandre DumasAlexandre Dumas once silenced a man who had insulted his ancestry with a single retort. "My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my…
- Hector BerliozHector Berlioz was born on the 11th of December 1803 in the commune of La Cote-Saint-Andre, in south-eastern France, the son of a physician who had never…
- Jean RacineJean Racine was born on the 22nd of December 1639 in La Ferté-Milon, a small town in the province of Picardy in northern France, and he would die sixty years…
- Gabriel MarcelGabriel Honoré Marcel was born on the 7th of December 1889 in Paris, and by the time he died on the 8th of October 1973 he had written more than a dozen…
- Louis Carrogis CarmontelleLouis Carrogis Carmontelle was a man who could not be contained by a single art form. Born on the 15th of August 1717 in Paris, the son of a bootmaker, he…