Goncourt, Edmond and Jules

Goncourt, Edmond (-Louis-Antoine Huot de) and Jules (-Alfred Huot de)

(born May 26, 1822, Nancy, France—died July 16, 1896, Champrosay) (born Dec. 17, 1830, Paris—died June 20, 1870, Auteuil) French writers. The Goncourt brothers were enabled by a legacy to devote their lives largely to writing. They produced a series of social histories (from 1854) as well as a body of art criticism. The most lasting of their meticulously detailed naturalistic novels is Germinie Lacerteux (1864), which explores working-class life. Their published journals (kept 1851–96) represent both a revealing autobiography and a monumental history of social and literary life in 19th-century Paris. By his will Edmond established the Académie Goncourt, which annually awards the Prix Goncourt, one of France's preeminent literary prizes, to the author of an outstanding work of French literature.