Maurois, André

Maurois, André (äNdrā` mōrwä`), 1885–1967, French biographer, novelist, and essayist. His name was originally Émile Herzog. His first work, The Silence of Colonel Bramble (1918, tr. 1920), describing British military life, was highly successful. Ariel (1923, tr. 1924), a life of Shelley, was followed by lives of Byron, Disraeli, Chateaubriand, Washington, George Sand, Victor Hugo, and others. Other works include A History of England (1937, tr. rev. ed. 1958), Tragedy in France (1940, tr. 1940), From My Journal (1946, tr. 1948), and Proust (1949, tr. 1950). Maurois wrote discerningly on the art of biography as well as on writing and on living.

Bibliography

See his memoirs (2 vol., tr. 1942 and 1970).

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Maurois, André

 orig. Émile Herzog

(born July 26, 1885, Elbeuf, France—died Oct. 9, 1967, Paris) French writer. An officer in the British army during World War I, Maurois had his first literary success with The Silences of Colonel Bramble (1918), a humorous commentary on warfare and the British character. His novels include Bernard Quesnay (1926) and Whatever Gods May Be (1928). He is best known for biographies with the narrative interest of novels; his subjects included Percy B. Shelley, Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, and Marcel Proust.

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Maurois, André 

(pseudonym of Émile Herzog). Born July 26, 1885, in Elbeuf; died Oct. 9, 1967, in Paris. French writer. Member of the Académie Française (1938).

Maurois served in World Wars I and II. He was the author of short stories, literary criticism, history, and memoirs. He wrote the psychological novels Bernard Quesnay (1926; Russian translation, 1926), Atmosphere of Love (1928; Russian translations, 1930 and 1966), and The Family Circle (1932; Russian translation, 1966). He gained world renown for his biographies Ariel, the Life of Shelley (1923; Russian translation, 1925); The Life of Disraeli (1927; Russian translation, 1934); Byron (1930; Russian translation, 1936); Turgenev (1931); Lélia (1952; Russian translation, 1967), about G. Sand; Olympio (1954; Russian translation, 1971), about V. Hugo; The Titans (1957; Russian translation, 1962), about the Dumas family; The Life of Sir Alexander Fleming (1959; Russian translation, 1961); and Prometheus (1965, Russian translation, 1967), about H. de Balzac.

Based on precise historical documentation, Maurois’s biographies are vivid portraits of great men. Maurois usually focused his attention on the inner world of his heroes, as well as on the circumstances of their personal lives. Maurois’s later books reveal an increased interest in public affairs, the social ethos of an age, and national literary traditions (the biographies of Sand, Hugo, Balzac). As a writer, Maurois was inspired by French and world literature. He was fond of the Russian classics and wrote about I. S. Turgenev, L. N. Tolstoy, and A. P. Chekhov. His realistic writing is imbued with faith in the human personality and runs counter to the modernist tendencies in French literature.

WORKS

Oeuvres complétes, vols. 1–16. Paris, 1950–56.
Mémoires. [Paris, 1970.]
Une Carrière et autres nouvelles. Moscow, 1965.
In Russian translation:
“Tragediia Frantsii.” A. Simon [et al.], O tekh, kto predal Frantsiiu. Moscow, 1941.
Fialki po sredam. Moscow, 1963.
Literaturnye portrety. Moscow, 1970.
“Iz ’Pisem k Neznakomke’” Introduction by E. Evnina. Inostrannaia literatura, 1974, no. 1.

REFERENCES

Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 4. Moscow, 1963.
Leviant, M. la. “Teoriia biograficheskogo romana André Morua.” Uch. zap. Mosk. gos. pedagogich. in-ta im. V, I. Lenina, vol. 458. Moscow, 1971.
Narkir’er, F. S. André Morua. Moscow, 1974. (In press.)
Michel-Droit. André Maurois, 2nd ed. Paris, 1958.
Suffel, J. André Maurois. With commentary by André Maurois. [Paris, 1963.]
Biblio, 1965, no. 6. (Special issue on Maurois.)
Keating, L. C. André Maurois. New York [1969].

F. S. NARKIR’ER