The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward of only 10 euros, but results in considerable recognition and book sales for the winning author. Four other prizes are also awarded: prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle, prix Goncourt de la Poésie (poetry) and prix Goncourt de la Biographie (biography). Of the "big six" French literary awards, the Prix Goncourt is the best known and most prestigious. The other major literary prizes include the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française, the Prix Femina, the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Interallié and the Prix Médicis.
Éditions Gallimard (French: [edisjɔ̃ ɡalimaːʁ]; formerly Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française and Librairie Gallimard, is one of the leading French book publishers. In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1,418 titles.
Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier, a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which has been filmed twice and is considered a classic of French literature. The book is based partly on his childhood.
Gaston Gallimard was a French publisher.
Jacques Rivière was a French "man of letters" — a writer, critic and editor who was "a major force in the intellectual life of France in the period immediately following World War I". He edited the magazine La Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF) from 1919 until his death. He was influential in winning a general public acceptance of Marcel Proust as an important writer. His friend and brother-in-law was Alain-Fournier, with whom he exchanged an abundant correspondence.
Jean Cassou was a French writer, art critic, poet, member of the French Resistance during World War II and the first Director of the Musée national d'Art moderne in Paris.
Auguste Armand Ghislain Marie Joseph Nompar de Caumont de La Force, 12th Duke of La Force, was a French duke and historian. Specialising in the 17th century, his work allowed him to reconstruct events in which his ancestors had taken part. He was elected a member of the Académie française on 19 November 1925.
Henri Massis was a conservative French essayist, literary critic and literary historian.
Émile Poulat, was until 1954 a Catholic priest, associated with the Prêtres Ouvriers movement, and thereafter a French historian and sociologist. Director of Studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, he was also director of research at CNRS and historian of the contemporary church. He was a founding member of the Group of Sociology of Religion, director and member of the editorial boards of several journals including Politica Hermetica. His research concentrated on the conflict between Catholic culture and modern culture in the history of contemporary Catholicism.
Igor Yourievitch Bogdanoff and Grégoire "Grichka" Yourievitch Bogdanoff were French twin brother television presenters, producers, and scientific essayists who, from the 1970s on, presented various subjects in science fiction, popular science, and cosmology. They were involved in a number of controversies, most notably the Bogdanov affair, in which it was alleged the brothers wrote nonsensical advanced physics papers that were nonetheless published in reputable scientific journals.
Véronique Olmi is a French playwright and novelist. She won the Prix Alain-Fournier emerging artist award for her 2001 novella Bord de Mer. It has since been translated into several European languages. Olmi has published a dozen plays and half a dozen novels.
Calmann-Lévy is a French publishing house founded in 1836 by Michel Lévy as Michel Lévy frères. His brother Kalmus "Calmann" Lévy joined in 1844, and the firm was renamed Calmann Lévy in 1875 after Michel's death.
Émile Janvion was a French teacher, an anarcho-syndicalist leader, a founder of the Confédération générale du travail (CGT) and a leader of the anti-militarist movement. He came to hold national syndicalist views that prefigured fascism. He was anti-Semitic, hostile to freemasonry, hostile to the republic and flirted with monarchism. However his main goal was the nationalization of the land and of the means of production.
Edmond Doutté was a French sociologist, orientalist and Islamologist - both Arabist and Berberologist - but also an explorer of Maghreb.
John Scheid is a French historian. A specialist of ancient Rome, he has been a professor at the Collège de France since 2001.
Baron André de Maricourt was a French historian.
Marie-Jacques Massacrié-Durand was a French music publisher and composer, sometimes under the pseudonym J. Samm. The family's publishing house, Éditions Durand, published works by many of Durand's contemporaries, including Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, Gabriel Fauré, Jacques Ibert, Darius Milhaud, Maurice Ravel and Camille Saint-Saëns.
Events from the year 1634 in France.
Élisabeth van Rysselberghe was a Belgian translator. She was the daughter of Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe.
Ève Paul-Margueritte was a French-language writer, the author of many sentimental novels. After she was widowed and her sister, Lucie Paul-Margueritte, was divorced, they lived and worked together, co-authoring at least two books, and several translations. She translated from English to French works by Alice and Claude Askew, Thomas Hardy, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Garrett P. Serviss, Bram Stoker Lilian Turner, Paul Urquhart, and A. M. Williamson. Paul-Margueritte was the recipient of the "Prix Jean-Jacques-Berger", for Auteuil et Passy, 1947, and the "Prix Georges-Dupau", 1950, from the Académie Française.
