Edmond de Goncourt | |
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 Portrait by Nadar, c. 1877 | |
| Born | May 26, 1822 Nancy, France |
| Died | July 16, 1896 (aged 74) Draveil, France |
| Resting place | Cimetière de Montmartre |
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| French literature |
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Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt (pronounced [ɛdmɔ̃ də ɡɔ̃kuʁ] ; 26 May 1822 –16 July 1896) was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt. [1]
Goncourt was born in Nancy. His parents, Marc-Pierre Huot de Goncourt and Annette-Cécile de Goncourt (née Guérin) were minor aristocrats who died when he and his brother Jules de Goncourt were young adults. [2] His father was a former cavalry officer and squadron commander in the Grande Armée of Napoleon I, and his grandfather Jean-Antoine Huot de Goncourt had been a deputy in the National Assembly of 1789. [3] [4] Edmond attended the pension Goubaux, the Lycée Henri IV, and the Lycée Condorcet. [5] At the Lycée Condorcet, he studied rhetoric and philosophy from 1840 to 1842, followed by the study of law between 1842 and 1844. [4]
After their mother's death in 1848, the brothers inherited an income which enabled them to live independently and pursue their artistic interests. Edmond was able to leave a treasury clerkship that had made him so miserable as to contemplate suicide. [6] [2] For much of his life, he collaborated with Jules creating works of art criticism, a notorious journal, and subsequently several novels. Their most notable novel was Germinie Lacerteux (1865), inspired by the exploits of the brothers' housekeeper Rose, who stole from them to fund a double life of orgies and sexual encounters. It is considered one of the earliest works of French Realism to deal with the working class. [6] [2]
In 1852, Edmond and his brother were indicted for an "outrage against public morality" after they quoted erotic Renaissance poetry in an article. [6] They were ultimately acquitted. He was known to be fascinated with Rococo and Japanese art. [7] He also collected rare books. [8] The brothers' house at Auteuil, which they purchased in 1868, was a showcase for their collection of 18th century French and Far Eastern art. Edmond documented the house and its interiors in his 1881 book "La Maison d'un Artiste". [9] Between 1856 and 1875, the brothers published essays on 18th century art in a collected series called "L'Art du XVIIIe siècle", which revived appreciation for the Rococo. [2]
After the death of Jules in 1870, Edmond continued to write novels alone. He also continued writing the Journal des Goncourt , which he and Jules had begun in 1851, only stopping 12 days before his death in 1896. [10] He completed unfinished works from his collaboration with his brother, including a monograph on Paul Gavarni (1873) and a book called "L'Amour au XVIIIe Siècle" (1875). [11] He revised, enlarged and reissued Les Maîtresses de Louis XV (1860) in three volumes between 1878 and 1879: La du Barry, Madame de Pompadour, and La Duchesse de Châteauroux et ses soeurs. [12] His last novel, Chérie (1884), about a young woman who expresses her artistic sensibility in fashion, can be read as an exploration of impressionistic art. [13] He collected the letters of his late brother in 1885, and between 1887 and 1896 issued 9 volumes of the Journal. [14] Edmond became increasingly jealous of more successful writers like Guy de Maupassant and Émile Zola, which is reflected in scathing entries in the Journal. In 1893 he wrote of Maupassant that his "success with loose society women is an indication of their vulgarity, for never have I seen a man of the world with such a red face, such common features, or such a peasant build." [10]
He bequeathed his entire estate for the foundation and maintenance of the Académie Goncourt. In honour of his brother and collaborator, Jules de Goncourt (17 December 1830 –20 June 1870), each December since 1903, the Académie awards the Prix Goncourt. It is the most prestigious prize in French literature, given to "the best imaginary prose work of the year". [15]
Edmond de Goncourt died in Champrosay in 1896, and was interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris.[ citation needed ]
(by Edmond alone) [14] [4] [16]
Nonfiction
Novels
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.
French literature generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature.
Didier Van Cauwelaert is a French author of Belgian descent who was born in Nice. In 1994 his novel Un Aller simple won the Prix Goncourt.
Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt was a French writer, who published books together with his brother Edmond. Jules was born and died in Paris. His death at the age of 39 was at Auteuil of a stroke brought on by syphilis.
The Goncourt brothers were Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) and Jules de Goncourt (1830–1870), both French naturalism writers who, as collaborative sibling authors, were inseparable in life.
Marcel Rouff was a prolific novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, historian, and gastronomic writer. With Curnonsky he wrote the multi-volume work La France gastronomique, guide des merveilles culinaires et des bonnes auberges françaises. He may be best known today for his novel about the fictional gourmet Dodin-Bouffant, La vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet, which was first published in 1924 and dedicated to his friend Curnonsky and the great nineteenth-century French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Rouff's novel was adapted for French television in 1973 by Jean Ferniot.
Jules, Baron de Saint-Genois was a Belgian liberal politician, historian, librarian and professor at the University of Ghent. He was the first President of the Willemsfonds and a prolific contributor to the early volumes of the Biographie Nationale de Belgique, serving as president of the editorial committee.
Alphonse Van Bredenbeck de Châteaubriant was a French writer who won the Prix Goncourt in 1911 for his novel Monsieur de Lourdines and Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française for La Brière in 1923.
Jean-Louis Curtis, pseudonym of Albert Laffitte, was a French novelist best known for his second novel The Forests of the Night, which won France's highest literary award the Prix Goncourt in 1947. He is the author of over 30 novels.
Patrick Grainville is a French novelist.
Antonio de La Gándara was a French painter, pastellist and draughtsman. La Gándara was born in Paris, France, but his father was of Spanish ancestry, born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and his mother was from England. La Gándara's talent was strongly influenced by both cultures. At only 15 years of age, La Gándara was admitted as a student of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Cabanel at the École des Beaux-Arts. Soon, he was recognized by the jury of the 1883 Salon des Champs-Élysées, who singled out the first work he ever exhibited: a portrait of Saint Sebastian.
Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, or Lebas was a French engraver, head of the largest engraving workshop in Paris during the 18th century.
The Country Dance is an oil painting by French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. Probably one of Watteau's earliest painting, created roughly 1706-1710, it depicts a group of quite courtly peasants dancing among the trees.
François Crouzet was a French historian. Considered the greatest French historian of Britain of his generation, he was Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne at the time of his death.
Jules Léon-Jean Combarieu was a French musicologist and music critic.
The Goncourt Journal was a diary written in collaboration by the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt from 1850 up to Jules' death in 1870, and then by Edmond alone up to a few weeks before his own death in 1896. It forms an unrivalled and entirely candid chronicle of the literary and artistic Parisian world in which they lived; "a world", it has been said, "of bitter rivalries and bitterer friendships, in which every gathering around a café table on the Grands Boulevards [was] a chance to raise one's status in the byzantine literary hierarchy". Fear of lawsuits by the Goncourts' friends and their heirs prevented publication of anything but carefully chosen selections from the Journal for many years, but a complete edition of the original French text appeared in the 1950s in 22 volumes, and there have been several selective translations into English.
The Two Cousins is a 1716 oil-on-canvas painting by Antoine Watteau, now in the Louvre Museum, in Paris, which acquired it in 1990.
L'Indifférent is a 1717 oil on panel painting by Antoine Watteau, which entered the Louvre in the collection of Louis La Caze in 1869.
Two Studies of an Actor is the name given to a sheet of drawings in the trois crayons technique by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau. Dated between 1716 and 1721, the sheet was once in the collection of Watteau's friend, the manufacturer and publisher Jean de Jullienne; passing through a number of private collectors, it was acquired in 1874 by the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, where it remains.
The Prix Bordin is a series of prizes awarded annually by each of the five institutions making up the Institut Français since 1835.
The 'big six' literary prizes in France have an extremely high profile and are, significantly, all awarded for novels. The best known and most prestigious is the Prix Goncourt. The other major literary prizes are the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Academie Francaise, the Prix Femina (awarded by a jury of women, though not necessarily to a female novelist), the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Interallie and the Prix Medicis.
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