When was André Gide born and where did he grow up?
André Paul Guillaume Gide was born in Paris on the 22nd of November 1869. He grew up in isolated conditions within Normandy after his father died when he was only 11 years old.
André Paul Guillaume Gide was born in Paris on the 22nd of November 1869. He grew up in isolated conditions within Normandy after his father died when he was only 11 years old.
André Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux in 1895 but the marriage remained unconsummated throughout their lives. She burned all his correspondence after he fled with Marc Allégret to London.
André Gide published Corydon in 1924 as a defense of pederasty which included arguments about the age of consent being set at 13 before 1945. He later considered this book his most important work even though it blocked him from nomination to the Académie Française.
André Gide traveled through French Equatorial Africa from July 1926 to May 1927 and criticized the Large Concessions regime that exploited native workers for rubber. His book Travels in the Congo and Return from Chad compared these conditions to slavery and contributed to growing anti-colonialism movements in France.
André Gide faced condemnation in the Soviet press and by friends of the USSR when he published Return from the USSR in 1936. The Kremlin had been informed about the manuscript and Soviet author Ilya Ehrenburg attempted to postpone its release but failed.
André Gide died in Paris on the 19th of February 1951. The Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1952.